jan 1, 1928 - Magnetic Tape
Description:
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in 1928, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video are tape recorders and video tape recorders. The German engineer Fritz Pfleumer discovered a different method of magnetic recording. While on a business trip in 1927 for the Universelle Company that made cigarette machines, he thought of coating paper tape with iron oxide in the same way that he had been coating cigarette paper with bronze powder lacquer. His German patent for "sounding paper" was granted Jan. 1, 1928, but his tape recorder tore up the paper tape and was only used to demonstrate the potential of tape for editing and reuse. An important discovery made in this period was the technique of AC biasing which improved the fidelity of the recorded audio signal by increasing the effective linearity of the recording medium. Due to the escalating political tensions, and the outbreak of World War II, these developments were largely kept secret. Although the Allies knew from monitoring their Nazi radio broadcasts that the Germans had a new form of recording technology, the nature was not discovered until the Allies acquired captured German recording equipment as they invaded Europe in the closing of the war. It was only after the war that Americans such as Jack Mullin, John Herbert Orr and Richard H. Ranger that were able to bring this technology out of Germany and develop it into commercially viable formats.
Added to timeline:
Unit 5: Music Technology in Context.
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