John Herbert Orr

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John Herbert Orr ( August 19, 1911 - May 6, 1984 ) was an American entrepreneur  from Alabama  and the founder of Orradio Industries Inc., a manufacturer of audio tapes .

Life

In 1945, Orr was part of the US Army intelligence service investigating this technology originally developed in Germany in the 1930s. It was claimed that General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to record a message to the German people in 1945, which he made with captured German tape. However, the tape was not completely erased and Hitler's voice   would have been temporarily heard in Eisenhower's recording. Eisenhower ordered that no tape could be reused and ordered Major John Herbert Orr to use  captured German scientists  to build an American tape factory. At the time the medium was paper tape, but the German engineers had already experimented with a plastic tape and provided Major Orr with the knowledge that formed the basis of what would later become the sound and video recording industry. When the German engineers gave Orr their studies on the plastic tape, the only place where this material was produced was in Europe. It was a factory that made faux leather women's purses .

Orr's knowledge enabled him to found Orradio in 1949. When, after some uncertainty, tape became the medium for magnetic recording and became available as video tape and data storage, sales skyrocketed in the late 1950s. Orradio produced the world's first commercially available audio tape, video tape and magnetic data tape . The company was  bought up by its larger competitor  Ampex when it had been recognized in 1959 that it was cheaper to own the production facility itself than to continue to only buy the produced tape.

After the company was sold, Orr founded OrrTronics, which developed the tape coated with lubrication on the back and used it in endless cassettes such as the "Orrtronic Tapette". This was produced in versions for home and automobile, as well as professional use, initially developed as a single-track mono tape, which had gone into production as the "Cart" ( NAB cartridge ) for radio stations and followed by two-track mono and Stereo versions was further developed.

OrrTronics was later sold to Delco Battery; Orr Inc. went to Orrox Corporation, which had specialized in hard drive controllers and the refurbishment of quadruplex recording heads and computer-based videotape processing systems for television broadcasters and post-production houses . The later produced CMX systems were for years the preferred editing system for 80% of all television programs shot on video tapes.

Orr retired from Orrox in 1976 and founded Orr Proprietorship, which transferred everything from old sound carrier cylinders to the tape recordings of the 1960s to a modern tape for preservation.

Orr died of a heart attack in 1984 while driving with his sister on a Sunday afternoon.

Documentation

In 2005, the documentary series History Detectives on  PBS reported  in Season 3, Episode 6: "Car Tape Deck"  about Orr and his work in the magnetic tape industry.

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Orr, John Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur and company founder
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1911
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1984