WEBVTT - Making Media Personal: Mix Tapes 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.040 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.320 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:19.319 with How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:25.000 love all things tech. And it has been about two 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.960 weeks since I've been in the studio, even though this 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.680 episode is going to go right behind one that I 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:35.280 recorded two weeks ago. So in our last episode, which 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:37.880 was ages ago for me, I teased a bit about 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.360 the emergence of the audio cassette tape, and I think 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.760 you could argue that the cassette split the path of 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:51.280 audio consumption into two sort of broad philosophies. On one side, 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:55.720 you have the audiophile dream of a format and a 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.720 system capable of producing sound from a recording that would 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:03.600 be indistinguishable from the original performance. So would be as 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.920 if you, the listener, were actually in the recording studio 0:01:07.040 --> 0:01:09.520 when the tracks were first laid down, or at the 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:12.120 very least, that you would be hearing the sound that 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:15.240 the producers intended for you to hear, because if they 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:17.520 put a lot of effects on it or anything like 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.040 that in post production, then obviously you're not going to 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:22.840 hear exactly the thing that was performed when it was 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.720 being recorded. But you get my point. The other philosophy 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:32.240 would sacrifice some quality in return for added convenience. So 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:34.959 these this isn't just one format, but sort of a 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:38.800 group of formats that are not the highest in audio 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:43.080 quality compared to things like vinyl albums, for example. These 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:46.840 formats can't provide the fidelity of the ones that are 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.800 beloved by audio files, but they do allow for more 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:54.480 versatile listening experiences, such as portable devices capable of playing 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.800 back audio. These two philosophies would continue on from the 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.840 nineteen sixties through to today, and they have an impact 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:06.480 on the actual practices of audio recording. But we'll get 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.280 into all of that in this and future episodes. So first, 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.440 let's talk about magnetic tape. I mentioned it a bit 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:17.720 in the previous episode, like when I talked about recording 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:21.240 multiple tracks to the same tape, making it possible for 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:25.320 a single musician to accompany him or herself on different 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.520 instruments or even the same instrument, playing different parts of 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.359 a song. With enough tracks and a versatile enough musician, 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.079 you could have one person play virtually all the instruments 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:41.520 and provide lead and backing vocals on a single piece 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.920 of music. So, for example, this isn't a song, but 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.040 a piece of music. In the piece tubular Bells, which 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:53.240 was made famous in The Exorcist, Mike Oldfield played acoustic guitar, 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:59.920 bass guitar, electric guitar, three different kinds of organs, fuzz guitars, glockenspiel, mandolin, 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.519 and piano, and timpani. Oh, and also the tubular bells, 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.160 plus some other stuff. And obviously he wasn't playing all 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.160 of that simultaneously during the recording session, he was able 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:15.040 to lay that down track by track into a full piece. 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.680 So let's talk a bit about the tech of magnetic 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.880 tape and how all of this is possible. So this 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.600 is gonna mean backtracking again through our history, but I 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:28.920 feel like this is easier to understand if we tackle 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.320 each topic individually, as opposed to going year by year 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:35.440 and kind of leap frogging back and forth between different 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:38.840 technologies evolving at different rates. Um, that was just the 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:42.960 call I made when I was building out these episodes. So, uh, 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.040 you've gotta remember that the progress of magnetic tape is 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:50.280 also connected in many ways to other technologies. Including stuff 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.040 like the evolution of the microphone and the development of 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:57.840 amplification tubes and later amplification transistors. But we're gonna start 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:02.040 with a Danish engineer named valdam Our Poulson. Though some 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.800 other smarty pants had already been theorizing that magnetic recording 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.760 could be a possibility, but it was Poulson's work that 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:13.040 would produce the first actual working devices. Everything else was 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:17.520 kind of theoretical. Sometime around nine, Poulson developed a machine 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.240 that could record sound onto a length of steel wire 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.839 through means a magnetism. He called it the telegraphone. I'm 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:28.640 guessing it's telegraphone perhaps, But how the heck does the 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.120 darn thing work? Let alone? How is it pronounced? Well, 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.200 imagine you've got a ferro magnetic material. So this is like, 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.440 you know, something like iron. This is a material that 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.440 if you expose it to a magnetic field, it will 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:44.800 remain magnetized by that field. You take the field away, 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:49.240 the material still remains magnetized, so it doesn't just have 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:52.800 magnetic effect in the presence of a magnetic field. The 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:56.160 magnetic field itself will magnetize the material, at least until 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.000 some other magnetic force acts upon it. Now before you 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:03.400 record anything onto a fresh strip of magnetic tape or 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:07.640 in the case of Poulson's device, steel wire, the material 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:12.240 isn't magnetized. It's in its raw state, so it's just 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:16.320 waiting as a blank medium. You take a microphone and 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:19.240 you play sound into the microphone. Maybe you're singing into it, 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.560 maybe you're playing an acoustic guitar. But the vibrations from 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.760 the sound cause a small diaphragm inside the microphone to vibrate, 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.320 and the diaphragm transfers those vibrations to other elements in 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:34.039 the microphone. Those elements depend upon the type of microphones, 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:36.480 so not all microphones are exactly the same. They all 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:40.320 work on a similar principle, but the details are different. However, 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:45.200 for simplicity sake, let's talk about dynamic microphones for the 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.240 purposes of this discussion. The diaphragm would cause a coil 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.360 of conductive wire to move around a magnetic core. So 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:57.160 imagine you've got a coil and the coil is uh 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.640 is wrapped around a magnetic core loose wrapped around and 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:05.600 the coil can move back and forth laterally along this core. 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.800 If you remember how electro magnetism works. You'll remember that 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.560 if you happen to move a conductor in and out 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.520 of a magnetic field, or you subject the conductive material 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:21.279 to a fluctuating magnetic field, it induces current to flow 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:25.400 through that conductor. The electric current is pretty weak coming 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:28.880 out of a microphone, but it represents the fluctuations of 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.920 the diaphragm, which in turn are representations of the sound 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.520 vibrations that hit that diaphragm. So think of it this way. 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:40.359 Sound hits the diaphragm, diaphragm vibrates, the vibrates cause vibrations, 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:43.680 cause this coil to move back and forth across this 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:48.640 magnetic core. That induces current to flow through the wire, 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.000 and then you've got an electric current. You can use 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:56.000 that current to drive a different electro magnet. Typically you 0:06:56.040 --> 0:07:00.479 would wrap the wire around a ferromagnetic or iron lie core, 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.800 and as the current flows through the wire coiled around 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.560 this core, the electro magnet generates a magnetic field. So 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:11.760 it's kind of recreating the magnetic field that was uh 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:16.600 fluctuating when the coil was vibrating in the microphone side. 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:18.880 So it's sort of the same thing I just described earlier, 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:23.520 but in reverse magnetic recording devices use such an electro 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:29.880 magnet too imprint a magnetic recording onto the medium. So 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:32.560 typically the core is actually a disc or a ring. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:37.840 It's very small, and there is a wire coiled around 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.120 one side of the ring. Think of like a washer, 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:44.480 like a washer that you would get from a hardware store, 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:48.600 a little round disc. And imagine that you've wrapped this 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.760 particular little round disk happens to be magnet or at 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:56.040 least it's feral magnetic, and you've wrapped a wire, a 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:01.800 conductive wire, around one side of that disk, and then 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.080 you cut a gap at the bottom of that disk. 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:08.400 That that gap is what is going to be very 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.920 close to the recording medium. The gap actually causes the 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.880 magnetic field that will be generated when electric current flows 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:20.000 through the wire to fringe outward, and it's this that 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:24.600 magnetizes the recording medium passing below. So you've generated this 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.920 magnetic fluctuation by feeding an electrical signal that you had 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:32.200 generated with the microphone. And remember that electric signal represents 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:35.839 the original sound. You need the recording medium to pass 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.040 by that electromagnet at a regular speed to get a clear, 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.679 undistorted recording. So it's very important that the speed at 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:48.599 which the medium passes under this recording head is is 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:53.559 nice and regular. As the medium passes by this electromagnet, 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.920 the material in the medium is magnetized according to those 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:00.920 fluctuations from the magnetic field. When you're on you've got 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.000 a length of that medium, whether it's tape or it's 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.640 steel wire that has imprinted on it, those magnetized particles, 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:12.480 and they will stay in those magnetic orientations unless you 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.200 expose them to a more powerful magnetic field, in which 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:17.840 case they will re orient. This, by the way, is 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.880 why if you've ever worked with any sort of magnetic storage, 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:22.720 people would tell you make sure you don't have any 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:27.360 powerful magnets nearby it. That's why, because the powerful magnets 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:32.920 could re orient the magnetic particles in that material and 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:36.839 thus erase whatever was recorded on them. That's why if 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:41.280 you are destroying magnetic storage, you typically expose it to 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:45.360 a very powerful magnet first. To play back recorded sound. 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.560 You would then take this medium where you've got these 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:54.360 magnetized particles, and you would run them under a tape head. Uh. 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:56.440 It's essentially it's exactly the same thing. In fact, it 0:09:56.440 --> 0:10:00.439 could be the same head as the recording tape head. 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.640 And in this case, you don't actually have a current 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:08.559 running through that wire. It's the ferromagnetic core and it's 0:10:08.559 --> 0:10:10.240 the coil wrapped around up. But the coil at the 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.920 moment is inert, there's no electricity running through it. When 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:19.720 you run the magnetic material past this, then you create 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:23.920 those magnetic fluctuations which induce electricity to flow through the 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.880 wire wrapped around the ferro magnetic core, and you reproduce 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:32.560 the electric current that was used to create the magnetic 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.800 fluctuations that were imprinted on the material in the first place. 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.679 So you're just you're reversing the whole process. And again 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:44.800 it's because of that electromagnetic phenomena where you have the 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:51.440 magnetized material running past a conductor that's wrapped around ferro 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.960 magnetic core. You technically don't even need the ferro magnetic 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:57.640 core to do this. It's just it makes it easier. 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.360 It kind of it almost acts like amplifier, so that's 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.160 really why it's there. And then that current that's generated 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.320 can be then sent to amplifiers which will take in 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:12.079 that signal and boost its strength so that that signal 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:15.120 can then drive something like speakers and then you get 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:18.880 the sound. So the steel wire approach worked, but it 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.800 produced recordings of pretty low sound quality. It was not 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:27.000 something you could use for music or for performance. Recorders 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.400 using magnetic wire did find their way into some products 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:35.400 with later innovators. They took that same idea that Pulson had, 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:40.040 and mostly you would get dictation machines that were used 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:43.240 by hoity toity executive types who would dictate their words 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.840 to be preserved on wire for later transcription. Then you 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:50.000 have a German businessman named Louis Blattner who wanted to 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.080 take this technology and to develop it further. Well, not 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.280 not himself personally, he actually told the engineers in his 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:58.520 company to get to work on doing that. He wanted 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:00.920 to try and have a product he could sell to 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.959 the BBC. And they made the switch from steel wire 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:08.439 to steal tape, so it's flat piece of tape, but 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:12.200 it's made out of steel, and they produced a device 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:15.360 that was called the Blattner Phone, which is probably the 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:19.320 most attractive name for a piece of technology I've ever heard. 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:23.800 Lou would present this gadget to the BBC and they 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.640 decided it's good enough for recording speech, but it was 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.760 not good enough to record sound of other stuff like 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.679 like music, and a high enough quality to be considered broadcastable. 0:12:35.400 --> 0:12:38.480 The tape was, or at least the original machines the 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:42.000 first two use tape that was six millimeters wide, so 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:44.240 not very wide at all, and it ran through the 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.439 machine at a rate of five ft per second. That's 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.320 about a meter and a half per second, which is 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:53.400 pretty darn fast. Think about this. You've got this thin 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:58.480 steel tape moving at that speed. You might be thinking, oh, my, 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:02.560 Drew gees, that's pretty darn dangerous, and you would be right. 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:04.880 You would not want to get too close to this thing, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.520 or you could get pretty badly cut. And it didn't 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:10.840 get much better. When Blattner's team created a version that 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:15.400 used tape. It was only three millimeters wide, but the 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.640 tape was actually better than steel wire. You've got better 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:21.840 quality recordings, but still not to the level that could 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:24.120 be used for broadcast, and certainly a far cry from 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:26.960 anything that could be used for consumers. Now. While the 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.360 Blatner phone was terrorizing the BBC, there was a German 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.920 Austrian engineer named Dr Fritz Floimer, and he had been 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:40.559 experimenting with a paper tape coated with lacquer and an 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:45.320 iron oxide powder. So iron oxide is ferro magnetic and 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.679 would serve as the actual recording medium, and iron eyed 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.040 oxide for a very very long time would become the 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:55.520 go to material. There were different iron oxides that different 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.640 inventors would use over the years to get better and 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:01.800 better results, but iron oxide became kind of ve go 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.920 to powder that you would use to create this kind 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:10.120 of magnetic tape. So the A E. G Company in 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:14.760 Berlin negotiated with floim Er Uh to develop a device 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:18.160 based off of his work back in ninety two, and 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.240 they also collaborated with a different company called B A 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:26.080 SF to create a magnetic recording materials and equipment. This 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:30.240 collaboration led to a tape made from cellulose acetate rather 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:34.520 than papers, still coated with lacquer and iron oxide, and 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:38.320 using another cellulos acetate type of material to act as 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.360 a binder agent. The two companies presented their collaboration, which 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.680 they called the Magneto Phone, which is not something you 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:50.000 used to call the head of evil mutants, and they 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:53.040 showed it off at the nineteen thirty five Radio Fair 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:56.400 in Berlin. Now floim er had a bit of a 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:00.160 sad outcome to this whole thing. Everything was done on 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.680 the up and up, but his patents were later overturned 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.120 by the German National Court. They court determined that the 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:12.080 ideas he had patented had already been presented way back 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:16.080 in the late eighteen hundreds by none other than Valdemar Poulson, 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.800 the guy who came up with that steel wire contraption 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:23.160 that he had already described a tape based system. It's 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:25.840 just that he wasn't able to make that one work 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:30.480 during his lifetime. But because there was prior art, the 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:36.760 patents that Floeimer had had registered were overturned. German engineers 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:40.120 continued to improve the technology, and by the early nineteen 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:41.880 forties it was at the point where it was a 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:46.000 legitimate alternative to the other recording methods of the time. 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:50.960 Magnetic tape made a huge impact on that recording industry. So, 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.600 for one thing, you could record way more information on 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.760 a reel of tape than you could on a wax 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:01.360 cylinder or a shellack disc, which of the other media 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:05.240 at the time. For another, with tape, you could edit 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.080 if you're recording to a wax disc or a shell 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.960 act disc, and you make a mistake, it's there and 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:16.080 you pretty much have to scrap everything and start over, 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:18.840 or you have to live with the mistake. With tape, 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:23.240 you could actually record and you could literally cut and 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.600 paste if you needed to the tape so that you 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:30.000 could get rid of accidents. You could loop things if 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:31.600 you wanted to. There are a lot of different tricks 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.800 you could do. And as we listened to the last episode, 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:39.840 you could do multi track recordings. You could put multiple 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.200 tracks side by side on the same length of tape. 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:45.240 You know, imagine you've got a piece of tape and 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.960 it's several feet long and it's maybe a couple of 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:54.040 inches wide. You could actually fit multiple tracks side by side, 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.640 and each track is a different recording, and they're all 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.680 synchronized by just being next to each other on this tape. 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:05.320 So that allowed for a lot of versatility in the 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:09.240 recording process and it really freed things up. Shifting the 0:17:09.280 --> 0:17:11.800 recording head over slightly allows you to record a second 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.240 track or a third track. Um you could even record 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.800 tracks for specific speakers. That's what allowed for stereo sound. 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:21.560 And like I said in the last episode, Less Paul 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.280 played a really big part in getting multi track recording 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:29.080 off the ground running. Uh Ampex would actually build the 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:32.119 device based on less Paul's requests, and they built the 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:35.800 first eight track recording system. So soon you had the 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.399 entire recording industry relying on magnetic tape for recording, mixing, 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.800 and mastering. At the time, they were mostly relying on 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.440 three track systems, and then a little bit later four 0:17:45.480 --> 0:17:48.160 track systems. The eight track actually didn't come into play 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:51.240 until a bit later, but people began to figure out 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.040 how to work with those, Like you could record four 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:57.080 tracks onto a tape, then you can take that tape 0:17:57.119 --> 0:18:00.520 of four tracks and transfer the recording to one track 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:03.879 of another four track recorder, and thus you could start 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:07.879 to build a piece that way. It was more time consuming, 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.959 but it was also still more versatile than the you know, 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:13.880 just getting everybody in the same room at the same 0:18:13.880 --> 0:18:16.240 time and hope that no one makes a mistake. So 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.679 the real impact of magnetic tape I want to feature 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:23.840 on this episode hit consumers, and we're gonna talk about 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:26.040 that in just a second, But first let's take a 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:37.120 quick break from the nineteen thirties to the early nineteen sixties, 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:41.080 the format of the tape recorder was huge. It was 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.119 a big, big machine. You are working with real to 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.000 real tapes. That meant that you would have one reel 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:50.280 that would have all of your audio stored on magnetic tape. 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:52.639 It's wrapped around this reel, and then you have a 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.120 second empty reel, and you would put both of those 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:58.440 reels on spokes on your tape recorder. Then you would 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.800 take the magnetic tape from the main reel. You would 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.920 carefully feed the magnetic tape through the machine so that 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:09.600 the tape is going to pass under the tape head 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:12.280 or over the tape head, depending upon the design of 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.000 the machine, but that the tape head would it would 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:19.200 pass across it. Then you would feed it continuing through 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.399 the machine until you could wrap it and tuck it 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:26.960 into the secondary reel. You turn on the machine, and 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.119 then the secondary reel starts to turn and starts to 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.360 pull the tape through the recorder. And that meant that 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:38.560 the magnetic tape would pass over or under the tape head, 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:41.560 and that would create that electrical signal in the tape 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.280 head that could be amplified to drive a speaker and 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.400 you could play it back. It was big, it was bulky. 0:19:47.640 --> 0:19:50.720 It required deft hands to thread the tape, and it 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.280 meant it was not typically very user friendly for most people, 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.040 and it was pretty expensive. There were consumer models of 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.600 reel to reel tape players. You could out and buy 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.639 one yourself, but very few people actually owned one, just 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:06.800 because it was kind of a hassle to use them 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.560 and they were very expensive. Also, the reels took up 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:14.040 a lot of space, and depending upon which model you got, 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.240 you might be stuck with specific types of reels that 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:20.000 you could use, and you couldn't use other ones because 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:23.359 they weren't compatible. Our c A, the Radio Corporation of 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:27.320 America that has factored so heavily in these histories, developed 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:31.280 a reversible cassette tape as early as the late nineteen fifties, 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.720 but it didn't look like the cassette tapes that were 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.399 all the rage in the nineteen eighties. The r C 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.159 A cassette tape was much larger. It was about the 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:43.119 size of a video cassette. And now I'm realizing that 0:20:43.160 --> 0:20:49.200 I'm comparing one obsolete technology against a different obsolete technology, 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.440 and some of you may have no idea what I'm 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:54.040 talking about. But the cassettes were about the size of 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.440 your average paperback book. They were big and the form 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:00.359 factor didn't really catch on, so our ci A would 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:04.119 scrap it. After a short while, the company Phillips created 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.640 the format that would become the cassette tape that those 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:09.920 of us who grew up in the eighties no and love. 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.480 It was called a compact cassette in the early days, 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:17.520 and Phillips developed these much smaller cassettes filled with magnetic 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:22.200 storage back in nineteen sixty two. They unveiled the technology 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.359 at the nineteen sixty three Berlin radio show, the same 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:29.560 radio show where we got to see the earlier forms 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:33.320 of magnetic tape playback. So these cassettes were about the 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:35.960 size of a credit card, much much smaller than our 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.840 Cier's version. At the time, there were other magnetic storage 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:44.760 formats that were vying for the top spot in the market, 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:49.560 and the early versions of the Phillips cassette weren't able 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.360 to produce very high quality recordings, and so they were 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.119 marketed more as something to record speech to rather than music. 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.240 You would buy a tape recorder and you would buy 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:01.959 the cassettes and you would use it to dictate, very 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:06.000 much like the steel wire devices from decades earlier. So 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:09.320 how the heck did the cassette become the standard with 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.680 these kind of drawbacks, Well, it was largely because Phillips 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:17.280 made a very shrewd move. The company licensed the technology 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.679 to other companies for free. So if you had the 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:24.160 means to manufacture cassettes, you could get a free license 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:27.320 from Phillips and then you could do it. Phillips wasn't 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:30.280 going to take any sort of licensing fee or royalties. 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:33.520 That way, they could make money selling machines capable of 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:36.119 recording and playing back the stuff on tapes. And it 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:38.680 was a savvy move that paid off, and the cassette, 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:44.000 despite its early limitations, received widespread adoption. Engineers would continue 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:46.800 to work on the technology and it didn't take terribly 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:49.280 long for the recording quality to improve to the point 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:51.760 where it was at least feasible to use cassettes to 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:56.440 record music. By nineteen sixty five, European companies were doing that, 0:22:56.880 --> 0:22:59.280 and the following year in sixty six, saw the United 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:02.280 States doing the same, and right away companies were selling 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:05.200 machines that could not only play a cassette, but also 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:08.560 record to blank cassettes. And this would be another thing 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:11.680 that would make an enormous impact on the recording industry. 0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:17.159 For two decades, Vinyl would still hold out over prerecorded cassettes. 0:23:17.520 --> 0:23:22.119 It's not like prerecorded cassettes immediately displaced vinyl records, but 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:27.120 in the nighties, prerecorded music cassettes overtook vinyl sales and 0:23:27.440 --> 0:23:31.600 things changed dramatically. The compact cassettes quality was pretty much 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:35.600 always held up as inferior to a good vinyl album. 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:38.639 Cheap cassettes had a lot of tape hiss, and tape 0:23:38.680 --> 0:23:41.840 hiss is produced by the magnetic particles that are on 0:23:41.960 --> 0:23:45.520 the tape. The larger the particles are, the more hiss 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:47.520 you will hear during a recording. It's kind of the 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:51.520 base level or the the room noise of a tape. 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:54.480 And you can reduce tape hiss a couple of different ways. 0:23:54.520 --> 0:23:57.360 One is by recording sound at a higher tape speed, 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:01.000 which effectively uses more tape to cord the same amount 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:04.399 of sounds. So instead of saying, let's say that one 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:09.840 version would have a second equals you know, let's say 0:24:11.200 --> 0:24:15.520 eight inches of tape, which is pretty fast, and another 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:18.720 one a second equal sixteen inches of tape, Well, you're 0:24:18.760 --> 0:24:21.359 using twice as much tape to record the same amount 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:25.359 of sound, and you also reduce hiss that way. You 0:24:25.400 --> 0:24:29.399 can also reduce hiss by reducing the size of the 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:33.000 magnetic particles themselves. If you get finer grains of iron 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:37.120 oxide than it brings down hiss, and then other technologies 0:24:37.200 --> 0:24:40.640