Brush History - A.P. Dank 1931 to 1974 - Brush Development Company photos of A.P. Dank contributed by his Grandson Michael Dank
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Hi folks,
I have my grandfather's Brush Sound Mirror BK-443 reel to reel recorder... My grandfather Alfred P. Dank worked for Brush-Clevite-Gould for his entire career 1931-1974 and actually had some recording patents through them. This is a complete unit with microphone and original reels. It works great. I have recorded with it with my band in the past.
Also have some other Brush microphones.
I will be sending the information I have on my grandfather Alfred. P Dank's work with Brush-Celvite-Gould in the next few days. As I mentioned earlier he worked for them from 1931-1974. Feel free to use what is applicable and edit it for content. I have included some photocopies of pictures as well. Family lore says his tenure with Brush started before his 1931 hire date. His older brother, my uncle Merv was friends with the Brush family and the two Dank boys as teenagers would cut the grass and do landscaping for the company during the summer.
Unfortunately the photographs and drawing mentioned in the text are unavailable.
Here is the link to the patent AP Dank had while working for Brush-Clevite-Gould
Please shoot me an email when this information posts. I know my two brothers and nephews will enjoy reading it.
Regards, Mike Dank |
View more photos and comments about Brush by A.P. Dank • More about the Brush Development Company • Brush recorders in our collection
Brush Soundmirror BK-401
"My father owned one of these machines; he obtained it in early 1948, and when he bought it, it was the first tape recorder in Kansas outside of a radio station.
The specifications were fairly primitive - the frequency response was 100-5,000 cycles per second as they called them in those days, and the signal to noise ration was a whopping 35 db! The unit was equipped as standard equipment with a ball-shaped crystal microphone. You could definitely tell the difference between a live performance and a recording on this machine, but it was novel enough to allow my dad to do professional recording for several years.
I don't know of any photos of my dad with the machine, sadly. The only thing I have is about 20 reels of the old paper tape that he recorded. Before he died I was able to play the tapes onto much more modern reel tapes - Dad had an RCA home recorder at the end of his life. Those paper tapes put a quite a bit of wear on an old Tandberg reel recorder that I played them on, that I ended up disposing of because the Tandberg heads ended up worn from the usage of the paper tapes."
Robert Moehle
