The Santa Barbara Unit and Magnetic Tape History

For many years, magnetic tape was the fabric that held Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic together. It is, therefore, altogether fitting that the man who introduced tape and tape recorders to this country, John T. Mullin, was an active volunteer, board member and all-around electronic advisor to the Santa Barbara Unit of Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic for many years until his death in 1999 at age 85.

The story of his discovery of German taping equipment began in England in 1943 with "a little night music." An officer in the United States Signal Corps, assigned to the RAF, Jack was working mainly on solving a series of radio-frequency interference problems. Because of the urgency of the program he worked far into the night, and began listening to German radio stations while he worked after the BBC had gone off the air. The stations came in loud and clear - so clear that they sounded like live performances. Although the German music sounded live, Mullin reasoned that even a dictator like Hitler could not compel musicians to perform continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Germans had to have some kind of outstanding recorder about which no one knew. Just a few weeks after V-E Day, the May 1945 surrender of Germany, he found the answer.

After the liberation of Paris in the late summer of 1944, Mullin was sent to the French capital to set up an electronics lab. His mission was to examine captured German electronic equipment and to submit reports to the Signal Corps and to Allied Intelligence. A working demonstration of the Magnetophon unlocked the secret source of the beautiful night music he had heard in England, for the machine had been used in German radio broadcasts for some time. It had also been used as a weapon of war, providing the means for Hitler's life-like broadcasts throughout Germany, and for editing prisoners of war statements. Surprisingly, there was no official word that such a machine existed.

The importance of such advanced equipment was obvious to Mr. Mullin, and after making sure that the Signal Corps received several recorders, he saved two for himself. During his last few months in the army he took them apart and sent them, along with fifty rolls of tape and photographs of the manuals and schematics, home to San Francisco in eighteen separate packages; this was to comply with army regulations requiring that war souvenirs fit inside a mailbag. Miraculously, all those individual bundles did finally arrive safely.

Back in the United States after the war, it took him about four months of re-assembly of the machines, re-wiring with American parts, before he was ready to show them to audio professionals. These experts were impressed with the clean, undistorted recording of sound, and, in addition, the flexibility of easy editing afforded by this new method. It was these attributes that convinced Bing Crosby and the producers of his radio show in 1947 that Mr. Mullin and his tape were the answers to their broadcast problems. With tape, Bing could produce his shows when he wished and not have to be tied to a rigid schedule, and, of course, the quality of sound was superior. Their alliance was the beginning of a revolution in radio broadcasting, the recording industry, motion pictures and television.