EARLY TAPE RECORDERS

Good one Russell,

  There was a version earlier I believe, saw it at one of those darn antique malls that the better half is always dragging (screaming and kicking I might add) to.

  Used spools of wire rather than tape, and was driven by a clockwork.  The batteries only powered the heads and amplifier.
Early 1900s period, maybe between the wars.  Sorry no photo, but I could have purchased it for a couple hundred dollars...
like I need more old stuff!

  Take Care;
  Doug

Interesting Link:

A Chronology of Magnetic Recording

http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/MAGN_REC_CHRON.html

Starts out:

1878 - Inspired by a visit to Edison's laboratories in Menlo Park, New Jersey, a prominent American mechanical engineer named Oberlin Smith conceived the idea of recording the electrical signals produced by the telephone onto a steel wire. He files a patent caveat but not a formal patent.

1888 - Oberlin Smith, deciding that he will not pursue his idea, "donates" it to the public by publishing his ideas about magnetic recording in the journal 'Electrical World'.

1889 - Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen re-discovers ( perhaps after seeing Smith's article or the Tainter patents ) the principle of magnetic recording. Over the course of the next few years he produces practical sound recorders for steel wire and tape. He takes patents in Denmark, the United States, and elsewhere and attempts to sell his patent rights to investors. The machine, called the Telegraphone utilises a steel wire wound helically on a cylinder rotating under an electromagnet connected to a carbon microphone or an earphone. It is described as a device to record telephone messages in the absence the called party.

1900 - Poulsen's first major demonstration of the Telegraphone takes place at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900. The Telegraphone is desribed in glowing terms by the technical and scientific press as superior to the phonograph and a great advance in physics as well.

1903 - The American Telegraphone Company formed in Washington, D.C.to manufacture the Tele graphone. A manufacturing facility in Wheeling, West Virginia set up to make the machines, and the company makes a large public stock offering. American Telegraphone creates several distributorships across the country to handle service and sales. Telegraphone publicity over the next decade or so promotes the various models of the machine as a dictation system and an automatic telephone recorder.

1910 - American Telegraphone, failing because of bad management and production problems, moves production to Springfield, Mass.

Here is a photo of valdemar Poulsen the inventer who filed the patent

Fritz Pfleumer is credited with inventing the first practical tape recorder heres a photo of him and his invention.