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These articles are interesting, but raise some questions: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55748706/historical_articles_on_james_miller_0001.pdf The longer article talks about Miller's "magnetic recording" invention and juxtaposes it in competition with German tape developments in the 1930s. As I understand Miller's system that Philips made and sold, and Miller's patents related to that system, his was not a magnetic recording system as in a magnetic head inducing a field onto magnetic media. Rather, it was a system which used electromagnetism to drive a cutting stylus which cut an opitcally-reproduced soundtrack onto black-coated film stock. Miller's patents covering this are US2034111 amd US1919116, and there are also patents for the coated-film "recording blanks." Did Miller also invent a magnetic-induction recording system? I have never seen any details on this. Miller was my father's first employer and an early mentor. By the late 1930's, Miller operated a film-sound studio in Queens or Manhattan (not sure of exact location). My father started work there as a teenager, shaving wax recording blanks. Miller was an expert at cutting stylus systems, and developed a high-fidelity, high dynamic range disk-cutting system that used no electronic feedback (it was mechanically damped, and each cutterhead needed to be hand-tuned against resonances). The Miller cutting system was part of the "secret sauce" of the mono-era Mercury Living Presence records, along with the Fine-Fairchild Margin Control system, which allowed for wide dynamics and classical-length LP sides as early as 1952. As far as I know, the Philips-Miller film-recording system was used only by a few organizations in Europe. I've wondered why it wasn't adopted in Hollywood, because it would have allowed instantaneous playback and would have been very useful in such activities as location sound recording and dialog looping. Perhaps the machines were not interlockable? Or was it a typical "not invented here" thing? As I understand it, until magnetic-film recorders were developed in the late 40's, the only way to get instantaneous playback in Hollywood was to run disk recorders at the same time as optical film recorders. Does anyone know a source for more information on Mr. Miller? I've been able to find only sketchy info online. As far as I know, he made relatively few Miller cutterheads and even fewer Philips-Miller recorders. Perhaps there is more information buried somewhere at Stanford? -- Tom Fine