Talk:Semi Joseph Begun

What are the sources for this article? There are several obvious errors, and a lot of unfamiliar material that just doesn't sound right. To start with, Begun's autobiography lists his birthplace as being in Germany, not Hungary. And he makes it pretty clear that he developed the steel tape recorders mentioned in the article on his own, not in collaboration with AT&T. The list goes on . . .this article probably needs to totally rewritten--and fact checked!dbrainchip 22:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I just read this article again. Wow. This is like some alternative universe version of the history of magnetic recording. The author, whoever he or she is, has dredged up two of the most obscure players , Battelle and Indiana Steel, and for some reason turned them into the center of the story. Whoever came up with this really needs to produce some citations, because this is just way out of line with everything that has been written about the history of magnetic recording over the past decade or so. Also, very little of this article is actually about Begun, the subject. There's no way to edit this to make it correct - I suggest that the Wiki-gods expunge the whole thing and let somebody else give it a try. dbrainchip 22:30, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Off-topic section

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Lloyd Jackson, a supervisor, and Gerard M Foley, a research engineer in the Physics Division of Battelle, undertook the project. At the first conference among Begun, Jackson, Foley and other Brush researchers, Foley observed that magnetite (lodestone), an iron oxide, was strongly magnetic. Dr. Begun said that he did not want to use a natural material, the properties of which would be hard to control.

Foley produced powders from a wide variety of metallic permanent magnet materials, and set up a process for coating them on short lengths of cellulose acetate tape, using an acrylic lacquer to cement the powder on the tape. Brush would not agree to supply a means to test the tapes in Columbus, so they were carried by train to Cleveland and tested on a rig in the Brush laboratory. The short lengths of tape were spliced into a belt, and run at about 24 inches (60 centimeters) per second past (1) a permanent magnet, (2) a recording head supplied with an AC bias at around 60 kHz (kilocycles per second in those days) in series with an adjustable frequency AC source, and (3) a playback head connected to an electronic voltmeter, or, alternatively, to a cathode ray oscilloscope. The head gap was such that the first null in response occurred abround 10 kHz. The materials tested included carbon steel, various iron alloys, and alnico, the best permanent magnet material of the day.

Coincidentally, Foley was also assigned to work on a project for Indiana Steel Products, the leading producer of alnico magnets at the time. His assignment was to attempt to discover what a strange genius who worked for the Indiana Steel Products Research Department was really doing. This man was making a fairly good permanent magnet material by leaching the aluminum from an iron-aluminum mixture using caustic soda, and then cold pressing the resulting powder into bars. The problem was that no one could duplicate his results. When Foley went through the steps prescribed by the inventor to make the material, the resulting bars were very poor magnets, just as had resulted when others had tried to make them. Foley arranged for the inventor to visit Battelle and repeat the process. The inventor first recounted some theories he had about permanent magnets which bore no relation to anything Foley had ever heard anywhere else. He then proceeded to perform the steps of his procedure, punctuating his actions with theoretical explanations of why they were necessary. Each time he described a procedure he in fact did something different from what he said he was doing. The result was a material having the good properties of his previous productions. Foley, having taken notes of the actual procedure, was able to duplicate the inventor’s result.

Ethical considerations prohibited the Battelle workers from disclosing the Indiana Steel Products work to Brush, and those together with the fact that the Brush work was classified forbid the disclosure of the Brush work to ISP. Foley decided, however, that he could ethically and legally make a test tape using the powder resulting from the ISP process to find whether it was good for recording. If it were, he and Jackson would take up the problem of introducing the two sponsors to each other. It was, in fact, not very good. The same ISP worker made some middling good magnets by electrodepositing iron into a mercury anode. He continued the process until the mercury was a muddy slurry. The resulting slurry could be cold pressed into bars, squeezing out the mercury and leaving a metallic bar, which was a pretty good permanent magnet. When this material was crushed into powder and coated on plastic, the resulting tape was the best yet.

In the meantime the ethical problems had been solved, and Dr. Begun somewhat reluctantly agreed to a conference with the ISP Research Director and his genius worker. The latter embarrassed everyone by showing up at the conference carrying a cigar box which proved to be a working magnetic tape audio recorder. His demonstration of the device so alarmed the Brush participants that they refused to allow any further communication in the Brush-Battelle-ISP direction. The other direction was still allowed, however.

As a result, Foley was asked to arrange for the production of at least a mile of tape using the powder resulting from the ISP mercury process. He had no doubt of his ability to produce sufficient powder in his laboratory, but the handling of such a quantity of tape seemed beyond the capabilities of Battelle, given the rather low priority of this project under war time conditions. He therefore arranged to visit Eastman Kodak Company, to see if they might be able to assist.

He met in Rochester, New York, with E. K. Carter, the Kodak Assistant Director of Research, and another Kodak researcher who had a less memorable name. Early in the conference he brought out a small vial containing a sample of the magnetic powder. When he poured some of it on a sheet of paper a tiny drop of mercury came out with it. The two Kodak men recoiled as if a rattlesnake had appeared on the table. The assistant hurriedly said he would dispose of the paper and its contents, and rushed off with it. Dr. Carter then explained that Eastman tried to keep mercury out of Rochester as far as possible. Trace amounts of mercury could cause erratic hypersensitisation of photographic film, ruining large amounds of production. They were not interested in working with any material that was possibly contaminated with mercury.

At his desk one morning, Foley had a memory of consulting Jackson on the question of whether iron oxide paint pigment was magnetic, but he realized that no such conference had ever occurred. He went to talk with a Battelle chemist whom he knew to be familiar with paint pigments. The chemist produced from his desk a cardboard containing samples of iron oxide paints. Foley could pick up the card with a permanent magnet. A search of the literature showed that the pigments were produced by synthetic processes which would permit good control of the properties of the product.

Foley then ordered black iron oxide paint pigments from six different manufacturers, including C. K. Williams Co. of St. Louis, Missouri. He coated test lengths of tape with each of them and took the tapes to Cleveland for evaluation.

The results were unbelievable. As the recorded frequency was raised, the output rose linearly up to 8 or 9 kHz. It then dipped to zero around 10 kHz, where the head gap was half the wavelength of the recording on the tape. As the frequency was raised more, the output rose to continue the linear rise up to 18 or 19 kHz, when it dipped again but returned in the mid 20 kHz region before finally dropping off completely. (The tape speed was quite high.)

Miles of tape were immediately demanded. Foley got in touch with Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M), and took five pounds of pigment to Minneapolis. The classification of the project for security reasons prevented him from telling the 3M people how the tape was to be used, but he could specify the pigment density required. A week or so later he received several miles of tape, all of it sticky. 3M knew how to make Scotch tape!

He then contacted a friend at Mead Paper of Chillicothe, Ohio. He made up the lacquer, took it to Chillicothe one morning and returned that afternoon with 96 miles of Kraft paper tape coated with a magnetic film. He also found a company in Mount Vernon, Ohio, whose main product was bread wrappers. They produced 48 miles of cellulose acetate tape coated with the magnetic film.

The Alsos project to find German technological products as the Allied troops fought their way into Germany revealed the German work on iron oxide magnetic tapes, which preceded the Battelle work and precluded the issuance of any patents on the American work.

The black magnetic iron oxide pigment was Fe₃O₄, magnetite. Gamma Fe₂O₃, a form of the red oxide hematite, is also magnetic and proved to be superior for magnetic recording. Several years later 3M sued C. K. Williams for infringement of 3M patents relating to magnetic recording and lost the suit.
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Moved above section from article to here. It is way off topic. This page should be limited to a bio of Mr. Begun. I'm not sure if anything in this section is worth saving, but I would like to see it cross checked with other sources and possibly used to expand other articles. -- Austin Murphy 19:41, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

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