History of Magnetic Recording

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Sonik Wiz

đź‘‚ 500 MPH EARS đź‘‚
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I think a lot of us appreciate the appeal of reel to reel magnetic recording. Don't we all love the classic quad machines with 4 VU meters from back in the day? Of course with that being vintage 70's stuff, there's still a huge amount of recording technology prior to that. I was poking around aimlessly on the Interweb to day & was highly intrigued by this picture:

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It's BBC wire recorder from 1932. Recording speed was 300 feet per minute. And it took 1.8 MILES of wire to record a 1/2 hour program. Cor! Blimey!

This pic is taken from Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording website. From the Education section. This is a huge great site that you can spend an hour on easily. Like I just did. You just might find that long gone R2R favorite of yours is listed. I thought this was interesting enough to share.
 
And the chermans started out with what looked like tape. But it was actually thin metal ribbon. There is a picture of that too and it looks just like the picture you posted except instead of a British boffin it's a cherman one.

Somebody gave me a wire recorder when I was a teenager. It had terrible fidelity which I could tell even as a lad. I guess it ran about six inches per second. The wires liked to kink and snag and tangle. It did have a level winder. It had the same motor as turntables of the day. I guess it was built after wwii.
 
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