In playback mode, a dull, loosely mounted stylus, attached to a rubber diaphragm, carried the reproduced sounds through an ear tube to its listener. The sharp recording stylus, actuated by a vibrating mica diaphragm, cut the wax from the strip. The tape was then taken up on the other reel. 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 machine was of sturdy wood and metal construction, and hand-powered by means of a knob fastened to a flywheel. It employed a 3⁄ 16-inch-wide (4.8 mm) strip of wax-covered paper that was coated by dipping it in a solution of beeswax and paraffin and then had one side scraped clean, with the other side allowed to harden. The earliest known audio tape recorder was a non-magnetic, non-electric version invented by Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory and patented in 1886 ( U.S. As of the first decade of the 21st century, analog magnetic tape has been largely replaced by digital recording technologies. Since some early refinements improved the fidelity of the reproduced sound, magnetic tape has been the highest quality analog recording medium available. The alternative recording technologies of the era, transcription discs and wire recorders, could not provide anywhere near this level of quality and functionality. It gave artists and producers the power to record and re-record audio with minimal loss in quality as well as edit and rearrange recordings with ease. Magnetic tape revolutionized both the radio broadcast and music recording industries. This German invention was the start of a long string of innovations that have led to present-day magnetic tape recordings. Prior to the development of magnetic tape, magnetic wire recorders had successfully demonstrated the concept of magnetic recording, but they never offered audio quality comparable to the other recording and broadcast standards of the time. The use of magnetic tape for sound recording originated around 1930 in Germany as paper tape with oxide lacquered to it. Tape-recording devices include the reel-to-reel tape deck and the cassette deck, which uses a cassette for storage. In its present-day form, it records a fluctuating signal by moving the tape across a tape head that polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the audio signal. 1978Īn audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. A reel-to-reel tape recorder from Akai, c.

Reel to reel tapedeck