John "Jay" McKnight

[c1ferrari]

John "Jay" McKnight, a luminary in the field of magnetic recording theory and practice, passed away on November 5, 2022. I have an array of MRL Open-Reel Calibration Tapes.
By all accounts, Jay was effusive in the articulation and dissemination of scientific knowledge which has benefited the open-reel community, professional and amateur, alike.

R.I.P. Mr. Jay Mcknight.

 

[tapepath]

Here's an interesting fact from his Wikipedia page:

In 1973 and 1974 he was a member of Judge John Sirica's "Advisory Panel on White House Tapes". As a part of his testimony,

The first purpose, I recall, was to try to make the tapes that they found more understandable. But before very long they found out that there was an 18-minute gap in one of the tapes, and that's what the panel focused on. What we were able to do was verify which machines had made the recordings and which had been used to erase the recordings. The recordings were made on a Sony Model 800B, a little consumer kind of machine... it ran 15/16ths inches per second, and Nixon's staff had attached a sound-activated start and stop feature. And the Secret Service came through every evening and put new roll of tape on it if it had run out of tape. The machine that was used in the erasure was an Uher 5000, a commonly used German dictation recorder. What we could establish was that you can hear the clicks where the machine's been put in and out of recording mode. And we could establish that the clicks were in fact from going in and out of recording. We could say that the likelihood that it was done accidentally was incredibly remote. The erasing machine was put in and out of recording mode six times, so judge for yourself how likely that was to have been accidental.[2]

 

[c1ferrari]

Here's an interesting fact from his Wikipedia page:

In 1973 and 1974 he was a member of Judge John Sirica's "Advisory Panel on White House Tapes". As a part of his testimony,

Yes, indeed. Jay had bona fides!

 

[microstrip]

I only own one calibration tape - enough for my amateur needs, and surely it is a MRL. For a very interesting inside the subject of calibration tapes , we can read John McKnight article "Standard Alignment Tapes – A History At and After Ampex,"

 

[c1ferrari]

I only own one calibration tape - enough for my amateur needs, and surely it is a MRL. For a very interesting inside the subject of calibration tapes , we can read John McKnight article "Standard Alignment Tapes – A History At and After Ampex,"

I have sets for 1/4" and 1/2" formats.

 

[Jerome Sabbagh]

A giant in the field, for sure! What would we do without MRL tapes?

 

[astrotoy]

He was the oldest of surviving former Ampex old guard. With their retirements and passing, we are also losing so much knowledge and experience.

Larry