Talk:Wire recording

Magnetic Tape
Currently text says but the development of consumer magnetic tape recorders starting in 1948 quickly drove wire recorders from the market.[citation needed]

but of course magnetic tape were invented in the 1930s and became wide spread more or less wordwide only after end of WWII — Preceding unsigned comment added by MauriceM3 (talk • contribs) 15:41, 11 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The below text was added by an unlogged in user to the article text. It looks like some good info, some of which should be incorporated into the text, but as it was formated as a comment rather than article addition I moved it here to talk. -- Infrogmation 19:58, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The information above is incorrect. The wire recorder was short lived to about 1958. (Not sure of the dates)

(Magnetic wire recorders for audio and other data were made from the 1890s (e.g. the Poulsen "Telegraphone")into perhaps the 1960s. The most familiar type of wire recorders are those produced during and after World War II through about 1954-55. Most of the information added on this page relates to those recorders.)

It was soon replaced with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Then later on the reel recorder was soon replaced by a cassette recorder.

(The above is an oversimpflication of a complex story and is probably not relevant here anyway)

The Wire Recorders varied in difference sizes. The reels always came in varied sizes.

(I'm not sure what he's trying to say, exactly. The reels for the postwar consumer recorders came in two sizes, but held varying amounts of wire providing a range of possible recording times up to about an hour)

There were more than one Wire Recorder Company, but the most common maker was WEBSTER. The Wire Recorder was made by a company named WEBSTER in Chicago, Ill.5610 BLOOMINGDALE AVE. CHICAGO 39. Catalog No.was 11X175 that you ordered the reels by.

(The name of the company is Webster-Chicago Corp. Webster Electric was different company that also made wire recorders. There were dozens of wire recorder makers in the U.S. and about as many in Europe. )

The recording wire was made of stainess steel and was magentized to record on.

(Not ordinary stainless steel of the kind you typically encounter in flatware, pots, etc. but a specially drawn type that is fairly magnetically "hard." Common stainless is not magnetizable)


 * True of Austenitic Stainless Steel, but Martensitic Stainless Steel is easily magnetisable. This later type is just as common - try a magnet on your stainless steel sink!

The reels were made of metal and were heavy especially if you got many together in one bunch. The fidelity on the wire was surprising good. There was no hissing sound like on a magnectic tape.


 * All the ones I have seen were made of bakelite.

(there was little "hiss" because the amplifier had a cut-off filter below the threshold at which you enounter hiss--it simply could not reproduce those high frequencies. The Magnecord company --later a famous maker of tape recorders--briefly offered a high fidelity wire recorder that was capable of recording and reproducing frequencies up to about 15,000 hz)

The wire reels were recorded or listened at 24 inches per second (That is 2 feet per second)There is 1,200 feet of wire on a 1 hour reel. The wire only had one track since it was just a thin wire and not a flat tape that could get 2 to 4 tracks on it. The reel was small and only lasted 1 hour per reel. The reels also came in different times like 30 minuets and a 1/4 hour which is 15 minutes. After the reel was done it had to be rewound cause there was no way to take off the take-up reel. It was a very inconvenient way to record and if you were lucky enough you might get a wire recorder with a removeable take-up reel, but you needed a replacement take-up reel to take up the new wire reel.

(I think what this is intended to say is that on many of the postwar consumer recorders, the "takeup" reel was not removable.)

The wire was easily tangled especially when being rewound. The wire would run through a very small recording head slit on a bobbing head that went up and down to put the wire on the take-up reel evenly. As far as I know the wire recorder was never used for dictation.

(Actually, Webster-Chicago wire recorders, which were by far the top sellers among the U.S.-made wire reocrders of the late '40 and 1950s were designed specifically for office dictation)

I do know it was used in detective work at one time years ago. Please let me know if I missed anything. I have done some research on wire recorder and own 2 of them myself and have several wire reels. Thank you.

I am very confused by the remark that 'Wire recording devices have a high head speed and a low media speed, and can store either one audio track or many data tracks.' Does it mean that heads are moving as in rotary head machines? Dsc 18:55, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

(I don't think I've ever seen an audio wire recorder with more than one track-but I suppose it could have been done with some kind of multiplexing. Perhaps the author is referring to one of the military/aerospace wire recorders, which may have had this multiplexing capability. The kind of audio wire recorders that people typically find at garage sales and online auctions are probably going to be single-track devices.)

Bias?
I'm new to wikipedia, so I'm not sure what is allowed to be included and what isn't, but the link at the bottom of this page seems to be more of an advertisement than a source of information. Should it be removed?


 * I think you're right; the link more of an advertisement than information, so I've removed it. Cheers, -- Infrogmation 00:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You need bias to get a good recording. 50.89.71.42 (talk) 06:22, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Woodie Guthrie Live Wire
Added non-advertisement-style Woodie Guthrie Live Wire album information. --KJRehberg (talk) 01:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Re-recording/erasing
Anyone know if you can record over a wire that has been recorded on? Is there an erase head? Is there a special process for erasing? NickD 02:30, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * All the mains powered audio recorders that record and replay that I have seen were equipped with an 'erase head' (though it is nothing more than a coil powered from the mains transformer). However, record only machines (presumable for field use) rarely have erase heads as the batteries are unable to provide the power required. 86.179.167.116 (talk) 16:53, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Recording Wire
"Nearly hair-thin" wire would probably be nearly (or entirely) unusable, and hideously expensive to make as well. I don't know of a proper source, but this site: ( https://psap.library.illinois.edu/format-id-guide/wire ) suggests tenths-of-a-millimeter scale wire. Presumably there's a proper source out there as well. 2602:301:7764:AC00:1982:8EC7:A09F:B0F2 (talk) 09:08, 28 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the note. I removed the reference to hair and swapped in some actual figures for wire diameter, taken from Semi J. Begun's book about the history of magnetic recording, published in 1949. Binksternet (talk) 17:27, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Another Notable Use?
In another "Hogan's Heroes" episode (Don't remember which,) I recall the team receiving a care package from somebody's "granny," which contained a pair of socks. They unraveled one of the socks, and extracted a wire that had been knitted into the fabric. When they played it on their machine, it proved to be recorded with orders, sending them on a dangerous mission. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.75.33.51 (talk) 19:31, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

First Oral History Recordings?
Some of the interviews with former slaves conducted by the WPA between 1936 and 1938 were recorded. I'm not sure if they were recorded on wire recorders as recording phonographs are a possibility, but those interviews probably antecede Boder's holocaust recordings.Bill (talk) 05:54, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

I think the Notable Use of the Wire Recorder at Nuremberg is wrong, despite the cited book
Here are two articles that show that the Recordgraph using Amertape grooved film was used in the way credited to wire recorders. I'm not certain how to go about fixing it. Could a real editor do that? https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18514298/nazi-germany-holocaust-records-audio-lost-saved-hitler-nuremberg-trials https://www.d-dayrecordgraph.com/nuremburg.html The last screen of the second link actually shows a functional diagram of the recording system Link to Recordgraph description https://obsoletemedia.org/recordgraph/ Rlhess (talk) 00:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)


 * You have excellent proof for your point. I'll fix this article. Binksternet (talk) 02:35, 18 May 2022 (UTC)