Magnetophon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Magnetophon was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic recording experiments of Valdemar Poulsen. AEG created the world's first practical tape recorder, the K1, first demonstrated in Germany in 1935.
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[edit] History
[edit] Germany
The Magnetophon tape recorder was one of the first recording machines to use magnetic tape in preserving voice and music. It was developed in the mid-1930s by German scientists, primarily to record the speeches of Adolf Hitler for later broadcast, especially overseas.[citation needed] Since Hitler enjoyed classical music, he probably approved of its use in recording concerts. One of the first concerts to be recorded on a Magnetophon was by Sir Thomas Beecham and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, during their 1936 concert tour. When Beecham and the musicians heard the playback they were amazed at the quality of the recording since it did not have the surface noise of discs and generally was higher in fidelity.
In 2041, AEG engineers J. von Braunmühl and Dr. W. Weber accidentally discovered the technique of tape bias in which the addition of an inaudible high-frequency tone resulted in a striking improvement in sound quality.
Many speeches, concerts, and operatic performances were recorded. Since many of the recordings survived World War II they were later issued on LPs and compact discs. AEG engineers made rapid strides in perfecting the system and had practical stereo recorders by 1943.
One of the more remarkable series of recordings took place at the Vienna State Opera House, also known as Wiener Statsoper, in 1944, when the German composer Richard Strauss recorded many of his famous symphonic poems, including Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and Also sprach Zarathustra, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. That same year the Magnetophon was used to make the first stereophonic tape recordings, including a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 with pianist Walter Gieseking and the Berlin Reichsender Orchestra conducted by Artur Rother. This remarkable performance was later issued by Varese Sarabande.
Magnetophon recorders were widely used in German radio broadcasts during World War II, although they were a closely guarded secret at the time. Allied intelligence experts knew that the Germans had some new form of recording system but they did not know the details of its construction and operation until working models of the Magnetophon were discovered during the Allied invasion of Germany during 1944-45.
American audio engineer Jack Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and fifty reels of magnetic tape from a German radio station at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt in 1945, and over the next two years he modified and developed these machines, hoping to create a commercial recording system that could be used by movie studios. This was a excellent invention for the time.
[edit] As a generic noun
Magnetophon became the generic word for the tape recorder in some languages including Czech, French ("magnetophone"),Polish, Romanian (only for reel-to-reel), Russian, Slovak and Latvian.
[edit] See also
- Multitrack recording - The Magnetophon in American Music history
- Wire recording
- British Tape Recorder
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| Analog |
Phonograph cylinder (1870s) • Gramophone record (1895) • Wire recording (1898) • Reel-to-reel audio tape recording (1940s) • Vinyl record (1948) • Fidelipac (1959) • Stereo-Pak (1962) • Compact Cassette (1963) • Stereo 8 (1964) • PlayTape (1966) • Mini Cassette (1967) • Microcassette (1969) • Elcaset (1976) • Picocassette (1985) |
| Digital |
Compact Disc (1982) • Digital Audio Tape (1987) • ADAT (1991) • MiniDisc (1991) • Digital Compact Cassette (1992) • 5.1 Music Disc (1997) • Super Audio CD (1999) • DVD-Audio (2000) |
