Editing Tape recorder (section)

==History==
{{further|Timeline of audio formats}}
{{gallery |title=Early tape recorders |width=250
|File:Early experimental non-magnetic Tape Recorder invented by the Volta Associates -Bell & Tainter -i013.jpg |An early experimental '''non-magnetic tape recorder''' patented in 1886 by Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory.
|File:Tape Recorder 1909.tif |1909 analog tape recorder of Franklin C. Goodale. This machine had 15 Tracks
|File:Tape Recorder 1909.pdf |Franklin C. Goodale built the first working tape recorder in 1909 and got the patent for this invention
|File:Prototype of the Goodale Tape Recorder.jpg |Prototype of the Goodale tape recorder. The patent is based on this machine.
}}

=== Wax strip recorder ===
The earliest known audio tape recorder was a [[non-magnetic]], [[electricity|non-electric]] version invented by [[Alexander Graham Bell]]'s [[Volta Laboratory]] and patented in 1886 ({{US patent|341214}}). It employed a {{convert|3/16|in|mm|adj=mid|-wide}} strip of wax-covered paper that was coated by dipping it in a solution of [[beeswax]] and [[Paraffin wax|paraffin]] and then had one side scraped clean, with the other side allowed to harden. The machine was of sturdy wood and metal construction and hand-powered by means of a knob fastened to a [[flywheel]]. The wax strip passed from one eight-inch reel around the periphery of a pulley (with guide flanges) mounted above the V-pulleys on the main vertical shaft, where it came in contact with either its recording or playback [[stylus]]. The tape was then taken up on the other reel. The sharp recording stylus, actuated by a vibrating mica diaphragm, cut the wax from the strip. In playback mode, a dull, loosely mounted stylus, attached to a rubber diaphragm, carried the reproduced sounds through an ear tube to its listener. Both recording and playback styluses, mounted alternately on the same two posts, could be adjusted vertically so that several recordings could be cut on the same {{convert|3/16|in|mm|adj=mid|-wide}} strip.<ref name="Newville"/>

While the machine was never developed commercially, it somewhat resembled the modern magnetic tape recorder in its design. The tapes and machine created by Bell's associates, examined at one of the [[Smithsonian Institution]]'s museums, became brittle, and the heavy paper reels warped. The machine's playback head was also missing. Otherwise, with some reconditioning, they could be placed into working condition.<ref name="Newville">Newville, Leslie J. [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30112/30112-h/30112-h.htm Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory], United States National Museum Bulletin, [[United States National Museum]] and the [[Museum of History and Technology]], Washington, D.C., 1959, No. 218, Paper 5, pp.69–79. Retrieved from ProjectGutenberg.org.</ref>

The waxed tape recording medium was later refined by Edison's  [[wax cylinder]], and became the first widespread sound recording technology, used for both entertainment and office dictation. However, recordings on wax cylinders were unable to be easily duplicated, making them both costly and time consuming for large-scale production. Wax cylinders were also unable to record more than 2 minutes of audio, a problem solved by [[Phonograph record|gramophone discs]].<ref>{{citation |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-sound-recordings/history-of-the-cylinder-phonograph/ |title=History of the Cylinder Phonograph |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=2024-02-24}}</ref><ref>{{citation |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/emile-berliner/articles-and-essays/gramophone/ |title=The Gramophone |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |access-date=2024-02-24}}</ref>

=== Celluloid strip recorder ===
[[File:Franklin C. Goodale Tape Recorder D.jpg|thumb|This tape recorder of Dr. Goodale is exhibited in the private Phonograph Museum in Mariazell, Austria.]]
Franklin C. Goodale adapted movie film for analog audio recording. He received a patent for his invention in 1909. The celluloid film was inscribed and played back with a stylus, in a manner similar to the wax cylinders of Edison's gramophone. The patent description states that the machine could store six records on the same strip of film, side by side, and it was possible to switch between them.<ref>{{cite patent|country=US|number=944608|title=Sound-reproducing machine|pubdate=1909-12-28|inventor1-first=Franklin C.|inventor1-last=Goodale}}</ref> In 1912, a similar process was used for the Hiller [[talking clock]].{{citation needed|date=August 2022|reason=Mentioned without citation at [[talking clock]]. Search confirms it exists but does not identify a [[WP:RS]].}}

=== Photoelectric paper tape recorder ===
In 1932, after six years of developmental work, including a patent application in 1931,<ref>USPTO. [https://books.google.com/books?id=gCegAAAAMAAJ Official Gazette Of The United States Patent Office], United States Patent Office, 1936, Volume 463, pp.537.</ref><ref>USPTO. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US2030973 United States Patent Office, Patent US2030973 A, "Method of and apparatus for electrically recording and reproducing sound or other vibrations"]</ref> Merle Duston, a [[Detroit]] radio engineer, created a tape recorder capable of recording both sounds and voice that used a low-cost chemically treated paper tape.  During the recording process, the tape moved through a pair of electrodes which immediately imprinted the modulated sound signals as visible black stripes into the paper tape's surface.  The [[audio signal]] could be immediately replayed from the same recorder unit, which also contained photoelectric sensors, somewhat similar to the various [[sound-on-film]] technologies of the era.<ref>Popular Science. [https://books.google.com/books?id=2CcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA40 Record Of Voice Now Made On Moving Paper Tape], Popular Science, Bonnier Corporation, February 1934, pp.40, Vol. 124, No. 2, ISSN 0161-7370.</ref><ref name="Onosko">Onosko, Tim. [https://books.google.com/books?id=2XKQAAAACAAJ Wasn't The Future Wonderful?: A View Of Trends And Technology From The 1930s: (article) Book Reads Itself Aloud: After 500 Years, Books Are Given Voice], Dutton, 1979, pp.73, {{ISBN|0-525-47551-6}}, {{ISBN|978-0-525-47551-4}}. Article attributed to: [[Popular Mechanics]], date of publication unstated, likely c. February 1934.</ref>

=== Magnetic recording ===
[[Magnetic recording]] was conceived as early as 1878 by the American engineer [[Oberlin Smith]]<ref>Engel, Friedrich Karl, ed. (2006) "Oberlin Smith and the invention of magnetic sound recording:  An appreciation on the 150th anniversary of the inventor's birth".  Smith's caveat of 4 October 1878 regarding the recording of sound on magnetic media appears on pp. 14–16.  Available at:  [http://www.richardhess.com/tape/history/Engel--Oberlin_Smith_2006.pdf RichardHess.com] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061021075340/http://www.richardhess.com/tape/history/Engel--Oberlin_Smith_2006.pdf |date=21 October 2006 }}</ref><ref>Smith, Oberlin (1888 September 8) [https://books.google.com/books?id=zYVMAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA3-PA116 "Some possible forms of phonograph,"] ''The Electrical World'', '''12''' (10) :  116–117.</ref> and demonstrated in practice in 1898 by Danish engineer [[Valdemar Poulsen]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Poulsen |first1=Valdemar |url=http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=00661619&homeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect2%3DPTO1%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPALL%2526S1%3D0661619.PN.%2526OS%3DPN%2F661619%2526RS%3DPN%2F661619&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=NONE&Input=View+first+page |title=Method of recording and reproducing sounds or signals|id=No. 661,619 |orig-date=July 8, 1899 |date= November 13, 1900 |website=United States Patent and Trademark Office Patent Images |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190115234516/http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=00661619&homeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpatft.uspto.gov%2Fnetacgi%2Fnph-Parser%3FSect2%3DPTO1%2526Sect2%3DHITOFF%2526p%3D1%2526u%3D%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html%2526r%3D1%2526f%3DG%2526l%3D50%2526d%3DPALL%2526S1%3D0661619.PN.%2526OS%3DPN%2F661619%2526RS%3DPN%2F661619&PageNum=&Rtype=&SectionNum=&idkey=NONE&Input=View+first+page |archive-date= Jan 15, 2019 }}</ref><ref name="Nagra">{{cite web |title=Magnetic Recording Timeline |website=ACMI  |archive-url=https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20040302130000/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/13071/20040303-0000/www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HIST_REC_NAGRA.html |archive-date=2004-03-02 |url=http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/HIST_REC_NAGRA.html |author=Nagra Company}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> Analog magnetic [[wire recording]], and its successor, [[magnetic tape]] recording, involve the use of a magnetizable medium which moves with a constant speed past a recording head. An electrical signal, which is analogous to the sound that is to be recorded, is fed to the recording head, inducing a pattern of magnetization similar to the signal. A playback head can then pick up the changes in magnetic field from the tape and convert it into an electrical signal to be [[Amplifier|amplified]] and played back through a [[loudspeaker]].

=== Wire recorders ===
{{main|Wire recording}}
[[File:Telegrafon 8154.jpg|thumb|right|Magnetic wire recorder, invented by [[Valdemar Poulsen]], 1898. It is exhibited at [[Brede works]] Industrial Museum, Lyngby, Denmark.]]
The first wire recorder was the Telegraphone invented by Valdemar Poulsen in the late 1890s.  Wire recorders for law and office dictation and telephone recording were made almost continuously by various companies (mainly the American Telegraphone Company) through the 1920s and 1930s. These devices were mostly sold as consumer technologies after World War II.{{citation needed|date=August 2022|reason=Accurately summarizes content in [[Wire recording]] and [[Valdemar Poulsen]] but citations are lacking in both.}}

Widespread use of wire recording occurred within the decades spanning from 1940 until 1960, following the development of inexpensive designs licensed internationally by the Brush Development Company of Cleveland, Ohio and the Armour Research Foundation of the Armour Institute of Technology (later [[Illinois Institute of Technology]]). These two organizations licensed dozens of manufacturers in the U.S., Japan, and Europe.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Morton|first1=David|title=Armour Research Foundation and the Wire Recorder: How Academic Entrepreneurs Fail|journal=Technology and Culture|date=April 1998|volume=39|issue=2|pages=213–244|doi=10.2307/3107045|jstor=3107045|publisher=[[Society for the History of Technology]]}}</ref> Wire was also used as a recording medium in [[Flight recorder|black box]] voice recorders for aviation in the 1950s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-News/40s/Radio-News-1944-01-R.pdf|title=Radio News, 'Radio - On a Flying Fortress' |page=21|last=Porter|first=Kenneth|date=January 1944|website=www.americanradiohistory.com|access-date=February 13, 2019|archive-date=January 25, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220125123836/https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-News/40s/Radio-News-1944-01-R.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

Consumer wire recorders were marketed for home entertainment or as an inexpensive substitute for commercial office dictation recorders, but the development of consumer magnetic tape recorders starting in 1946, with the BK 401 Soundmirror, using paper-based tape,<ref name=CLEVE02/><!--less reliable, but interesting refs: http://esrv.net/brush_bk401.html, http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/brush_bk401.html--> gradually drove wire recorders from the market, being "pretty much out of the picture" by 1952.<ref>Mooney, Mark Jr. "The History of Magnetic Recording." Hi-Fi Tape Recording 5:3 (February 1958), 37. This detailed, illustrated 17-page article is a fundamental source for early history of magnetic (wire/tape) recording: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Tape-Recording/50s/Tape-Recording-1958-02.pdf {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309113138/https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Tape-Recording/50s/Tape-Recording-1958-02.pdf |date=9 March 2021 }}</ref>

=== Early steel tape recorders ===
[[File:Blattnerphone recorder 1937.jpg|thumb|Marconi-Stille steel tape recorder at BBC studios, London, 1937]]
In 1924 a German engineer, Kurt Stille, developed the Poulsen wire recorder as a dictating machine.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Magnetic tape recorder - Kurt Stille, Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company|url=https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/magnetic-tape-recorder-kurt-stille-marconi-s-wireless-telegraph-company/mAFj8zsPfUBqrw|access-date=2020-06-20|website=Google Arts & Culture|language=en}}</ref> The following year a fellow German, [[Louis Blattner]], working in Britain, licensed Stille's device and started work on a machine which would instead record on a magnetic steel tape, which he called the Blattnerphone.<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.orbem.co.uk/tapes/blattner.htm |title=Blattnerphone |access-date=2013-12-11}}</ref> The tape was 6&nbsp;mm wide and 0.08&nbsp;mm thick, traveling at 5 feet per second; the recording time was 20 minutes.

The [[BBC]] installed a Blattnerphone at Avenue House<!--Probably not [[Avenue House]]. [http://www.bbceng.info/Equipment/ed_top.htm This] mentions more than one Avenue House.--> in September 1930 for tests, and used it to record [[King George V]]'s speech at the opening of the [[Round Table Conferences (India)|India Round Table Conference]] on 12 November 1930. Though not considered suitable for music the machine continued in use and was moved to [[Broadcasting House]] in March 1932, a second machine also being installed. In September 1932, a new model was installed, using 3&nbsp;mm tape with a recording time of 32 minutes.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=EdIjgeedgRwC&pg=PA54 Video Recording Technology: Its Impact on Media and Home Entertainment, Aaron Foisi Nmungwun – Google Books] pub. Routledge, Nov. 2012. {{ISBN|9781136466045}}</ref><ref>[http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BBC-Annual/BBC-Year-Book-1932.pdf The BBC Year-Book 1932] p.101, British Broadcasting Corporation, London W.1, retrieved 30 September 2015</ref>

In 1933, the [[Marconi Company]] purchased the rights to the Blattnerphone, and newly developed Marconi-Stille recorders were installed in the BBC's [[Maida Vale Studios]] in March 1935.<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.orbem.co.uk/tapes/ms.htm |title=Marconi-Stille recorders |access-date=2013-12-11}}</ref> The quality and reliability were slightly improved, though it still tended to be obvious that one was listening to a recording. A reservoir system containing a loop of tape helped to stabilize the speed. The tape was 3&nbsp;mm wide and traveled at 1.5&nbsp; meters/second.<ref name="Nagra"/>

They were not easy to handle. The reels were heavy and expensive and the steel tape has been described as being like a traveling razor blade. The tape was liable to snap, particularly at joints, which at 1.5&nbsp; meters/second could rapidly cover the floor with loops of the sharp-edged tape. Rewinding was done at twice the speed of the recording.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://creativeaudioworks.com/history/the-marconi-stille-magnetic-recorder-reproducer/ |title=The Marconi-Stille magnetic recorder-reproducer |author=Stewart Adam |date=October 18, 2012 |access-date=2022-12-25}}</ref>

Despite these drawbacks, the ability to make replayable recordings proved useful, and even with subsequent methods coming into use (direct-cut discs<ref>{{citation |url=http://rfwilmut.net/broadcast/recording4.html |title=Directly-cut discs |access-date=2013-12-11}}</ref> and Philips-Miller optical film<ref>{{citation |url=http://rfwilmut.net/broadcast/recording3.html |title=Optical film |access-date=2013-12-11}}),</ref> the Marconi-Stilles remained in use until the late 1940s.<ref>Information in this section from 'BBC Engineering 1922-1972' by Edward Pawley, pp178-182; plus some from colleagues who worked in BH in the 1930s.</ref>
{{clear}}

=== Modern tape recorders ===
[[File:Ton S.b, tape unit.jpg|thumb|right|Magnetophon from a German radio station in World War II]]
Magnetic tape recording as we know it today was developed in Germany during the 1930s at [[BASF]] (then part of the chemical giant [[IG Farben]]) and [[AEG (German company)|AEG]] in cooperation with the state radio [[Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft|RRG]].  This was based on [[Fritz Pfleumer]]'s 1928 invention of paper tape with oxide powder lacquered onto it. The first practical tape recorder from [[AEG (German company)|AEG]] was the [[Magnetophon K1]], demonstrated in Berlin, Germany in 1935. {{ill|Eduard Schüller (engineer)|lt=Eduard Schüller|de}} of AEG built the recorders and developed a ring-shaped recording and playback head.  It replaced the needle-shaped head which tended to shred the tape. Friedrich Matthias of IG Farben/BASF developed the recording tape, including the oxide, the binder, and the backing material. Walter Weber, working for {{ill|Hans Joachim von Braunmühl|de}} at the RRG, discovered the [[AC bias]]ing technique, which radically improved sound quality.<ref name="fenster"/>

During [[World War II]], the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] noticed that certain German officials were making radio broadcasts from multiple time zones almost simultaneously.<ref name="fenster"/> Analysts such as [[Richard H. Ranger]] believed that the broadcasts had to be transcriptions, but their audio quality was indistinguishable from that of a live broadcast<ref name="fenster"/> and their duration was far longer than was possible even with 16&nbsp;rpm transcription discs.{{efn|The Allies were aware of the existence of the pre-war Magnetophon recorders, but not of the introduction of high-frequency [[Tape bias|bias]] and PVC-backed tape.<ref>Information from ''BBC Engineering 1922–1972'' by Edward Pawley, page 387.</ref>}} In the final stages of the war in Europe, the Allies' capture of a number of German [[Magnetophon]] recorders from [[Radio_Luxembourg#World_War_II|Radio Luxembourg]] aroused great interest. These recorders incorporated all the key technological features of modern analog magnetic recording and were the basis for future developments in the field.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}