Marvin Camras

Marvin Camras (1916-1995) is the inventor of the magnetic tape recording method that underlies most electronic and digital media, also including audio and videocassettes, floppy disks and credit card magnetic strips. He was born in Chicago in 1916, were he was known to his family as an "inventor" by the age of five. When he got older he began to focus his talents on electronics. In the late 1930's, he was studying electrical engineering at the Amour Institute of Technology, later he earned a BS and MS there.
At the same time his cousin was aspiring to become an opera singer. In order for his cousin's voice to be recorded, Camras resurrected and idea of Valdemar Poulsen, whose telegraph phone had proved sounds, could be recorded magnetically. At first Camras used piano wire to record his cousins singing but it would become twisted and wound up through the machine. To solve this problem he created a magnetic recording head that would surround but not touch the wire, so when the actual recording would be impressed symmetrically on the wire by the gap of air between the head and it. Camras eventually made this idea work and Camras himself won his first patents and a position at the Armour Research Foundation.
He later adapted his device for use by the Navy, who simulated depth charge attacks in order to train submarine pilots. He also helped the Army who used the "Model 50" machines in World War II to terrorize the enemy with high-volume, "decoy" attacks. When the war was over he switched from wires to tapes. After thousands of experiments, he developed a ferric oxide "paint" for the tape, which made the particles align uniformly when magnetized, forming the perfect surface on which to record. Camras also invented stereo recording and reproduction by tape; long before standard phonograph records were recorded that way. His other inventions are: multi-track recording, magnetic soundtracks for motion pictures, and prototype video tape recorder. Marvin Camras' invention of magnetic tapes and their coatings were, and still are, the basis for most of the media, entertainment and computer recording and storage done today. Camras spent 50 years at the Armour Research Foundation and the Illinois Institute of Technology, were he taught until 1994. He died in 1995 and by that time he had earned over 500 US patents for his work. He was put in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1985, and in 1990 he won the National Medal of Technology.