Semi Joseph Begun (December 2, 1905 in
Germany – January 5, 1995), usually referred to as S. Joseph Begun, was a German-American engineer and inventor known for his contributions to
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 ...
, underwater acoustics, and telecommunications.
Life and career
Born in 1905 in Danzig, Germany (now
Gdańsk
Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
, Poland), Begun earned a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1933 from the
Technical University of Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It wa ...
.
He immigrated to the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
in 1935.
In 1939, he married
Ruth Begun, who was the first woman to be awarded a
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which relat ...
PhD from the University of Berlin.
In 1943 Begun was
Vice President
A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...
of Research for the
Brush Development Company,
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
. Brush's main business was the production of
piezoelectric phonograph pickups, the least expensive and most widely used pickup of the late 1930s. Brush also produced in cooperation with
Western Electric
The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
magnetic steel tape sound recorders. These used hardened steel tape as the recording medium.
Another product Brush manufactured were
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 ...
s. These used
stainless steel wire, with a composition similar to (or perhaps identical with) high
carbon high
chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
cutlery steel, which is ferromagnetic, as the recording medium. The recording head was a split ring, with the wire running in a groove in the head, quite similar to the heads used today. High frequency
AC bias
Tape bias is the term for two techniques, AC bias and DC bias, that improve the fidelity of analogue tape recorders. DC bias is the addition of direct current to the audio signal that is being recorded. AC bias is the addition of an inaudi ...
was used to linearize the recording. The ferritic stainless steel was quite strong.
Diamond
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, ...
dies were required to draw it into wire. Dr. Begun obtained a contract from the National Defense Research Council to perform research and development on a substitute for the stainless steel wire. The work was justified by the military use of the recorders and the shortage of facilities for producing the diamond dies.
Dr. Begun had two concepts in mind for a different recording medium. One was to find a means for coating a ductile nonmagnetic metal wire with a metallic magnetic coating. The other was to coat a non-metallic tape with a magnetic coating. He placed the work on wire in the Research Department of Brush Development Company, and contracted with
Battelle Memorial Institute
Battelle Memorial Institute (more widely known as simply Battelle) is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle is a charitable trust organized as a nonprofit corporation und ...
,
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and ...
, for work on the development of a coated non-metallic tape.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Begun, Semi Joseph
1905 births
1995 deaths
Businesspeople from Ohio
German emigrants to the United States
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American inventors