I have the Frank Polkinghorn articles in another post but thought they deserve to have a standalone presentation. The first article is actually 2 in one, 10 pages, initiated by Jane Morgan wife of Robert Morgan, a mechanical engineer in Menlo Park, California. Jane’s goal was to bring to the for front “The Men Who Made Electronics Possible – The First Fifty Years” Jane was in the Women’s Army Corps in WW2 and served as a volunteer secretary of several museums and continued her interest in early radio. This interest prompted her to interview several early radio pioneers such as Frank Polkinghorn including writing many articles on the subject which now lie in History San Jose.

In this next article Frank recalls the history of Otis Moorhead and what specifically happened to his company. Frank actually worked for A-P Labs starting around 1925 but it was short-lived.

Jane Morgan wrote a book “Electronics in the West- The first Fifty Years” Here is a link to that book here: EW One fact I want the readers here to be aware of. I read her entire book and found several missing facts. As early as the mid 1930’s, Germany was working on the art of reel to reel recording and playback. By 1940-41 after the invasion of France, the reel to reel was perfected. The German army placed these machines in under-ground bunkers with small antennas above to broadcast propaganda through out France. Allied bombs could not silence them as the bunkers were quite deep. Reel to reel recordings were dispatched from Berlin every day and broadcast in a very wide area. When the allies invaded France, the machines in bunkers were found, crated up and shipped to the US. Many were made using reverse engineering and this eventually became the Ampex Corporation who advertised, even in my life time, they invented the reel to reel machines. James Millen, an engineer serving under General Patten, was the first to understand the great value he had found. In between the bunkers in France and the machines reverse engineered, singer Bing Crosby had a hand with the early machines. He liked the idea of having a recorder in his home and just sending the tape to Hollywood without having to travel there. The Ampex corporation began in 1944. I am sure that Jane was not aware of these facts and not stated on page 173 of her book.

Sources:

Thanks to now deceased Will Jensby as the source of much of the information above.