Marvin Camras (January 1, 1916 – June 23, 1995) was an

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and inventor who was widely influential in the field of

magnetic recording Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ac ...

. Camras built his first recording device, a

wire recorder Wire recording or magnetic wire recording was the first magnetic recording technology, an analog type of audio storage in which a magnetic recording is made on a thin steel wire. The first crude magnetic recorder was invented in 1898 by Valde ...

, in the 1930s for a cousin who was an aspiring opera singer named Willy. He also built Willy a telephone, due to the fact that he could not afford one, at the age of 8. Shortly afterwards he discovered that using

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

made the process of splicing and storing recordings easier. Camras's work attracted the notice of his professors at what is now

Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

(IIT) and was offered a position at

Armour Research Foundation IIT Research Institute (IITRI),Greenbaum & Wheeler (1967), cover sheet (technical paper).McCormac; et al. (1967), p. i (book)."IITRI" (or "iiTRi") is used on cover sheets of technical paper documents in prior decades. also known historically and ...

(which merged with

Lewis Institute Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has prog ...

in 1940 to become IIT) to develop his work. Before and during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Camras' early wire recorders were used by the armed forces to train pilots. They were also used for disinformation purposes: battle sounds were recorded and amplified and the recordings placed where the

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

invasion was not going to take place. This work was kept secret until after the war. In June 1944 he was awarded , titled "Method and Means of Magnetic Recording". In all, Camras received more than 500 patents, largely in the field of electronic communications. Camras received a bachelor's degree in 1940 and a master's degree in 1942, both in electrical engineering, from IIT. In 1968, the institution awarded him an honorary doctorate. In May 1962 Camras wrote a predictive paper titled "Magnetic recording and reproduction - 2012 A.D.". In his paper Camras predicted the existence of mass-produced portable media players he described as memory packs the size of a package of playing cards holding up to 10²⁰ bits of information. Such devices would not have any mechanically moving parts and would store both sound and movies. He also predicted music and movie downloads, online shopping, access to online encyclopedias and newspapers and the widespread use of online banking transactions. He built his own house, by hand, doing everything except laying the foundation. He also built a bomb-shelter in this house. In recognition of his achievements, he received the

National Medal of Technology The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...

award in 1990. Marvin Camras died of

kidney failure Kidney failure, also known as end-stage kidney disease, is a medical condition in which the kidneys can no longer adequately filter waste products from the blood, functioning at less than 15% of normal levels. Kidney failure is classified as eit ...

at the age of 79 in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wil ...

References

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External links

*https://web.archive.org/web/20031207053754/ *http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/26.html *http://voices.iit.edu/camrasbio.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Camras, Marvin People from Chicago 1916 births 1995 deaths 20th-century American inventors Illinois Institute of Technology alumni National Medal of Technology recipients Deaths from kidney failure Jewish American scientists 20th-century American Jews

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