The Bench, supplement 2011

Supplement · April 2011

Mihail Petru Ostrow, 1949–2011

Micky Ostrow, personnel number 0231, came to us in 1984 and ran the tape transfer bench until he retired in 2005. He was born in Timișoara and had been in England since 1971.

He had two rules. The first was that a transfer is faithful or it is not a transfer. The second was that you dictate your working notes onto the tail of the reel, because a note on paper gets separated from the tape and a note on the tape does not.

He never erased a tape in his life. He would tell you that this was not sentiment but procedure, and then he would tell you about the time it mattered.