Early Accomplishments
Putnam was the first person in the US to use artificial reverberation using echo chambers for commercial recording (the BBC's Broadcast House Studio in Savoy Hill, London, used for both broadcasting and commercial recording, being the first anywhere to use purpose made echo chambers with both echo send and returns and cue sends and multi-band EQ, and recording to disc and tape as early as 1931.) He also developed the first US multi-band audio equalizer, and with his company Universal Recording Electronics Industries (UREI), he was responsible for the development of classic recording studio equipment including the UREI 1176LN, the UREI Time Align Monitor, and the famed Universal recordings consoles, which soon became standard equipment in studios all over America. Alongside his friend Les Paul, Putnam was also involved in the early development of stereophonic recording and he founded several major independent recording studios in Chicago, Hollywood and San Francisco.
In 1947, Putnam made the first recording of a single artist singing more than one line on a recording. Patti Page sang one vocal line of "Confess", a duet in which the second part was recorded onto a large 17.25" disc and then played back as she sang the main vocal line; the two vocals and accompaniment being wedded onto a wire recorder. Les Paul followed in short order with his own quite different technique for doubling vocals.
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“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)