JIM WHEELER
Audio and video tape preservation and restoration expert
Jim Wheeler specializes in all aspects of tape restoration, forensic tape analysis, and audio and video enhancement. He has been a tape archive consultant for over 20 years, and he restored some of the world's oldest magnetic tapes. Jim served as technical expert for the US Department of Justice Nixon White House (Watergate) tape project. He was a member of the special Library of Congress Video Heritage Task Force and advises the Library of Congress and the National Archives. He has served as an expert witness in a variety of court cases.
Jim worked as a tape engineer and tape recorder design engineer at Ampex Corp for 32 years (Ampex perfected tape recording). He invented the original stop-action/slow-motion instant replay and shared an Emmy™ as co-inventor of professional helical-scan recording. He helped solve a serious problem with the on-board tape recorder of the Jupiter Galileo probe while the spacecraft was 400 million miles from earth.
Education:
Jim holds a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and did graduate work at California State University at San Jose. Much of his extensive knowledge of analog magnetic tape comes from his years as a design and test engineer at Ampex Corporation, the company that perfected audio, data, and video tape recording. He is a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA).
ELLINOR WHEELER
Business communications manager, data analyst, and project planner
Ellinor consults extensively with clients to gather information on their needs. She brings together data from all sources, analyzes it, and enters it into a plan for the individual client. Ellinor communicates with clients and other consultants to keep the project on course. She also tests software and other systems.
Education:
B.A. in Psychology, University of California, Berkeley Graduate work in Computer Science, San Jose State University
ASSOCIATES:
DigitalForward is associated with consultants who are experts in a wide variety of digital technologies and other specialties that may be required in a tape digitization project.
