Bing Crosby felt exhausted in the mid-1940s. And who could blame him? He was the most popular musician in the world--and it wasn't just "White Christmas," which sold more records than any other song in history. He eventually recorded some 1,600 songs, and more than forty of them reached the top of the chart. But he was just as popular in movies, winning the Oscar for Best Actor in 1944, and getting nominated again in 1945. In addition, he was tireless in touring and entertaining troops during the war.

But it was his radio show that proved too much. Because of the time difference, he had to do two different live broadcasts--and the network refused his proposal that they pre-record the later West Coast show on 16-inch transcription disks, basically a very large phonograph record. NBC had good reason for this. The sound quality on the disk recordings of that day were noticeably inferior. And the disks were cumbersome to edit--negating one of the major advantages of pre-recorded shows.

Crosby needed better recording technology. And in 1947, a stranger from Northern California made the trek to Hollywood with a big box that not only solved Bing's dilemma, but set the wheels in motion for a whole host of later technologies.

What Jack Mullin did at MGM Studio that day is almost like a magic trick. He set up a live performance behind a curtain, and then followed it with a playback from his magnetic tape recorder. The audio quality was so true-to-life that many listeners couldn't tell the difference. A private demonstration was arranged for Crosby at the ABC Studio on Sunset and Vine.

Crosby knew this was a huge breakthrough. But the price of a single Ampex 200-A recording machine was $4,000--more than many people paid for a home back then. In fact, the average median family income in the US that year was just $3,000. But Crosby wanted to buy 20 of these devices. He offered to pay 60% of the money up-front.

Thus, a few days later, a letter arrived in the Ampex office with a Hollywood postmark. Inside was a check from Bing Crosby for $50,000.

Ampex, according to Silicon Valley historians Peter Hammar and Bob Wilson, was later involved either directly or indirectly in the launch of "almost every computer magnetic and optical disc recording system, including hard drives, floppy discs, high-density recorders, and RFID devices."

In other words, Bing Crosby launched the data storage business in Silicon Valley--indirectly laying the groundwork for everything from computer hard drives to cloud computing.