Yesterday my pals Mutt and Sara took me by the Pavek Museum in Minneapolis. This wasn’t the reason I came to Minneapolis, but it’s a heck of a good reason to go to the Twin Cities!
There are microphones, old radios and Victrolas, broadcast equipment and theremins. There are recording lathes and television cameras. But perhaps the most amazing artifacts they have at the museum came from the Jack Mullin collection.
Jack Mullin was the guy responsible for every tape recorder we’ve ever had in America. If you research magnetic tape and tape recorders, the technology was invented by the Germans in the 1930s and used by the Nazis in World War II. When some of these German “Magnetofon” tape recorders were discovered by the Allies in a Nazi radio station, Jack Mullin brought two of them back to the United States. He reverse-engineered the tape recorder and the tape itself, demonstrated the machines to Bing Crosby, and with Crosby financing the project, produced the first Ampex model 200 tape recorder in 1947 (less than two years after the war ended—think about THAT…).
The US tape recording industry started from there and exploded. Ampex and Mullin also invented the video tape machine in 1956, if that gives you an idea of the staggering number of accomplishments that came from this man.
So, here at the Pavek Museum in Minneapolis, you can see the actual Nazi tape recorder that Mullin brought back. And it still works! They’ll play a Bing Crosby tape for you! They also have Jack Mullin’s personal Ampex 200, the most overbuilt, art deco, Buck Rogers-looking tape machine ever made (which also works! They played a tape on the 200, with backward-facing tape at 30 ips—mind blown!).
Needless to say, I was in geek heaven. Thanks again to Mutt and Sara for taking me there. I highly recommend going, if you are in Minneapolis!
Watch some videos!
https://www.facebook.com/652061745/videos/pcb.10158341685031746/710447026606290
https://www.facebook.com/652061745/videos/pcb.10158341685031746/670627474065223
