The History of Magnetic Recording in the United States, 1888-1978 A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty by David Lindsay Morton, Jr. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in History of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology December 1995 Copyright ? 1995 by David L. Morton, Jr. THE HISTORY OF MAGNETIC RECORDING IN THE UNITED STATES 1888-1978 Amoved: Bruce Sinclair, Chairman 11 Jarpe^ E. Brittain AUGI/^ dieb^lhaus Date Approved. DEDICATION To my parents, David L. and Kathryn P. Morton iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT I wish to extend thanks to all the people who helped in some way with the production of this dissertation. Funding for research and writing came from a number of sources, including the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science Foundation, and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers. The staffs of the libraries at Auburn University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Rutgers University were especially helpful. I owe a great debt to individuals at various historical organizations for assisting in the gathering of information. This includes the archival staffs of the Joplin, Missouri Globe, the Springfield, Massachusetts and Wheeling, West Virginia historical societies, the Perham Foundation, and Motorola Corporation. Valuable assistance came from the Ampex, C. K. Williams, and Norrtronics Corporations. Finally, thanks to Kirk Willis for getting me into all this. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgment iv List of Tables vi List of Illustrations vi Chapter One: Introduction 1 Two: Concepts in Competition: Magnetic Recording 32 in America, 1878-1930 Three: American Telephone and Telegraph and Magnetic 115 Recording, 1900-1945 Four: The Mechanisms of Technological Ossification: 186 Corporations, Regulators, Labor, and Technology in the Industries Using Sound Recording, 1924-1945 Five: European and American Technologies of 244 Magnetic Recording: Technology Transfer Six: Making Armour: A Study in Innovation and Technology 321 Transfer at Armour Research Foundation, 1939-1965 Seven: The Broadening and Narrowing of Magnetic Recording 390 in the 1950s Eight: The Eight Track Tape Cartridge: 466 A History of That Which Repeats Itself Nine: Conclusions and Discussion of Results 533 Appendix One 54 Bibliography 5 Vita 552 v LIST OF TABLES Table Page 3.1 Estimated Cost of the Bell Labs Tape Recorder 159 3.2 Budget Allocations for Projects 33257 and 20872 169 4.1 Value of RCA Radio Receiver Sales 211 4.2 AT&T Income 1924-1935 214 4.3 Network Option Time 9 4.4 Estimated Cost of Running a Radio Station 221 5.1 Types of Magnetophones 279 5.2 Magnetophone and Tape Production, 1939-1944 282 6.1 Universities with Highest Levels of Federal Funding, in Descending Order, 1963 327 6.2 Fields of Specialization at Armour Research Foundation 335 6.3 Samples of ARF Licensee Bulletin Titles 354 7.1 U.S. Sales of Recorded Reel-to-Reel Tapes, 1967-75 439 7.2 U.S. sales of Phonograph Records, 1949-1975 439 7.3 Sales of U.S. Made Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders, 1949-1970 442 8.1 Number of Titles Available on Tape by Format 514 8.2 Sales of Recordings in the United States, 1967-1975 518 8.3 Sales of Recordings on Tape by Format, 519 1967-1975 (In Millions of Dollars) vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure Page 1.1 Edison's Tinfoil Phonograph 18 1.2 The Principle of Transduction 9 1.3 Sectional View of a Telephone Transmitter 20 1.4 Magnetic Field Around an Energized Wire 22 1.5 Magnetic Flux in and Around an Electromagnet 23 1.6 Sectional View of a Telephone Receiver 25 1.7 Electromechanical Phonograph Cutter Mechanism 26 1.8 Recording Electromagnet Pole-Pieces and Recording Tape 28 1.9 Magnetic Flux Through Recording Electromagnet and Medium 29 2.1 Oberlin Smith's Recorder 38 2.2 Elihu Thomson's Magneto-Mechanical Sound Generator 42 2.3 Poulsen's Magnetic Recording Experiment 45 2.4 Poulsen's Patented Drum Recorder 48 2.5 Poulsen's 'Horizontal' Drum Recorder, Circa 1900 49 2.6 Steel Tape Telegraphone, 1900 50 2.7 Telephone Relay or Repeater 2 2.8 Telephonic Broadcasting Using the Telegraphone 82 3.1 C. N.. Hickman's' Proposed 135 Telephone Answering Machine, 1931 3.2 Centralized Type of Telephone Recorder 148 vii 3.3 Details of a Centralized type of Telephone Recorder 149 3.4 Long Loop-Type Voice Mirror 157 3.5 Short Loop Voice Mirror 8 3.6 Proposed General-Purpose Portable Tape Recorder, 1935 163 4.1 The Phonographic Recording Process 190 4.2 Western Electric Light Valve 194 4.3 Variable Density and Variable Area Sound Recording 196 4.4 Projector Pickup'Head' 197 5.1 Construction of a Ring-Shaped Recording Head 260 5.2 Recording Process with a Ring-Shaped Head 261 5.3 The Dailygraph Recorder 265 5.4 The C. Lorenz Co. 'Stahltonbandmaschine* 274 5.5 The AEG Magnetophone 275 6.1 Armour Military Wire Recorder 242 6.2 Armour Military Wire Recorder, Front View 343 6.3 Armour Military Wire Recorder, Side View 344 6.4 Armour Research Foundation Experimental Tape Recorder 359 Circa 1945-46 7.1 A Vision of Home Videotape Technology 400 7.2 Proposal for a Stereophonic Tape System, 1958 428 7.3 Stereo Reproduction 446 7.4 Multitrack Head Assembly 449 7.5 Actual Versus Apparent Perceived Locational Distortions 453 With Directional Microphones Displaced Laterally viii 7.6 Actual Versus Apparent Perceived Locational Distortions 454 With Directional Microphones Displaced Fore and Aft 8.1 An Armour-Designed Cartridge Wire Recorder 468 8.2 Four Track Tape 472 8.3 The 1958 RCA Cartridge Tape Catalog 474 8.4 CBS/3m Cartridge System 479 8.5 The Armour Self-Threading Tape Cartridge 481 8.6 Poulsen's Drum and Endless Loop Telegraphones 485 8.7 Brush Development Company Loop Recorder 488 8.8 Lee de Forest's Mobius Loop Sound Recorder 490 8.9 Example of a Mobius Loop Motion Picture Projector 491 8.10 Complex Mobius Loop Projector Mechanism 492 8.11 Television Associates, Inc. Film Cartridge 494 8.12 Cousino's Mobius Loop Cartridge Hub 495 8.13 Audio Vendor and Echomatic Cartridges 496 8.14 Eash's Public Address Helmet 498 8.15 Eash's Fidelipac Cartridge 9 8.16 The Lear Wire Recorder 506 8.17 Comparison of Muntz and Lear Head Specifications 509 8.18 Cartoon Depicting Compatibility Problems 515 of the Tape Cartridge Industry ix SUMMARY The history of magnetic recording is an important subject which has not received much scholarly attention. This study uses secondary historical sources in addition to manuscripts, technical documents, interviews, photographs, examinations of artifacts, and descriptive statistics to draw together a history of magnetic sound recording in the United States. The analysis of this data showed how magnetic recording fit into the context of other sound recording technologies and its intersections with and American culture and society. Magnetic recording technology was invented before the turn of the century as an adjunct to telephone service. Between its invention and its eventual commercial success after World War II lay a long period when it was repeatedly reshaped and re-conceived by a series of corporate and institutional sponsors. This long history of repeated re-definition was reflected in the designs and intended uses of postwar tape recorders.. As a broader range of users gained access to it after 1945, the technology was again reshaped, and its subsequent history demonstrates its remarkable adaptability to new applications. Focusing on sound recording rather than newer applications like video or data recording, this study shows the cultural impact of the tape recorder and related innovations. This research should be of use to those interested in innovation and invention, the transfer of technology between nations and between research laboratories and corporations, and students of popular culture and consumerism. x CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Historiography "Tape and wire recording are not as 'modern' as many would like to think," wrote technical journalist Leon A. Wortman in 1954 for the trade journal Radio and Television News.1 The middle years of the 1950s were a time when the American public became more familiar with this technology, first in the form of home tape recording equipment, and then through television shows on video tape. Wortman informed readers that magnetic recording had been around for decades, for he sensed that most people would not have known just how long it had been in existence. Magnetic recording had been nearly invisible in the United States after 1900, when scores of news and engineering articles on the subject had appeared announcing its invention. But it was not until after 1945 that magnetic recording began to have a major commercial impact in America. Suddenly there was a tape recording industry, and increasingly it was a large and internationally important industry. How did that industry develop? Why was there so little recognition of magnetic recording before World War II? The history of magnetic recording has received much less attention than the related technologies of radio, television, or the phonograph. However, at regular intervals, from the 1950s to the present, historical articles like Wortman's have appeared in a variety of periodicals, mainly engineering journals and audio trade and hobby magazines. The main scholarly interest in magnetic recording history has come from journalism students. In at least two 1 dissertations and in more numerous master's theses, students have repeatedly reinvented a history of magnetic recording which reiterates the tale of its long history and sudden commercial success. These writers have been impressed by the number of unsuccessful attempts to commercialize magnetic recording in America, and by the contrast between the situation here and the relative success of the same technology in Europe. The Journalists emphasized the gap between magnetic recording's initial period of languishing and its contemporary importance in broadcasting (both in audio and video recording) and home entertainment, and thus they have been anxious to explain why success had to wait.2 Until recently, that explaination depended almost entirely on technical arguments. For example, the received wisdom has taught that the the magnetic recorder that was invented around 1900, known as the Telegraphone, failed mainly because it lacked electronic amplification, a technology which which was not available until the 1910s. Similarly, the commercial successes (however minor) of European magnetic dictating machines of the 1920s would have been greater, it is said, if not for poor sound quality and high prices. This line of reasoning sometimes goes on to claim unequivocally that a German tape recorder called the Magnetophone, which had significant sales in the the 1930s, did not achieve "broadcast quality" reproduction (despite the fact that it was used widely in European broadcasting). Other authors take a somewhat different approach, recognizing the Magnetophone's technical excellence but claiming that it was kept secret by the Germans, preventing American broadcasters from gaining knowledge of it.3 2 More recently a more scholarly and in many ways more sophisticated explanation of magnetic recording's history has begun to emerge. A student of communications named William Lafferty produced a doctoral dissertation in 1983 which exhaustively examined the published material on magnetic recording and offered an interpretive framework for the technical and business history on this subject. Lafferty discovered that there were important economic and business considerations to consider which transcended narrowly technical issues in explaining the history of magnetic recording. For example, one early English sound system that used magnetized wire as a recording medium seemed to have come into being because of the heavily subsidized British film industry, which encouraged experiments with new kinds of sound recording technologies. Clearly, then, there is more to the explanation of the history of magnetic recording than narrowly technical arguments.4 Ten years later, historian Mark Clark's doctoral dissertation appeared, and within a year he published an article on the subject of magnetic recording in the journal Technology and Culture. Clark re-evaluated the published sources and surveyed new troves of primary sources.. Clark confined his study mainly to the invention and early development of magnetic recording, although he also opened up a new discussion of the business history of several manufacturing firms in the field. Clark's published work pursued in detail a point brought up by Lafferty regarding the acomplishments of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in magnetic recording research in the 1930s. AT&T spent an enormous sum of money and committed a number of talented researchers to the problem of developing a device to record magnetically on steel tape, yet commercial applications of the resulting 3 recorders failed to materialize. Lafferty posited that AT&T was reluctant to offer tape recorders for sale to the general public because of their relationship to radio broadcasters: the major American radio networks used AT&T long distance cables to distribute their programming. The availability of tape recorders would have, Lafferty feels, undermined AT&T's business by making those cable connections unnecessary. While Clark acknowledged this relationship, he felt that AT&T had other reasons for restricting access to the magnetic recording technology it had worked so hard to invent. He argues that at first one of AT&T's research goals was to develop telephone conversation recorders analogous to the modern home telephone answering machine. While AT&T engineers were enthusiastic about these new recorders, corporate managers believed that the public might stop using the telephone for confidential conversations if it thought those conversations could be secretly recorded. Thus, for strategic reasons, AT&T tightly restricted the marketing of magnetic recorders.5 Clark's publication and dissertaton had not yet appeared when this author began research on the subject of magnetic recording history in 1988. The lack of reliable, detailed secondary sources other than William Lafferty's dissertation made it necessary to review a large number of technical articles published between the 1890s and the 1950s in order to evaluate an important collection of documents related to a small firm called Orradio Industries, a pioneering American manufacturer of plastic-based, magnetic recording tape. The Orradio case proved to be significant as a study of technology transfer of tape-making knowledge from Germany to the United States. Its founder and some of his colleagues investigated captured German tape 4 recorders during World War II, published their findings for public dissemination as war booty, but then returned to the United States to found companies or act as technical consultants for firms interested in exploiting German know-how. Orradio, however, was the smallest by far of several firms making the German style of recording tape after World War II, and thus its commercial importance was overshadowed by competitors. It remains, however, the only tape making firm whose corporate records are readily available to historians. With much additional research, the story of Orradio was published in Business History Review in 1994, but it does not represent a useful overview of the magnetic recording industry or even the tape recording industry in the post- 1945 period. Instead, its historical significance lies in its contributions to the understanding of the ways in which small entreprenurial businesses in "high technology" fields find their way.6 The Approach of This Study and Its Wider Historical Context One of the aims of the present study is to add to acomplishments of previous historians by putting magnetic recording into its broader context, breaking away from technological deterministic arguments on the one hand, and the internalist focus on the other. The "contextual history" approach as a way to present the history of technology was described by the emminent historian Melvin Kranzberg; it is a methodology which takes into account the social, political, and cultural environment of a technology as it develops. More recently, something closely resembling certain aspects of contextual history in its general premises has become fashionble, the so-called social construction of technology [SCOT], a methodology whose practicioners tend to insist that the 5 development of technolgy can only be explained as the outcome of social forces. SCOT'S adherents, ironically, are occasionally dismissive of technology itself, despite their goal of explaining the history of technology. Such omissions are unfortunate, for it is apparent that sometimes a close examination of "hardware" can reveal the motivations, desires, and biases of its inventors or designers. Clearly, technology must be brought back into the SCOT approach, and it is an aim of this dissertation to show that it can be done. In contrast to the dearth of secondary material on the history of magnetic recording proper, a wealth of published material is avialable to help put this technology into its social, cultural and technical context. That context has changed significantly since magnetic recording's invention, making it nearly impossible to pick a small set of contextual threads and weave them thoughout the study. In 1888, when engineer Oberlin Smith first suggested the possibility of sound recording on a magnetic medium, through the 1940s, when several different firms were energetically developing and promoting a range of practical magnetic recoroding devices, those contextual foci included the telephone and later the motion picture and the radio. The contexts examined in this dissertation include these technologies, the businesses involved in making these devices, those firms providing them as a service (or presenting htem in the case of movies) and the whole network of social interaction connected to them. Note that the phonograph, that popular entertainment device invented by Thomas Edision just a few years before Oberlin Smith's recorder, is not included in the list. The intersection of magnetic recording and the home 6 phonograph in America did not become important until well after 1940. That important fact sometimes gets overlooked, and historians often describe magnetic recorders of the early 20th century as if they were Lamarckian antelopes, stretching their necks to reach the sweet fruit on the upper branches until, teleologically, they evolve a few generations later into giraffes (or modern tape recorders as the case may be). Still, the phonograph manufacturing industry of the 1930s and 1940s is a central part of this study, and the industry as it turns out, is not so simple as it may at first seem. The term "phonograph industry" must be defined to include a broad range of products, firms, and technologies extending well beyond the familiar home phonograph. A more generally useful concept employed throughout this dissertation is the notion of the group of interrelated industries constituting the "industries using sound recording." This set of industries included (at various times) the telephone, radio, motion picture, office equipment, and finally the phonograph industries. Magnetic recording's promoters after about 1910 mworked within the context of large, integrated, and later regulated industries in the United States. The integrated firms which dominated the telephone, radio, motion picture, and phonograph manufacturing industries for a variety of reasons did not choose to adopt magnetic recording. While every historian of these industries has been aware of this fact, no one has made more than a halting attempt to explain how these industries arrived at their technological decisions and how they lived by them from the early 1930s through the end of World War II.7 Here the concept of politcal-cultural hegemony, as expressed by social analysists from Marx to Michel Foucault, has been enormously useful as a sort 7 of conceptual peg on which to hang an analysis of the use of sound recording in the interwar period. Without attempting to be rigidly doctrinaire, I have tried to use social theory to provide a framework and a useful set of concepts, to explain a model of power relationships within and between firms and the reasons behind the decisions to adopt, reject, or modify certain technologies. The overwhelming rejection of magnetic recording by a series of industries using sound recording before World War II serves as the focus of an examination of the structure of these industries. During World War II, the nature of research in magnetic recording changed radically, as new institutions began to participate in this research. Before new sources of archival materials became available in the late 1980s and early 1990s, historians could only sketch out the events of the war years. Mark Clark's dissertation represented the first use of an important collection of manuscripts and papers related to the work of the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago and its leading magnetic recording expert, Marvin Camras. Armour Research developed compact, portable sound recorders using a steel wire medium and successfully marketed these to a range of military agencies during the 1940s and ealry 1950s. In fact, the military during the War served as the most successful market yet encountered for magnetic recording products, a fact which was not lost on established institutions like AT&T. But Armour's long-term goal was not the exploitation of military markets the introduction of a consumer wire recorder. As wartime contracts tapered off after 1944, Armour's leaders shifted their energies to the establishment of postwar markets, the transfer of technology to client manufacturers, and the maintenance of the Foundation as industry leader. 8 Mark Clark's pioneering study of the wire recorder project at Armour was primarily an analysis of invention and innovation. This dissertation examines Armour in terms of patent management and technology transfer, showing the two-way relationship between Armour and its clients which gradually eroded under the influence of outside sources of innovation. Those sources emanated not from the established, pre-war seat of magnetic recording research in America, Bell Telephone Laboratories, nor even from wartime upstarts like the Brush Development Corporation of Cleveland, Ohio, but from foreign firms. During the War and especially after 1945, not only did the hegemony exercised by American electrical equipment manufacturers during the 1930s break up, but new markets for sound recording equipment began to emerge. World War II had seen a complex set of structural changes which not only opened traditional sound recording equipment markets to new types of equipment but also established or greatly expanded new markets in which magnetic recording seemed well-suited. During the War, the government suddenly came to represent a major buyer for sound recording hardware through its appropriation of news reporting activities. Theodore DeLay, Jr.'s 1951 dissertation on the history of the Armed Forces Radio Service examined the government's sound recording activities in great detail but still failed to connect government purchases and practices with important postwar events.^ Wartime agencies involved in newsgathering and entertainment proved much less rigid in their choices of technologies than had AT&T, the motion picture studios, radio broadcasters, and phonogrpah manufactgurers: a great irony given that representatives of established firms made up much of the 9 LEADERSHIP OF WARTIME COMMUNICATIONS AGENCIES. THE REASONS FOR THE SUDDEN SHIFTS IN CORPORATE PRACTICES RELATED TO SOUND RECORDING OF ALL KINDS, BOTH DURING AND AFTER THE WAR, REPRESENT PREVISOULY UNEXPLORED HISTORICAL TERRETORY WHICH THIS DISSERTATION ADDRESSES. FOREIGN TECHNOLOGY WAS A SECOND SOURCE OF THE DISRUPTION OF TRADITIONAL PATTERNS OF MANUFACTURING, SALES, AND PRACTICE IN SOUND RECORDING WHICH RELATED DIRECTLY TO THE HISTORY OF MAGNETIC RECORDING. GERMAN AND ENGLISH COMPANIES HAD ACTIVELY DEVELOPED AND MARKETD "PROFESSIONAL" MAGNETIC TAPE RECORDING DEVICES DURING THE 1930S AND 1940S, ALTHOUGH AMERICAN COMPANIES USING SOUND RECORRDING HAD PAID LITTLE MIND. DURING AND AFTER THE WAR, THE GERMAN VERSION OF THIS TECHNOLOGY SUDDENLY CAME INTO THE HANDS OF AMERICANS AS WAR BOOTY. THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE ENCOURAGED THE TRANSFER OF THIS TECHNOLOGY BY HIRING EXPERTS TO INVESTIGATE IT AND DESCRIBE IT IN REPORTS WHICH WERE LATER DISTRIBUTED TO THE PUBLIC. THE AUTHOR'S 1994 ARTICLE, PUBLISHED IN BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW ANALYZED THE WAY THAT AN AMERICAN INDIVIDUAL EXPLOITED GERMAN TECHNOLOGY, TRANSFERRED IT TO THE UNITED STATES, AND USED IT AS THE BASIS OF A NEW FIRM MAKING PLASTIC-BASED RECORDING TAPE OF THE FAMILIARY, MODERN VARIETY. THERE ARE, HOWEVER, SEVERAL OTHER SIGNIFICANT CASE STUDIES OF THIS TYPE. FURTHER, SOME AMERICAN COMPANIES BORROWED TECHNOLOGY FROM BOTH GERMAN AND AMERICAN, OR FOUND THAT DOMESTIC AND GERMAN TECHNOLOGIES WERE NOT SO VERY DIFFERENT, CREATING A SITUATIONI IN WHICH THE PROTECTION OF PATENTS AND TRADE SECRETS WAS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. THE POST-1945 PERIOD IN WHICH MAGNETIC RECORDING BECAME MORE PUBLICALLY VISIBLE WAS ALSO A PERIOD WHICH SAW A BEWILDERING PROLIFERATION OF 10 new varieties of this technology. No longer were radio, the telephone, and the movies the only industries which constituted its context, and no longer was sound recording the only kind of magnetic recording. Wheras magnetic recorders and their media in the 1930s had been purely experimental, after the war they were increasingly standardized and available "off the shelf." This convenience encouraged experimenation in projects not previously associated with magnetic recording, such as in computer data storage. Furthermore, structural conditions in the phonograph, motion picture, and broadcasting industries were changing radically in ways which tended to create new opportunities for magnetic recording. Several historians have examined the sudden and nearly universal adoption of magnetic recording in these industries. However, the question remains as to why these industries, resistant for so long, were now ready to embrace a familiar and previously unwanted sound recording technique. Was it the case that the technology had improved so much that it was now the only logical choice? The facts suggest that technological change as well as social and economic factors also contributed to this turnabout. Previous historians have applied the seemingly uncontested acceptance of magnetic recording in these "professional" situations after World War II to consumer tape recording. After over half a century of promises delivered by boosters, by 1945 or so magnetic recording finally emerged as a competitor to the phonograph, but a competitor with a difference. As opposed to the movie and radio businesses, for example, there was no real tradition of home recording. For that was the essential difference between the phonograph and 1 1 the home tape (or, for a bried period, wire) recorder-- that ability to record in addition to reproducing. While the first generation of consumer devices, recording on wire just as had Poulsen's earliest design, proved unsucessful after only a few years, tape recording had more commercial longevity and indeed tape recorders much like those of the late 1940s are available today. Almost immediately after its introduction, manufactuarers linked tape recording to the emerging high fidelity movement. But hi-fi in its original incarnation proved to have a limited appeal, and recorder manufacturers (in addition to manufacturers of other types of home audio equipment) struggled during the 1950s to find a way to reach a broader audience. Even within the movement, enthusiasts were not sure whether tape recording was an essential part of the hi-fi. Sound quality, itself always a problematical and controversy-ridden topic, was less an issue than simple questions of the utility of the tape recorder versus the phonograph. Historians Oliver Read and Walter Welch, authors of From Tin Foil to Stereo (1959) and Roland Gelatt, author of the earlier work The Fabulous Phonograph (1954), traced the history of the phongograph from its invention to its technological maturity, but completed their work before the peak of the medium's commercial popularity. In the late 1950s, technical improvements culminating in the "Long Playing" and "Microgroove" consumer phonograph records all but obviated the technical superiority that tape's promoters could claim as compared to the earlier 78-rpm records. Further, for a time after the commercial appearance of stereophonic recordings, the tape medium represented the only way a consumer could purchase and use such recordings, 1 2 but by 1956 the introduction of the stereo phonograph record had also eliminated this marketing advantage. The promoters of music on tape, including both record companies and equipment manufacturers, foundered in the late 1950s having seemingly exhausted their collective imagination in trying to invent a form of tape recording that would appeal to what they perceived as the mass market, a rapidly expanding group of phonograph buyers.9 One of the most interesting problems of the recent period in magnetic recording history, and one which has not been fully explored, is the appearance of a truly popular form of tape recording. Previous historians have assumed that there was a natural evolution from the early hi-fi recorders of the 1950s to the current generation of tape cassettes. Such is not the case. The introduction of a widely successful form of the consumer tape recorder is in part almost a stereotypical story of industry "outisders" with little capital, power, or influence out-innovating the industry leaders. The technology in question was the endless loop tape cartridge, a technically curious format developed for specialty markets such as background music systems, where repetitive operation was important. Almost universally ignored now because of its obsolescence, the "8- track" was in its day a serious challenger to the vinyl disk. The entrepreneurs who exploited this technology latched onto the convenience and portability of the endless loop cartridge while adapting it for use in vehicles. Combined with innovations like stereophonic recordings, and transistor circuitry, promoters of the new cartridge quite literally found a "niche," market in the dashboards of American automobiles. The automobile market spurred competiton from another format, the familiar cassette, which eventually supplanted the earlier 8-tracks. 1 3 This study considers not only the technical and business history of the high fidelity audio movement among consumers and the role of tape recording in it, but also pay special attention to issues of social status. High fidelity is both a consumer product and a communications technology, and its analysis must take into account both of these aspects. Herbert Marcuse's model of the consumer of mass produced cultural products, a person who in the process became a "one dimensional man" is useful but somewhat inadequate. For consumers of high fidelity were not simply buyers, but also shapers of the technology. Similarly, theories of mass communications as a hegemonic, one- directional process simply do not easily fit the home audio movement. 10 More useful are studies of communities and elite culture as an excercise in status building. Here Max Weber was useful in a very general way for providing the notion that community building is a basic and primary type of human behavior in all societies. On a more specific level, historian Lawrence Levine, and sociologists like Paul DiMaggio and Pierre Bordieu have developed several concepts that are useful in analyzing the high fidelity movement. For example, Levine treats an earlier period in American cultural history when upper class civic groups successfully captured certain categories of culture, including sympphonic music, and made them largely the domain of the monied classes. While the appreciation of "serious music" is arguably still an elitist pretension, the rituals associated with music listening devised in the late 19th century are in sharp contrast with those promoted by the hi-fi movement. This fact is most readily apparent in the fact that while 19th century music listening usually involved live musicians, modern hi-fi listeners hear sounds produced by electronics devices.11 14 DIMAGGIO AND BORDIEU UTILIZED THE CONCEPT OF "CULTURAL CAPITAL" TO HELP EXPLAIN HOW HIGH SOCIAL STATUS GROUPS RETAIN THEIR STATUS IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL LEGAL OR OTHER BARRIERS TO ENTRANCE. IN HIGH FIDELITY, THAT TRANSLATES INTO LANGUAGE MORE FAMILIAR TO HISTORIANS OF TECHNOLOGY AS THINGS LIKE THE ACCUMULATION AND MASTERY OF TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE, NOT ONLY ABOUT THE HARDWARE ITSELF BUT ALSO ABOUT MUSIC AND SOUND. AS SUCH, THE EMERGENCE OF HIGH FIDELITY IS NOT SO VERY DIFFERNT THAN THE EMERGENCE OF THE ENGINEERING PROFESSION IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY, EXCEPT THAT MEMBERSHIP NEVER BECAME INSTITUTIONALIZED.12 THUS IN A PRELIMINARY WAY AT LEAST, THIS STUDY BROACHES THE SUBJECT OF THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NEW TECHNOLOGY AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR, STATUS SEEKING, AND TASTE. HIGH FIDELITY SEEMS LIKE AN ESPECIALLY APPEALING WAY TO APPROACH THESE ISSUES, GIVEN THE COMPLEX SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION VAGUELY LABELED "TASTE" IN MUSIC. DOES IT FOLLOW THAT THE MOST TECHNICALLY ADVANCED AUDIO EQUIPMENT, LIKE TAPE RECORDING, WAS EMBRACED BY THOSE WITH THE MOST SOPHISTICATED TASTE IN MUSIC? OR DID MUSIC PURISTS REPRESENT A CONSERVATIVE FORCE, PREFERRING THE ESTABLISHED TECHNOLOGIES IN A WAY ANALOGOUS TO THE OVERWHELMING PREFERENCE AMONG AFFICIONADOES OF ANTIQUE STRADIVARIOUS VIOLINS? IN A MORE GENERAL WAY, THERE IS ANOTHER BODY OF LITERATURE THAT HAS INSPIRED THIS DISSERTATION AND INTO WHICH THIS STUDY IS INTENDED TO FIT. IT INCLUDES WORKS ON THE NATURE OF INVENTION AND INVENTORS, MOST NOTABLY STUDIES OF INVENTORS SUCH AS ELMER SPERRY AND THOMAS EDISON BY THOMAS HUGHES, ROBERT FREIDEL, AND PAUL ISRAEL. SEVERAL CASE STUDIES IN THIS STUDY REFLECT THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF INVENTIVE ACTIVITY AS "SYSTEM BUILDING," THE RATIONALIZED, 15 methodical creation of inventions as parts of larger social, political, and technical systems.13 Another set of writings relating to this study is concerned with the relationship of certain kinds of institutions to technological change. On the one hand, there is a longstanding debate over the importance of the military in stimulating technological change. Recently, for example, a collection of articles edited by Merritt Roe Smith has reopened this dialog, showing in the main the positive effect of military sponsorship on technological change and diffusion.14 A very different group of historical writings examines the importance of other institutions in effecting change. The most important among these is Bruce Sinclair's monograph on the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the important role it played in connecting the methods of experimental science to technology, technolgoical standardization, and the diffusion of technological knowledge.15 There are a host of historical themes which appear in at least a minor way in this study. The popular reception of new electrical technologies, and the creation of gender relationships around new technologies appear in Carolyn Marvyn's When Old Technolgies Were New as well as David Nye's Electrifying America.16 Finally, in the writing of this dissertation it became obvious that while nearly everyone likely to read it is familar with magnetic recording, few people have any sense of how it works. While an aim of this study is to avoid a narrowly technical history, it is important to have at least a nodding familiarity with the process of magnetic recording as well as certain associated technologies from the outset. What follows is a description of two crucial, 1 6 related technologies, the phonograph and the telephone, as well as a description of the way that magnetic recording works. An Introduction to the Technology of Sound Reproduction Sound recording and reproduction through purely mechanical means was invented about a decade before the first proposals for a non-mechanical, magnetic type of sound recording and reproducing. This was Thomas A. Edison's phonograph of 1878, a device which recorded sound waves in the air as a wavering groove on a wax cylinder (Figure 1.1). A profoundly important innovation was Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. Although this device went through a series of important technical changes in its early history, its essential novelty was its ability to transform sound waves, a purely mechanical phenomenon, into electrical waves. Engineers now call a device like the telephone, which converts one form of energy (in this case mechanics) to another (in this case electrical) a "transducer" (Figure 1.2). Actually, the telephone uses two transducers, a transmitter and a receiver. A key element of the first telephone was the transmitter, which was a thin, flexible diaphragm made of a material delicate enough to be physically deformed, at least slightly, by the tiny pressures of sound waves in its immediate vicinity. In a practical early transmitter (Figure 1.3), the diaphragm was supported around its periphery, while the middle pressed on a small piece of carbon. Attached to the carbon "button" were wires carrying a small electric 1 7 Figure 1.1: Edison's Tin Foil Phonograph. A sketch of Edison's "tin foil" phonograph made in late 1877 shows the essential features of the acoustic recording process, in which sound waves are recorded directly onto a soft wax. Oliver Read and Walter Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams, 1959), second edition, 1976, 17. 1 8 Acoustic (mechanical) energy in the form of sound waves Transduction into electrical energy in a microphone Transduction into mechanical energy by a loudspeaker The translation of sound w.ves into electrical energy and vice vena ii accompl.shed by the use of devices called "transducers." In this illustration dep.cting a modern electronic sound system, there are two transducers, the microphone at left and the loudspeaker at right Other types of transducers include telephone receivers and transmitters, and phonograph pickups. Figure 1.2: The Principle of Transduction. The translation of sound waves into electrical energy and vice versa is accomplished by the use of devices called "transuders." In this illustration depicting a modern electronic sound system, there are two transducers, the microphone at left and the loudspeaker at right. Other types of transducers include telephone receivers and transmitters, and phonograph pickups. Drawing by the author. 1 9 Figure 1.3: Sectional View of a Telephone Transmitter. Sectional view of a "carbon" transmitter, showing thge carbon button D through which a small current flows via wires S and R. Vibrations are transmitted to the button via diaphragm B and an intermediary piece. From Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity (Chicago: Armour Instititue of Technology, 1905), 42 20 current from a battery into the carbon at one end, and drawing it away again at the other. This was embodied in Edison's "carbon transmitter" of 1877, a device which took advantage of the fact that the resistance of carbon to the flow of electricity varied according to pressure on the carbon. Sound waves acting on the diaphragm caused the resistance of the carbon to change, and the result was a tiny flow of electric current in the battery circuit that varied "in harmony with the undulations of the sonorous waves." 11. The variations in electric current were very slight, but were enough to be usable. The variations also corresponded to the frequency range of the voice, which is strongest between a few hundred and a few thousand cycles per second (hertz). A somewhat different principle was used to reproduce sounds in a telephone. The tiny, rapidly varying current coming in over the telephone wires from the transmitter passed through a length of fine wire, which was in turn coiled around a small piece of iron. Now, a length of wire carrying a steady electric current forms a magnetic field around itself (Figure 1.4). If the wire is arranged in the form of a coil, that field is in a sense concentrated and the coil can be used as a magnet. In such an "electromagnet," or artificial magnet, an iron core is usually placed in the center of the coil, because the iron has the effect of providing an easier path for the magnetic field. (Figure 1.5). The electromagnet is a device known since the early 19th century and was the basis of that earlier invention, the telegraph. The early Bell telephone receiver used a small electromagnet as a transducer to recreate sound. A varying "sound current" was passed through the coil of the tiny electromagnet, produced a varying magnetic field around the 2 1 Figure 1.4: Magnetic Field Around and Energized Wire. Given a length of wire (or other conductor) B-A through which a current flows, a magnetic field C will appear around the conductor. The intensity and direction of the field has a direct relationship to the strength of the current flowing in the conductor. From Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity (Chicago: Armour Instititue of Technology, 1905), 32 22 Figure 1.5: Magnetic Flux in and Around an Electromagnet. A dual-coil electromagnet, showing the way the magnetic field A flows across the air gap of a U-shaped core. From Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity (Chicago: Armour Instititue of Technology, 1905), 32. 23 coil and through the iron, which again corresponded with or was analogous to the original sound waves in the sense that the magnetic field increased or decreased in magnitude in step with the varying current. The small piece of iron at the center of the coil directed the magnetic field toward a thin, flexible diaphragm. The diaphragm might be made from thin steel, or might have a bit of metal attached to its center so that a magnetic field nearby would attract or repel it. Then the varying current would cause the iron and the attached diaphragm to vibrate. The mechanical movement of the diaphragm in the air caused it to generate an approximation of the original sound. (Figure 1.6) These two essential components of the telephone also became parts of the later magnetic recorder; the microphone to convert sound to current, the telephone receiver to convert it back again. Edison himself recognized that the conversion of mechanical sound waves to electricity and back again might be applied to the phonograph. He attached a stylus to the bit of iron in a telephone receiver to cut a wax phonograph record, although the "electrical" process of phonograph recording was not used commercially for many years. (Figure 1.7) Yet while the magnetic recorder converted sound waves into electrical and magnetic variations, its essential novelty was that it dispensed entirely with the reconversion of those flows back into mechanical energy during the recording process. However, many other aspects resembled telephone operation. A standard telephone transmitter was used to convert sound waves to electrical energy. The electricity flowed through wires to a simple electromagnet. Current in the wire coil still created a varying magnetic field 24 Figure 1.6: Sectional View of a Telephone Receiver. A telephone receiver using the electromagnetic principle. The electromagnet coil E and core F generate a field that acts upon diaphragm M to reproduce sounds. From Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity (Chicago: Armour Instititue of Technology, 1905), 39. 25 Figure 1.7: Electromechanical Phonograph Cutter Mechanism. A stylized drawing demonstrating the principle of "electrical" phonograph recording using a cutting stylus driven by an electromagnet. Harry F. Olson, Elements of Acoustical Engineering (New York: D. Van Nonstrand, 1940), 304. 26 around the coil which acted upon the iron, but the iron now acted to focus and redirect the magnetic field into space, instead of causing a diaphragm to vibrate. What, then, was the function of this modified but silent telephone receiver? With magnetic recording, a "medium" like steel wire or tape, itself capable of being magnetized when exposed to a strong enough magnetic field, was passed rapidly in contact with or in close proximity to the piece of iron in the recording electromagnet. In practice, two-piece or u-shaped electromagnets were used because the tips or "pole pieces" could more conviently put in contact with the medium. With a signal flowing through the recording magnet and the pole pieces touching the medium, magnetic recording began to take place. (Figures 1.8 and 1.9) The steel medium, as several inventors discovered, retained its magnetism as it passed the iron electromagnet. In fact, it remained magnetized to varying degrees along its surface in an exact analogy to the varying electric current which had passed through the coil. Reproduction was the opposite of recording. Just as electricity passing through a coil of wire creates a magnet, a magnet moved near a coil of wire produced an electric current. Thus, by running a magnetized wire or tape past the same modified telephone receiver used for recording, a small electric current was induced in the coil. This varying current, passed through a normal telephone receiver, produced sound. 27 Abb. 7. Kopfe mit Stahlband, prinzipielle Anordnung. 5 Figure 1.8: Recording Electromagnet Pole-Pieces and Recording Tape. An example of the way an electromagnet might be arranged in relation to the recording medium for magnetic recording. In this example, the tips ("pole- pieces) of the core are placed on opposite sides of a steel tape. From "Die Neue Stahlton-Bandmaschine," Lorenz Berichte. April/May 1937, p. 55. 28 Figure 1.9: Magnetic Flux Through Recording Electromagnet and Medium. Diagram showing the path of magnetic flux through the recording electromagnet pole-pieces and steel medium, for the equipment described in Figure Eight. From "Die Neue Stahlton-Bandmaschine," Lorenz Berichte. April/May 1937, p. 55. 29 ENDNOTES 1 Leon A. Wortman, "Magnetic Recording: 1888-1954," Radio and Television News 52 (July 1954): 59, 124-125. 2See for example, John A. Regnell, "A History of Magnetic Recording and Its Broadcast Applications in the United States," (M.S. Thesis, University of Illinois, 1957); there have also been article length histories (including the ones cited below in note three and several cited in the text of the dissertation) and surveys compiled by practitioners in the field. Regarding the latter, see S. J. Begun, Magnetic Recording (New York: Murray Hill Books, 1949), introduction; also see Marvin Camras, Magnetic Recording Handbook (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1988), 1-14. 3Wortman, 124-125; Mark Mooney, Jr. "The History of Magnetic Recording," Hi-Fi Tape Recording 5 (February 1958): 22-24; Robert Angus, "History of Magnetic Recording, Part II," Audio Sept 1984; Robert Angus, "The History of Recording, Part III, The Telegraphone's Finest Hour," Modern Recording (February/March 1976): 22-28; Peter Hammar and Don Ososke, "The Birth of the German Magnetophon Tape Recorder 1928-1945," Dfi 15 (March 1982), 24-29; James W. Gandy, "Bridgeton: The Birthplace of Magnetic Recording," South Jersey Magazine. Summer, 1989, 8-9,12; Adrian Hope, "The Basis of Modern Recording," Hi-Fi Sound 6 (January 1973): 81; Robert Angus," 30 Years of Tape and a Look into the Future," Photo Dealer 30 (July 1964): 62, 67-68, 70, 81. 4William Charles Lafferty, "The Early Development of Magnetic Sound Recording in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures, 1928-1950," (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1981); Mark H. Clark, "The Magnetic Recording Industry 1878-1960: An International Study in Business and Technological History" (Ph.D. Diss., University of Delaware, 1992). 5Mark Clark, "Supressing Innovation: Bell Laboratories and Magnetic Recording," Technology and Culture 34 (July 1993): 516-538. ^DavkJ L. Morton, "The Rusty Ribbon: John Gerbert Orr and the Making of the Magnetic Recording Industry, 1945-1960," Business History Review 67 (Winter 1993) 589-622 7The most directly relevant study here is a massive but unpublished study by Michael Biel called "The Making and Use of Recordings in Broadcasting Before 1936," (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern, 1977); For the motion picture industry, the best recent scholarship on the subject of sound is to be found in Elisabeth Weis and John Belton, eds., Film Sound: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); For radio, the standard sources include Bamouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: The Oxford University Press, 1975); Sydney W. Head, Broadcasting in America: A Survey of Television and Radio (Boston: Houghton-Miflin Co., 1956); W. Rupert, MacLaurin, et al. Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1949); Hugh G. J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio. 1900-32 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 240; Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting. 1920-1934 (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994) 8Theodore Stuart DeLay, Jr., "An Historical Study of the Armed Forces Radio Service to 1946," (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1951). 30 9Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tinfoil to High Fidelity (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1955); Oliver Read and Walter L. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams, 1959), second edition, 1976. I ?Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). II Christopher Brookeman, American Culture and Society Since the 1930s (New York: Schocken Books, 1984). 12See, for example, Sharon Jukin and Paul Dimaggio, Structures of Capital: The Social Organization of the Economy (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Pierre Bourdieu, "Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power," in Nicholas B. Dirks, et al., eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 155-201; also see Michele Lamont and Annette Lareau, "Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical Developments," Sociological Theory 6 (Fall 1988): 153-168. 1^Two ?f Thomas P. Hughes' works that discuss inventors as system builders are Elmer Sperry. Inventor and Engineer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), and Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society. 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); for an interpretation of Thomas Edison's inventive career that contrasts with Hughes' see Robert Friedel and Paul Israel, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986); also see Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Social Context of Innovation: Bureaucrats. Families, and Heroes in the Early Industrial Revolution. as Foreseen in Bacon's New Atlantis. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 14Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferrv Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977); Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985). 15Bruce Sinclair, Philadelphia's Philosopher Mechanics: A History of the Franklin Institute (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Sinclair, A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). 16Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technolgies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1988); David E. Nye: Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990). 17(Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity, vol 5, (Chicago: Armour Institute of Technology, 1905), 42. 3 1 CHAPTER TWO: CONCEPTS IN COMPETITION: MAGNETIC RECORDING IN AMERICA 1878- 1930 Introduction For many Americans the phonograph was always been a part of daily life. For at least three quarters of this century, Americans associated sound recording and reproduction with black phonograph disks, the act of putting a needle in the first groove, hearing the pops and clicks before and after musical selections, reading the lyrics from "liner notes," and listening as favorite disks progressively deteriorated from play or suddenly became cracked, warped, or shattered. When people went to restaurants or bars, they found a coin-operated version of the phonograph, known as the jukebox, glowing warmly in the corner. And as they listened to the radio, they often heard announcers refer to particular "hit" records. Only recently have American consumers become aware that other types of sound recording technologies exist, and most people probably think that they are all new inventions. In the post-World War II period, tape recordings appeared as a consumer product. More recently, the compact disk has replaced the phonograph in most homes and threatens to squeeze out tapes as well. In fact, the phonograph in its familiar domestic form is only one of several kinds of sound recording and reproducing technologies which have coexisted since the turn of the century or even before. Yet these other types existed for 32 many decades in contexts other than the household, serving a surprisingly diverse range of purposes in several different commercial situations. Magnetic recording, the subject of this study, is a type of recording currently used in cassette and video tape machines, computer hard and floppy drives, and other familiar applications. Although magnetic sound recording appeared after the invention of the phonograph, it emerged before Edison and his imitators had transformed the original device into something suitable for home entertainment purposes. Further, there were important industrial applications of the phonograph, now themselves obsolete, which had not yet been conceived when magnetic recording emerged. How, then, were the various specialized uses for sound recording invented, and why was one type of sound recording chosen over another? The early history of magnetic recording, from about the 1890s to the late 1920s, was not a story of competition with the home phonograph. Instead, the champions of magnetic recording explored other ways to commercialize the new device, but in the end failed to discover any successful combination of technology, market, and manufacturing. This early history, explored in this chapter, finds the inventors and boosters of magnetic recording latching upon the technical features which distinguished it from the phonograph and searching for commercial applications in office dictation, telephone service, and radio broadcasting. In the end, it was an almost completely unsuccessful effort. Of the several and complex reasons for this failure, one of the easiest to appreciate relates to patents. Although magnetic recording did not infringe on phonograph patents, proprietary interests between promoters of phonographic and magnetic 33 recording came into play. In several cases, not only in the early history of magnetic recording but also in later years, magnetic recording was passed over partly because the industries desiring to use sound recording had vested interests in the phonograph. The broad patent rights granted to the inventor of magnetic recording also helped close the field to competition for many years. But because the patent holding interests seemed unable to produce a viable product, magnetic recording seemed less viable than other methods. Finally, the failure of magnetic recording to find a place in the market for sound recording equipment hinged on external factors, particularly the way other new technologies such as the telephone network and radio broadcasting developed during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth. The Invention of Magnetic Recording and its Contexts The technological world into which magnetic recording was born was undergoing rapid changes which, if addressed soon enough, might have resulted in spectacular success. But as it turned out, magnetic recording failed in the marketplace between its introduction after 1900 and the end of World War II. In part, magnetic recording's sputtering start was the product of the utter impotence of the American Telegraphone Company, the firm that held key patents on magnetic recording in the first two decades of this century. The early "telegraphone" recorder, as it was called, was a poor "fit" with one of its intended markets, telephone call recording, in part because the dominant American telephone operating company, AT&T, had by 1900 begun to define the telephone network in a way that almost precluded the telegraphone. And by the time later inventors tried to reintroduce telephone recorders, following the 34 failure of the American Telegraphone company, AT&T had become an insuperable obstacle. Magnetic recording was also present at the birth of the business dictating machine, but failed to participate in the institutionalization of dictation technology in America. Instead, magnetic recording languished commercially while phonograph-based systems of dictation took the entire market. While magnetic recording had unexpected intellectual links to the scientific management movement just as the phonograph dictation machine, no one seemed able to capitalize on those links. By contrast, the nascent technology of radio represented an unanticipated but also nearly unexploited market for magnetic recording devices. Although some of the telegraphone's earliest users were radio operators, radio represented a "moving target" which neither American Telegraphone nor later firms seemed able to hit. By the early 1920s, radio was becoming an entertainment medium rather than a business communications service, and the radio industry was soon to be dominated by a few large entertainment networks. As these networks grew, the possibilities for recording technologies like magnetic recording dwindled. Finally, there were unexplored commercial possibilities. Despite the obvious interest of scientific organizations in magnetic recording, neither American Telegraphone nor later promoters seemed to appreciate that there might be a market for the telegraphone as a scientific instrument. Similarly, while the analogies to the home phonograph were obvious by the 1910s, promoters of the telegraphone never seriously intended that it compete in this market. The now familiar use of tape recorders for home use has its roots in the 35 1930s, when American firms began to offer special phonographs for radio recording. Here would be magnetic recording's first real market, but through a combination of factors (not the least of which were restrictions on consumer purchasing imposed by the Great Depression and World War II) home recording did not bloom until after 1945. The early history of magnetic recording in America was thus a difficult period of adjustment and transition, and commercial success hinged on technical and social changes which did not occur until decades had passed. Oberlin Smith. Inventor Like so many important inventions, the early history of magnetic recording is both fraught with contention over priority and singularly lacking in surviving evidence. Barring the discovery of additional historical data, its invention will remain a source of considerable and imaginative speculation. Yet its immediate technical milieu is not nearly as problematical. The 1870s saw the development of both the telephone and the phonograph, two devices which embodied the growing awareness among the technically literate of the possibility on the one hand of recording sound mechanically, and on the other hand of translating sound waves into electrical waves (and vice versa). Certainly the influence of these two prior inventions were the chief points of departure for the first documented inventor of the magnetic recording technique, Oberlin Smith. This eminent mechanical engineer in 1878 visited Edison at his laboratory in New Jersey and some time later invented a process for magnetically, rather than mechanically recording sound. Smith disclosed his idea and probably built a model of his recorder, but only after ten years did he publish his thoughts (Figure 2.1).18 36 Smith's invention, while perhaps inspired by his observations of the mechanical phonograph, technically had more in common with the telephone. Edison, for example, provided Smith with the essential element of a telephone- style "transmitter" or microphone,19 an electrical device not used in the purely mechanical phonographic recording technique. The magnetic recorder described by Smith used a telephone "receiver" to reproduce sounds, rather than the mechanical "horn" reproducer of the phonograph. Finally, Smith's device as described in the pages of the prominent journal Electrical World did not rely on mechanical action to record sound. Instead of the wavy line embossed in tin foil as in the phonograph, Smith's recorder recorded invisibly onto an iron filing-impregnated string by passing the string near an electromagnet, energized by the varying current from the transmitter.2^ Magnetic Theory Smith suggested that a solid metal medium might also work, but he believed that adjacent regions on the medium representing undulations of the original signal might cancel each other out. While some of Smith's contemporaries and even several historians21 have stated that mid-19th century magnetic theory would have predicted that a solid metal medium would self-demagnetize and be useless for recording, in fact that textbooks of the era do not rule it out. 19th-century physics textbooks taught a "molecular" theory of ferromagnetism. An iron bar magnet, according to this theory, has north and south poles which are readily apparent when iron particles are sprinkled 3 7 Figure 2.1: Oberlin Smith's Recorder, (from a ms in William J. Hammer Collection, Archive, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.) Oberlin Smith's proposal for a magnetic recording system used a steel wire (E) a telephone transmitter (A) and a battery (F). 38 around the magnet. While the presence of strong poles suggests that half of the magnet is positive and half negative, these texts usually provided a simple test to prove that such is not the case. Bifurcated, every bar magnet produces two complete bar magnets, rather than positive and negative magnets. Scientific measuring instruments of the era, often little more than compasses, would not respond to the magnetic pull of very small samples, or small adjacent samples, but textbook writers assumed that each molecule of magnetic iron constituted a "perfect" magnetic with a north and south pole. Thus, a bar magnetic could be subdivided to the molecular state and each bit would constitute a bipolar magnet in itself. A second axiom held that any sample of unmagnetized iron was comprised of molecules of iron, each with a north and south magnetic pole just as in a bar magnet, but with molecules arranged randomly throughout the sample, so that the numerous tiny magnets appeared to cancel each out other's magnetic attraction, and the aggregate magnetic pattern was null. Rubbing unmagnetized iron with a strong magnet physically realigned the tiny molecular magnets, allowing the compass needle to detect the aggregate pattern. Such a molecular theory of ferromagnetism inherently allowed bits of iron with different magnetic arrangements of molecules to exists without actually canceling each other out, but the limitations of detecting instruments prevented these differences from being observed. 22 More importantly, 19th-century texts on magnetism were not particularly concerned with the problem of minute regions of local variation in bar magnets. Rather, they were oriented toward existing technologies- the compass, the telegraph, the dynamo, the electric motor, and later the telephone. Thus the magnetic recording of sound, while truly a technological leap, did not directly contradict the theory of magnetism. Rather, it addressed a part of it that scientists had not considered important enough to pursue. Magneto-Mechanical Recorders The real intellectual leap represented by magnetic recording was the recording and reproduction of sound, a mechanical phenomenon, as invisible regions of magnetic flux and their reproduction by a non-mechanical process. With no way to visualize such a recording process, even scientifically savvy observers found magnetic recording mysterious. The process of translation between electromagnetic and mechanical forms of energy may not have been fully appreciated by later inventors, who may have continued to rely on mechanical models as they conceived their recorders. One such inventor was Charles Sumner Tainter, an associate of Alexander Graham Bell who worked at Bell's Volta Laboratory in Washington, D.C.23 In the 1880s, while engaged in the development of what became Bell's greatly improved phonograph, Tainter re-discovered magnetic recording, even though his system also retained the phonographic principle of mechanically inscribing a soft recording medium with a stylus. One version of this technology used a steel tape coated with wax. Just as in an ordinary phonograph, a horn collected sounds and transmitted them to a sensitive diaphragm, which vibrated to drive a tiny cutting stylus. The stylus cut a "phonogram" through the wax using a side-to-side motion, exposing the metal underneath. The groove was then treated with "Dutch mordant," evidently an etchant used in engraving, to dissolve the steel under the groove. With the wax stripped off, the steel ribbon, now perforated down its length by a wavy line 40 was matched to a second iron strip, and the two run together through steel rollers under pressure. The iron would be forced up into the groove, and when the two strips separated the iron would retain a wavy ridge, the shape of which corresponded to the original sound record. The sound could then, in theory, be reproduced by passing the iron strip past a small magnet attached to a diaphragm (such as in a telephone receiver). As the ridge passed the magnet, the latter would vibrate due to the attraction between magnet and iron. That vibration recreated the original sound.24 Tainter varied the form of this invention-- drawing the wavy line on paper with a magnetic ink; engraving the line on a disk and filling the groove with iron filings?but the mechanical element remained.25 A host of inventors over the course of at least the next 50 years proposed these magneto-mechanical recording techniques, demonstrating the power of this particular cognitive model of recording. (Figure 2.2) However, this was not the direction that the most influential promoters of magnetic recording chose to take.26 The Commercialization of Magnetic Recording It is interesting that while the invention of magnetic recording took place during the height of commercial activity in the telegraph field, inventors linked their devices most commonly to the recording of sound rather than telegraph signals. There were plenty of different inventions to record telegraph signals, and telegraph recording provided an important source of income for electrical manufacturing firms. Further, the first commercially-manufactured magnetic recorder was marketed not simply as a general purpose sound recorder in the 4 1 April 10, 192a 1,665331 C THOMSON PR0DUCIX0 AMD RErROMJCWQ SOUND RECORDS rilad Oot. 29, 1924 3 Sbstts-Sbttt 1 Figure 2.2: Elihu Thomson's Magneto-Mechanical Sound Generator (United States Patent 1,665,331) An unusual application of the magneto-mechanical recorder concept invented by Elihu Thomson. This machine uses magnetized disks with radial cuts representing waveforms. 4 2 model of the phonograph, but instead was conceived as a telephone signal recorder-- a device to record telephone conversations. The link between the telephone and magnetic recording which began early also persisted late. But the actual use of magnetic recording in the American telephone network was hampered for many years by nagging technical problems and the resistance of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. American telephone service from the 1880s to the 1920s was characterized by the dominance of the Bell Telephone Company (later American Telephone and Telegraph) and its affiliates. While the share of the telephone business directly controlled by Bell actually declined from pure monopoly to perhaps 80% during this period, the total volume of AT&T's business grew much more rapidly, and the company expanded much faster than competitors. Since AT&T maintained tight control over the telephone business, it had the power to choose the technologies used in telephony. The choices the company made naturally tended to reinforce certain corporate goals; the interconnection of regional systems, the increase of long distance capability, and the automation of switching. By the 1920s, the company began to offer several high profit services to corporations, such as special high fidelity audio service, facsimile, and teletype service. AT&T's control over technologies was increased when the Bell Telephone laboratories emerged as the leading site of audio and video technology research, tending to dominate every related field, and also became the force to be reckoned with in the phonograph industry, and in radio, and motion pictures as well as telephony. The first commercial applications of magnetic recording appeared in this context. 4 3 The Telegraphone Valdemar Poulsen, born in Denmark in 1869 (d.1942), was classically educated but self-taught in electrical engineering.27 After serving an apprenticeship, he was hired in 1893 as an assistant to chief telephone engineer J. L. W. V. Jensen at the Copenhagen Telegraph company, a firm that was also involved in telephone work 23 Poulsen took up inventing, apparently in his spare time, and in 1898 he stumbled upon the magnetic recording of sound. (Figure 2.3) 29 While Poulsen had trouble convincing patent commissioners that his device would actually work, he eventually obtained basic patents on magnetic recording in Denmark, Germany, the United States, and several other countries. He called his device the telegraphone.30 Poulsen's invention operated along the same principles set out by Oberlin Smith a decade earlier. The most important difference was that Smith had brought the design of the magnetic recorder closer to a state of potential commercial practicality. The design of the machine as disclosed in patent literature indicated that Poulsen had given thought to the mechanical problems of moving a considerable amount of wire smoothly past a recording electromagnet. Within the next few years, he had designed other versions capable of handling even longer wires, and had devised a machine to use a thin steel tape. The telegraphone was not simply an improved phonograph. Its name is derived from Greek root words meaning writing or recording sound at a distance. Perhaps Poulsen gave that name to his device because he believed that its chief advantage over the phonograph was its ability to record telephone 44 Figure 2.3: Poulsen's Magnetic Recording Experiment Valdemar Poulson's early experiments with magnetic recording involved a wire stretched between to points and a hand-held electromagnet connected to a telephone and battery (not shown in this drawing) 4 5 messages.31 Many later inventors proposed to couple the phonograph and telephone simply by placing the telephone receiver in the horn of the conventional phonograph, or, later, using the incoming telephone signal to cause an electromagnetic engraving point to oscillate. The first approach was impractical, as the acoustical energy that emanated (as sound) from a telephone receiver was far too weak to operate the engraving stylus of a phonograph, at least the relatively insensitive phonographs available at the turn of the century. While the second scheme was theoretically more effective, inventors still faced the problem of devising an engraving stylus mechanism of great sensitivity and accuracy. The telegraphone could, however, use the telephone signal exactly as it came through the wires, recording as varying patterns of magnetization the subtle variations of current that represented electrical analogies of the original sound waves. 32 Telegraphone as Debutante: The Paris Exhibition of 1900 Immediately after gaining patent protection for the telegraphone, Poulsen began a series of spectacular public demonstrations. Foremost among these was the one conducted at the International Exposition at Paris in 1900. By this time, Poulsen and his assistant Peder O. Pedersen,33 had formed a company in Denmark, Aktieselskabet Telegrafonen, Patent Poulsen, to commercialize his invention, an effort which unfortunately generated little interest among European investors.34 Conversely, the publicity that the telegraphone received in America and on the continent during the next several years surely exceeded his expectations.3^ 46 The machines that Poulsen announced in 1899-1900 were of three types; a "drum" type wire recorder, a "reel" type wire recorder, and a steel tape recorder. (Figures 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6) While all three operated by the same principles, each differed in its mechanical design. A "hard"36 steel wire or tape was passed against the tips or "pole pieces" of a horseshoe-shaped iron armature, around which was wound a coil of fine wire (alternately, the magnet might be in two-pieces, with a coil of wire wound on each pole piece). The wire in the coils was connected to a telephone transmitter circuit, and the latter supplied a varying electric current when someone spoke into it. The varying current traveled through the wire coils, setting up a rapidly fluctuating magnetic field around the coils and through the armature. This fluctuation field tended to radiate out into space between the two pole pieces, thereby acting on the spot where the pole pieces touched the surface of the tape or wire. That spot would become magnetized, and the intensity and orientation of the magnetization varied according to the intensity and variation of the field. Since the wire or tape was always moving rapidly past the pole pieces, the spot was quickly moved away to allow a new spot to be magnetized. A continuous record of the rapidly fluctuating field emanating from the horseshoe electromagnet was thus produced.37 The machines demonstrated in Paris in 1900 and in the United States during the next two or three years differed mainly in the way they moved the recording medium past the armature/coil assembly, or "speaking magnet." With the "drum type" telegraphone, recording wire was wrapped in a tight spiral around a brass drum and as the drum rotated the speaking magnet moved parallel to the center line of the drum, tracking the wire medium. In some 47 6 6 1,619. METHOD OF RECORDING AND REPRODUCING ? SOUNDS OR SIGNALS. VALDKMAE POULSEN, Copenhagen, Denmark. Filed July 8. 1899. Serial No. 728,198. (No specimen*) Figure 2.4: Poulsen's Patented Drum Recorder Poulsen's first American patent showed a "drum" type telegraphone that was mounted vertically inside a casing or bell jar. The drawing depicts a hollow cylinder (D) wound with wire. The recording/reproducing electromagnet (F) tracks the wire as the cylinder rotates. (United States Patent 661,619) 48 Figure 2.5: Poulsen's "Horizontal" Drum Recorder, circa 1900. ["The Telegraphone," The Electrician 47 (26 April 1901): 5] The drum recorders that Poulsen demonstrated during and 1900 were apparently all of this design, with the drum mounted horizontally. Superficially, the drum recorder resembled an Edison cylinder phonograph. 4 9 Figure 2.6: Steel Tape Telegraphone, 1900 A second type of telegraphone used steel tape. Otherwise, the principles were the same. The tape machines had a long playing time, but the heavy metal tape made it difficult to start and stop the machine rapidly. 50 respects, this machine resembled a cylinder phonograph in the arrangement of the medium and its interface with the speaking magnet. In the later "spool type" machine, wire wound on a spool passed a stationary speaking magnet and was taken up on a second spool. Poulsen's steel tape recorders also used a two- reel transport device with a fixed speaking magnet. Thus, although Poulsen announced the recorder as a telephone recorder, the early machines reflected the fact that they were to be used with a telephone transmitter and receiver, and did not address the practical problems of connecting the device to an actual commercial telephone line. One special type of steel tape recorder was Poulsen's "telephone relay." Before the introduction of electronic amplification, many inventors tried to perfect a device to restore weak telephone signals, so that they could be transmitted over greater distances. In telegraphy, this type of device was called a relay. Poulsen's telephone relay recorded the signal on tape and then immediately reproduced it via several reproducing electromagnets. The signals from the reproducers were sent down the line and re-combined at the receiving end, theoretically resulting in a stronger signal. Figure 2.7 illustrates the principle of this ultimately unsuccessful design. The telegraphone won a Grand Prix at Paris (and it should be pointed out that hundreds of these top honors were awarded- American exhibitors alone took 200 of them38), but more importantly the device raised considerable excitement. One gauge of the level of interest is the list of scientific and technical periodicals in which detailed, enthusiastic reviews of the telegraphone appeared, a list which included all the most important publications of the era, including Scientific American. Nature. Electricien. Revue Generale des Sciences. Elektrotechnik Zeitschrift. the Annual Report of the Smithsonian 5 1 Figure 2.7: Telephone Relay or Repeater Poulsen's Proposed telephone relay (sometimes referred to as a "repeater") was in modern terminology an amplifier based on magnetic recording. A source signal recorded by the "impressing" electromagnet (1) onto a loop of tape (A) is reproduced by "transferring" electromagnets (2-7). The signal is carried to a set of repeating tape loops (B-G) where the signal is re-recorded. Then, a third set of electromagnets called the "repeating series" picks up the recorded signal from all of the loops at once, adding the signals together to achieve amplification. The system obvious required perfect adjustment of the transferring series because of the delay introduced there. [The Electrician 46 (30 November 1900): 210.] 5 2 Institution. Electrical Engineer. The Journal of the Franklin Institute. Western Electrician. Annelen Per Physik. and others.39 Reviewers who visited the telegraphone exhibit were also uniformly enthusiastic. One noted that Despite the very disadvantageous conditions under which the apparatus is placed at the Exposition (in the Gallery of Machines, in the midst of noises of every nature), the telegraphone operates very well as a phonograph when the electric motor runs regularly. The noted British scientist, Sir William Preece, fairly gushed that The most beautiful thing and greatest novelty. . . was the microphonograph [sic] of Mr. Poulsen. ... it was one of those things that was going to open the eyes of all our physicists and scientists and theoretical men on the question of the molecular character of all magnetic and electric operations. This continual exchange of energy through electrical connections, through diaphragms and steel and circuits performed by this beautiful instrument of Mr. Poulsen's was marvelous.4^ Another famous English theoretician, Oliver Heaviside, remarked that "one could only wonder what next?"41, while the Literary Digest Advertiser claimed that "the more familiar you become with the telegraphone the more mystifying its performance will be to you. You can hardly believe what your senses attest, it seems so like witchcraft."42 Visitors to the 1900 Paris Exhibition, speaking into the machine's microphone "in a loud voice," could expect to hear how their "phrases and airs do not exhibit the nasal and disagreeable character of the sounds emitted by the ordinary phonograph."43 Herbert Fyfe of the British Post Office said that "the articulation of the telegraphone is almost perfect and a vast improvement over that of the phonograph. The voice is reproduced quite clearly and free from disturbing noises."44 Oberlin Smith visited the Paris 5 3 Exhibition, but surprisingly did not mention the telegraphone in his later recollections of the event.45 A Scientific Evaluation: William J. Hammer Besides published reviews, one extraordinary source of contemporary information about the early telegraphones exists in the form of a report written for the American Institute of Electrical Engineers by William Joseph Hammer (1858-1934). Born in Pennsylvania, Hammer worked with Thomas Edison in the development of the incandescent light. During the 1880s he acted as an engineer for several of the Edison lighting companies in the United States and abroad, including the English Edison Company and Deutsch Edison Gesselschaft (later AEG). By 1890, Hammer had set himself up as an independent consultant in New York, and it was in this occupation that he presumably undertook his evaluation of Poulsen's recorder.^ Hammer's report is of special significance, because it is perhaps the only extended analysis of the device conducted by a presumably disinterested critic and outside of the context of the various firms with a stake in the machine's success or failure. The degree to which Hammer was still loyal to Edison or Edison's commercial ventures is not clear, although his interest in the business applications of the telegraphone rather than simply its scientific value may be some indication. His investigation focused not only on the performance of the telegraphone under laboratory conditions, but also on the commercial possibilities of the device. More specifically, he took a very long, close look at the claims for and against the telegraphone as a telephone answering machine, a replacement for the phonograph, and a dictating machine. 54 Hammer's evaluation was not entirely free of the possibility of external manipulation, because the demonstrations of the machines were set up and adjusted by Peder Pedersen. But beyond some initial fiddling and instruction in the operation of the machines, Hammer seems to have had freedom to do as he pleased with the recorders. Pedersen brought five machines; an example of the original, wire-wound drum recorder, three wire-type telegraphones having nominal recording times of 7 1/2, 15, and 30 minutes, and Poulsen's "telephone relay" tape recorder.47 Dispensing with the experimental drum machine summarily, Hammer devoted most of his report to a description of the mechanical portion of the various wire recorders. He was careful to run the machines through all of their operations, noting for example that if the lever arm controlling the "stop" and "reverse" functions of the motors was moved too far in one direction, the motor brakes would be "thrown off without the motion of the drums [wire spools] being stopped," creating a snarl in the wire.48 "Some other brake mechanism," he wrote, "will have to be devised in order to make the machines practical."49 Frustrated with the discrepancies between the rated recording times of the various machines and their actual maximum times, Hammer tried to slow the speed of the motors by running them in series with load resistors (incidentally, these were in the form of incandescent lamps, the filaments of which offered resistance to current and dissipated it as heat and light). With a very high resistance in series, a record of about 10 minutes could be attained on the "15 minute" machine. Unfortunately, he noted, with each downward decrement in recording speed came a corresponding decrease in the loudness of the record, so that while a 10 minute recording was possible, it was almost too faint to be 55 heard upon playback. He reminded the reader that if dictation were the goal this would pose problems, for "typewriters prefer that there be considerable volume, since the noise of the typewriter [machine] itself interferes. "50 All this business of maximum recording time was important. The machines brought from Denmark had been designed with spools that held a certain volume of wire and no more. A longer recording time could be had only by slowing the machines down or employing a finer wire, but a wire resulted in a iower playback loudness.51 it is conceivable that the Danes substituted a larger diameter wire for the demonstration in order to improve the performance of the machine. But the total weight of the wire, spools, and other rotating parts had to be carefully calculated in order to design effective spool brakes. Poulsen faced the difficult design problem of rapidly stopping two spinning spools which exchanged part of their masses during the course of recording, as wire passed from one spool to the other. Too much braking on one spool might snap a wire, while too little would, as Hammer discovered, cause a disastrous snarl. Thus brakes and other parts were designed with a particular range of mass in mind. The telegraphone could not simply be given larger spools of wire, even if those spools would have physically fit on the machine, because such a change would have required redesigning or at least readjusting the wire transport mechanism. Such was the fate of any magnetic recorder utilizing a heavy recording medium. In assessing the telegraphone as a competitor to the phonograph for entertainment purposes, Hammer was no less astute an observer. He was perhaps the first engineer, but certainly not the last, to assert the belief that there exist two cardinal requirements which a magnetic recorder must meet in order to attain commercial success. The first was the necessity of bringing popular 56 recordings to the market as a complement to the recorder, while the second is more vaguely defined as the quality of being simple to operate. The twin prophesies of "software" and simplicity have proven remarkably accurate, not only in regards to magnetic recording but also in technologies like the radio, the videocassette recorder, and the computer. Hammer and his like minded successors, however, may have helped define a technology just at the moment of its greatest plasticity rather than pronouncing a self-evident truth.52 Hammer doubted, perhaps justly, that the telegraphone in its present form could compete directly with the phonograph as an entertainment device, if only because it required that a telephone receiver be held to the ear to be heard. Recent inventions.." he wrote,".. . have been made in loudspeaking receivers, and in connection with the development of the telegraphone this seems to be a desirable line of investigation."53 As long as this limitation persisted, a group of people could not listen to the telegraphone without additional equipment. On the other hand, Hammer could not avoid the obvious conclusion, although he had no facilities to test his assumption, that the telegraphone would record music and replay it with a more pleasing sound than the rasping phonograph. Nor did the records deteriorate with use as they did with the phonograph. Still, because of the general complexity and delicateness of the machines and the difficulty of inserting and removing spools of wire inherent in the prototype designs, Hammer claimed that a substantial redesign of the telegraphone would be required. Interestingly, he did not mention how the longer recording time possible with a telegraphone made it superior to the standard phonograph for certain special applications such as making 57 uninterrupted recordings of the long movements in classical music. Perhaps it is true, then, that Hammer had a very narrow vision of what a competitor to the phonograph had to be, or perhaps he hoped to downplay feature that made the telegraphone superior to his old boss' invention. On the other hand, Hammer noted that as a dictation machine, "the length of record possible with the telegraphones, becomes an important advantage."54 He believed, however, that a successful dictation machine must, like the phonograph, be equipped with pedal operated, rapid start, stop, and rewind mechanisms. The heavy rotating mass of the telegraphone's reels of wire now presented considerable problems, but it is important to note that Hammer was making the assumption that typists would routinely need to repeat sections of a recording. Such was the case with the phonograph in part because of its lack of intelligibility, whereas even Hammer admitted that the reproduction of the telegraphone was "exceedingly satisfactory." He noted also that the machine would require even in an improved form at least fifteen minutes to rewind the four and one-half miles of wire used in a thirty minute recording session. This Hammer cited as a very grave disadvantage, though he did not wonder whether much shorter lengths of wire might be suitable for most business letters.55 The last and most interesting part of Hammer's evaluation of the telegraphone as dictation machine was a trial by "an experienced graphophone operator," Miss M. F. Haslehurst. Haslehurst at first noted that the volume of the recording was lower than what she was used to, but was able to keep up with the machine. After only a few lines, however, she fell behind. The cylinder machine was an improvement, she thought, because it had better starting, 58 stopping and reversing action. Although this test seemed to justify Hammer's doubts, he nonetheless concluded that with some modification the telegraphone could be used for office dictation.56 American Telegraphone: Shaping Invention for Business Use The praise heaped on the telegraphone by the press helped Poulsen attract investors in the United States, but the subsequent history of the American Telegraphone Company was an almost unqualified failure. A recent article in the journal Technology and Culture by Mark H. Clark details the unfortunate history of the effort to commercialize this device. Representatives of the Danish telegraphone company traveled to America in an attempt to attract investors in 1901 and 1902, to little avail.57 When the firm attracted the attention of the American Bell Company as a potential investor, success seemed near, but the deal fell apart when Bell suddenly withdrew.56 Finally by 1903 one of the Americans involved in the original venture capital negotiations succeeded in attracting a new group of investors and formed a new American Telegraphone Company in the District of Columbia, uncapitalized as yet, but in possession of the American rights to Poulsen's invention. The firm organized a $5,000,000 stock offering,59 but gave almost all the shares, which had a ten dollar par value, to the Danish company in payment for the patent rights. For the next two years the company remained inactive until a new investor, a lawyer named Charles Fankhauser, purchased 325,000 shares from the Danish firm for $1.67 each 60 Fankhauser began to take an active role in the firm and selected a site in Wheeling, West Virginia as the site for a telegraphone manufacturing facility. Fankhauser brought in a new 59 board of directors, including two local businessmen; Harry S. Sands, owner of an electrical manufacturing company, and C. B. Hart, a banker.61 Fankhauser also sold a block of stock to a New York brokerage house, the Sterling Debenture company, late in 1905. The latter began a publicity campaign, marketing small blocks of shares in American Telegraphone and generally seeking to attract attention to the device.62 Besides generating a prodigious amount of promotional literature, some of which survives in various archives, Sterling Debenture (along with ATC and H.P. O'Reilly and Company, ATC's west-coast distributor) successfully exploited the interest of newspapers and the scientific press to create a second wave of favorable press for the telegraphone itself. An analysis of this campaign suggests how American Telegraphone conceived the invention and its place in American Business. Telegraphone Publicity. 1903-1910 The second and last drive by American Telegraphone to attract new stockholders reflected the changing presumptions of inventor and promoters, and the changing environment in which the telegraphone struggled. Among the changed factors were the increased use of the telephone, the growing power of AT&T in telephone service for most urban areas, and the spreading use of the phonograph in business and entertainment. The years after the turn of the century were a time of expansion for, AT&T, first as it extended its long distance capability and connected the various local operating companies especially in the east and midwest, and later as it began to exercise direct control over those companies. The latter had the important effect of allowing AT&T to standardize the equipment used in its network. "Ma Bell's" corporate policies, most 60 obviously the exclusion of "foreign" equipment made by manufacturers other than Western Electric, relegated telephone recorders to the increasingly marginal markets represented by independent telephone companies and private lines. Nonetheless, American Telegraphone and others plowed ahead with the idea of using magnetic recorders in telephone recording and business dictation. While in the case of dictation, telegraphone publicity evolved to reflect the success of the phonograph, but advertising copy about telephone recording did not reflect any particular appreciation for the real business or technical contexts in which the telegraphone existed. However, the numerous promotional pamphlets and advertisements produced by Sterling Debenture, HP. O'Reilly and Company, and American Telegraphone bear witness to the level aim American Telegraphone's designs took toward these two potential markets. ATC's promoters after about 1904 sometimes opposed telegraphone dictation to the two phonographic products already on the market, the Dictaphone and Ediphone63, or sometimes compared it to shorthand dictation, but always made claims of greater efficiency. HP. O'Reilly and Company maintained, for example, that "the telegraphone will save 50% of the stenographer's time." 64 Sterling Debenture stated that "it is valuable in the offices of newspapers, bankers, brokers, manufacturers, merchants, contractors, attorneys, etc."65 As a dictating machine, the telegraphone was touted as a work saver and an improvement over the phonograph. Because individual words could easily be replaced on a wire by simply recording over them, typists would not face the "bewildering" problem associated with the phonograph, that of making sense of 6 1 a crudely corrected dictation. Small errors on phonograph dictation cylinders could be corrected only by recording over an already-recorded portion of the cylinder. The result was often unintelligible. Further, the telegraphone was intended to be shared by a number of users, whereas "dictators" and typists had individual machines in the phonographic systems. Telegraphone promoters promised a cost savings because a central telegraphone could serve both dictators and typists. Typists would not bother executives by entering their offices to retrieve records, and the possibility of breaking the record in transit would disappear. No later than 1907, then, ATC's promoters were self- delimiting the product within the context of the Dictaphone and Ediphone.66 Promoters of the telegraphone as answering machine seemed oblivious to the changing context of the American telephone network. Rather than claiming economy or efficiency, promotional literature simply made the claim that the telegraphone could easily record both sides of a conversation or record in the subscriber's absence. Advertisements touted the advantages of telephone recording in non-pecuniary terms. Less clear was the way the answering machine could benefit the individual. Who would need such a device? Would it replace a receptionist? These questions were not in evidence, only the value of being able to make records. While the telegraphone's promoters invented a universe in which the telegraphone might exist, the reality of business, office machines, and the way those machines were used was changing in important ways. The history of the use of office dictation machines, and office machinery in general, helps shed light on the history of the telegraphone. 62 Dictating Machines and Machines Dictating The phonograph in 1900 was still widely perceived as a "little more than a scientific toy,"67 although its reshaping into a tool of dictation was rapid and successful. Thus , the phonograph is important in this story not only because of its early competition with magnetic recording in the field of dictation, but also because of this reshaping process. Between about 1900 and 1920, the business phonograph established a strong presence in the marketplace, permanently changing the environment in which the telegraphone competed. At the same time, the telegraphone languished and thus played little part in the defining of dictation technology. The firm that became the Dictaphone Corporation in 1923 was originally an offshoot of the Columbia Graphophone Company.68 While Columbia was a corporation of the District of Columbia, its manufacturing facility was set up by Charles Sumner Tainter in space rented from the Howe Sewing Machine company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Founded as a business machine company, entertainment phonographs quickly overshadowed the dictating machine market. Nonetheless, early customers like the federal government, Sears, Roebuck and Westinghouse helped sustain the company in its early years. The brand name Dictaphone was used after 1906 after the appearance of the improved Edison business phonograph.69 While Dictaphone Corporation's first president, Charles King Woodbridge, alluded to continuous improvement in the basic design after 1923, an "all new" model introduced in 1939 still retained the cylinder recording blank and the principle of acoustic recording, although a model utilizing electrical recording was also introduced that year. The most popular Dictaphone 63 recorders into the 1940s continued to be the inexpensive wax cylinder machines, even though messages recorded on them were by all accounts barely intelligible. The low quality of the recording was one reason why Dictaphones and Ediphones incorporated special mechanisms, like the Ediphone's "transophone," to easily repeat sections of the record. Users quickly discovered that certain sounds were almost always unintelligible, making the transophone a highly desirable feature.70 After about 1910, Dictaphone and Ediphone became part of a streamlined dictation system. Records made on a desktop recorder were taken to the typist's desk for replay on a separate machine with special operating pedals, and a key to actuate the "transophone" mounted right near the typewriter keyboard. After transcription, cylinders went to a third station where the engraved surface of the wax was shaved off, revealing fresh wax for a new record.71 Machine dictation in its mature commercial form, with the work of dictating, transcribing, and shaving divided, got a resounding endorsement from the scientific management movement after World War I.72 in its original guise, articulated by boosters such as Frederick W. Taylor, scientific management applied mainly to factory production. In office management, Taylor's counterpart was one William Henry Leffingwell. Born in Ontario in 1876, Leffingwell attended only two years of high school. He formed a consulting company in Chicago in 1918, billing himself as a "management engineer." Primarily a consultant and author, he also had a patent to his credit for a "posture chair for clerks."73 Leffingwell's major books on the subject of office management, published over the first two decades of the twentieth century, constituted an 64 exhaustive corpus of knowledge of clerical methods and the corresponding technology of the business office. His writings are shot through with the rhetoric of efficiency, though the "science" in his work is somewhat difficult to detect. Rarely did he for example back up his prescriptions with proof of their efficacy. Although in some cases he outlined techniques for collecting quantitative data, such as time and motion studies, he did not present detailed suggestions for, in the terminology of science, reproducing his results in other office "laboratories." LeffingwelPs vagueness owed to the fact that he treated every particular office situation as unique. Thus disciples of scientific office management were left with only a general methodology and vocabulary, and not a list of proven techniques. The particularistic nature of Leffingwell's case studies is evident from even a brisk thumbing of his books. The Automatic Letterwriter. for instance, in no less than 300 pages laid out hundreds of ways to devise form letters, but admitted that it could not be "contended that the form paragraphs or their classification as they stand could be applied to any or all businesses."74 His best-known work, Scientific Office Management of 1917 extended the reach of scientific management to the technologies of office ventilation and lighting, the hardware of shipping departments, typing, advertising offices, and filing and records. In the main, Scientific Office Management dealt more with motion studies and organization than with technology itself, but by 1926 Leffingwell devoted over 800 tightly set pages to office machines in Office Appliance Manual. This compendium in text and halftone surely included every office fixture and machine well-known or obscure, available to American businesses. But its very scope and breadth muddled its prescriptions, for if every type of 65 office appliance was as good as every other, how would an office manager make the right purchase? The manufacturers of office equipment portrayed in Leffingwell's books clearly had many different notions about efficiency. Simple technologies like filing systems, for example, came in many different varieties, each requiring a different system of office organization and information storage. But if there was little agreement over what constituted efficiency, either from these manufacturers or from Leffingwell himself, it is clear that the gospel of scientific office management movement was spreading. The pages of Office Appliance Manual literally portrayed the positive response of American office machine manufacturers to the call for a more efficient technological system. Leffingwell's vague admonition to get organized, to keep detailed records, and to increase the efficiency of all office workers had implications even for the ongoing attempts to stimulate demand for the telegraphone. Part of the notion of efficiency was centralization, and by the 1920s advocates of scientific management were pushing for centralized stenographic departments. One journal, tellingly entitled "System." rhetorically asked, "Shall I have a central typing department," to which came the reply '"Yes," from a "management expert, who describes savings that have resulted from this plan."75 The multiple-user, centrally located telegraphone that ATC developed between 1910 and 1915 could be seen either as a response to scientific management texts, or just a happy coincidence. While many of the features of the later telegraphones were oriented toward business dictation in a way that seemed savvy to the rhetoric of scientific management, other features were dictated by factors such as the limitations of the technology itself. H. P. O'Reilly 66 and Company, the San Francisco based telegraphone distributor, in 1914 published "a word about mechanical dictation" in The Shorthand Writer (subtitled, ironically, "a magazine for ambitious stenographers"). The advertisement prematurely eulogized phonographic dictating machines, saying "our own Edison probably has rendered no greater service to mankind than in the perfection of the phonograph whose use in big business as a machine for mechanical dictation is well nigh universal." By contrast, he stressed, the telegraphone "is a perfect stenographer always available, night or day, holidays or Sundays, subject to the pressure of a button and capable of taking and reproducing without an error the dictation of the most rapid speaker. Requires no vacation. Records every spoken language.. . It is superior to all other dictating machines. It does everything they can do, It does things no other machine can do." And indeed it could. By this time, ATC had adapted the basic recording technology for use in conjunction with a special telephone set, which had buttons for stopping and starting the recorder and an indicator to show how much time had been spent in recording. This "extension set" was wired via seven pairs of wires to the telegraphone. The telegraphone thus apparently could not be added to an existing office telephone network, nor could it be operated through an standard office switchboard. The extension set could, however, be electrically connected to a standard telephone, allowing a telephone conversation to be recorded. The expense of installing the network therefore was considerable, and once in place it somewhat fixed the location of dictating machines.76 The telegraphone could match, in theory, all the advantages of the phonographic systems and then some. It allowed the centralization of 67 stenography and typing and allowed all the machines to be put in the same room. Its often lauded sound quality obviated the need for the "transophone." Its recording medium was infinitely reusable, requiring no special shaving, separate machine, or other treatment before re-use. Further, its special adaptivity to the telephone made it possible (although there is no evidence that it was ever put into practice) for the executive to dictate away from the office, from home or perhaps from a public telephone, if not yet from out-of-town. Before the advent of the electronic amplifier, which made the phonograph- based telephone recorder practical, this represented a substantial potential advantage. American Telegraphone, however, was not fated to test whether American businessman and efficiency experts would accept this new approach to dictating technology. At the Wheeling factory, work began on a version of Poulsen's later disk-type telegraphone rather than the wire type, because Sands believed that the disk machine would be much easier to make. The disk machine, recording on a solid steel disk and looking much like a graphophone was intended to allow business messages to be sent easily through the mail.77 But as historian Mark Clark posits, at about this time a combination of factors contributed to the subsequent failure of the firm to start up disk recorder manufacture, including financial crises, poor management, and the inferiority of the disk recorder as compared to the wire recorder.78 As rifts developed among the investors over the obvious failure of the disk machine, stockholder Charles Fankhauser organized a takeover in 1908, bringing in new officers along with new capital. While the company geared up to produce the seemingly-superior wire-type recorder, still orders were not filled 68 until 1912. In the mean time, the new director had moved production to Springfield, Massachusetts and set up the Telegraphone Sales Company, with sales offices in Washington, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York.79 The new facility, occupying 75,000 square feet in a building on Harrison Avenue, announced in 1910 that "the machines are about to go on the market in large quantities."80 By 1918, the company was still struggling to produce telegraphones in quantity, although there is strong evidence that demand for the machines ran high. But, strapped for cash, the board in that year voted to liquidate the company. As the director, Charles Rood, searched for a buyer, a number of the major shareholders filed suit against the firm. Between 1918 and 1944, when the corporation in receivership was finally dissolved, no telegraphones were produced.81 Would the telegraphone have succeeded as a dictation system had American Telegraphone been in a position to produce it? The single documented example of extended commercial use of the device as a dictating machine suggests that it could have. Even in 1912, Charles Rood's failure to start manufacture was beginning to draw serious criticism from the other major stockholders. When the stockholder suit came, the attorney for the plaintiffs charged that Rood had a secret affiliation with AT&T and had sought to ruin the company. In 1912, the suit charged, production had awaited only the purchase of a single, crucial machine tool in the form of an ordinary lathe. Rood was apparently unable or unwilling to buy the new lathe for the factory. Charles McCrillis, an acquaintance of Charles Fankhauser, had by this time become the head of the telegraphone sales division. With his own money, he purchased the new lathe and succeeded in turning out 50 or so new telegraphones. At 69 about the same time, in late 1912 or early 1913, the DuPont company ordered and was supplied with 20 telegraphones.82 The DuPont installation involved ten dictating machines and ten transcribing machines installed in a centralized telegraphone room. while the machines have been efficient from the moment with they were put to work, having saved the salaries of six stenographers during the greater portion of that time, and at the present time a greater amount of work is being done than 18 girls were doing previous to this installation, said work being done at this time by 12 girls. This has been brought about by a central stenographers' room, and the dictating station being anywhere desired in the building.83 The telegraphone installation apparently pleased DuPont management, although the machines needed considerable maintenance. Harry E. Chipman, a former employee at the telegraphone factory, resigned his job at American Telegraphone in 1916 in disgust and accepted a position at DuPont in charge of the telegraphone installation there. By 1917, however, the machines were worn out and needed replacement. Dupont officials, "thinking that the factory was under genuine management at the hands of Mr. Rood," returned the machines for replacement, ordering new recorders and a new switchboard. The second installation was much less satisfactory, in part because of delays in supplying the telegraphones and in part because some of the new equipment, particularly the switchboard, was defective. In 1919 the company decided to scrap the entire idea. The Dupont experiments nonetheless suggest that a centralized system of dictation based on magnetic recording worked. Already by 1920, as American Telegraphone foundered and Poulsen's early patents began to expire, phonographic dictating machines offered by the Thomas A. Edison and Dictaphone corporations thoroughly dominated the market. Their products incrementally improved in quality and dropped in cost. 70 While there were many experimental magnetic recorders built after 1920, no other American manufacture offered dictation equipment utilizing magnetic recording until the 1940s. Judging from the dearth of patents in this field in the 1930s, it may be that the dominance of the phonographic dictation machine made the creation of a magnetic version an uninteresting problem for American inventors. Still, it was not the case that phonograph-based machines were satisfactory to all users. As one letter writer to Electronics magazine wrote in 1932, electronics has been rather frank in pointing out the deficiencies in existing apparatus and suggesting its improvements. . . .I would like to suggest a line of development badly needed by modern business and which could be accomplished by the use of electronic devices.. In any business where technical terms are used it is essential that dictation be very plain in order that the typist be able to transcribe correctly. The existing dictating machines are so very poor as to necessitate much guess work... Recording and reproducing means of high quality are available in the electronic art and should be applied to the construction of a high quality dictating machine.84 If the poor quality of the existing technology did not act as a spur, neither did the growing market, which expanded even during the Depression. But the telegraphone's chief advantage, centralization, may also not have been so important in light of other factors. Unfortunately only anecdotal evidence is available to indicate the real markets for dictating equipment. Margery Davies' study of scientific management in the office, perhaps the best secondary work on the subject, examines the history of women stenographers, particularly as their work was affected by the typewriter.85 Davies is much less concerned with other office technologies such as dictation equipment, though her findings have particular relevance to the history of magnetic recording. She finds, for instance, that the number of 7 1 stenographers continued to rise after the introduction of the dictating machine, indicating that scientific management was unable to persuade all businessmen to adopt machine dictation. This reveals the fatal flaw of centralized dictation and perhaps dictation technology in general, at least as it was envisioned in the early years: it could not easily be imposed "upward." Just what constitutes this upward imposition can be explained if scientific management can be temporarily reduced to a discussion of politics and power. The Hollywood film Double Indemnity is set in the 1930s and stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman. He meets femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck who tricks him into killing her estranged husband for his life insurance policy. Guilt-ridden after committing the crime, he confesses by narrating the events leading up to the murder into a Dictaphone. A secondary aspect of the unusual and central role played by dictating technology in this film is the way the machine betrays the hierarchy of corporate power as expressed in office technology. MacMurray, a salesman, maintains a desk on the lower floor bullpen of the agency with all the other agents. He visits his boss' office (which stands above and overlooking the bullpen) in order to gain access to the Dictaphone.86 Indeed, dictation technology in many cases was an executive privilege, but it is worth speculating as to whether executives could be forced to adopt a technology they did not particularly want. It is one thing to insist that women secretaries, who were low on the corporate hierarchy, learn to adopt the typewriter. It must have been quite another thing for an office manager to insist that a vice president use his Dictaphone. Leffingwell himself stated that "with all these advantages [of the Dictaphone] so well known, it is somewhat difficult to 72 understand why so many installations of dictating machines are failures." He concluded that resistance to it was purely "psychological,", "the strangeness of the machine at first affects his [the dictator's] flow of thought; he feels as though he were standing up against a blank wall and talking to himself. . . but this feeling soon wears off with practice."87 Much evidence suggests that the most successful use of highly- organized and centralized dictation departments was in organizations with large numbers of lower-status, clerk level employees who happened to write numerous letters. Certain government agencies for example were major customers for the equipment. The Welfare department of the City of New York, a rapidly expanding bureau in the Depression, by 1937 owned 537 Ediphone and 321 Dictaphone dictators and transcribers.88 The comptroller of Bridgeport, Connecticut endorsed the use of Dictaphone Corporation equipment for municipal service in 1939,89 and similar letters were published which originated from the Cleveland, Ohio Humane Society, the Family Service Society of Canton, Ohio, the St. Louis, Missouri Provident Association, the Department of Finance and Taxation of Chattanooga, and the Horace Mann School in New York.90 Centralization based on telephonic transmission was never popular, but promoters continued to install centralized installations into the 1950s, at least. These installations, based on telephone recorders manufactured by the Thomas A. Edison Company and later Dictaphone Corporation, apparently followed the model of installation in particular kinds of organizations, notably insurance firms, and used physically distinct interconnection wires.91 73 The magnetic recorder as a business machine did not catch on until after World War II, when manufacturers began offering tape (or wire) recorders with features no phonographic recorder could match, particularly easy portability. Although dictation is more rarely done in the modern office, tape recorders have completely displaced the phonograph during the last thirty years.92 The Magnetic Recorder as Answering Machine The telegraphone of 1910-1920 was hardly the telephone recorder most suitable for installation in the homes of individuals, in the fashion of today's "answering machines." Besides the high cost of owning a telegraphone, $250- 300, the need for a personal answering machine may not have been apparent at the turn of the century. Inventor Emile Berliner himself discovered magnetic recording in 1879 but found it "not promising." He felt strongly enough about the notion of telephone recorders to declare in the pages of Electrical World that "there is practically no demand for a recording attachment to telephones, and, if one was needed, the method of engraving into wax is the simplest and occupies the least space for a given length of a sound record." 93 Still, some felt that "nothing is more annoying to find, after you have succeeded in 'getting through' to the person to whom you wish to speak, that the individual in question is 'not at home, or 'busy.'"94 Indeed, there was probably some market for telephone answering machines in the early 20th-century as home adjuncts to business. Many of Bell Telephone Company's customers from the founding of the company into the first decades of the 20th-century were businesses. Often businessmen had been the first in an area to have a telephone line installed in their homes, in order to keep in touch with the plant. AT&T's profitable Long Lines Department was built 74 around the business uses for long distance calling, with personal calls constituting an important but secondary concern American Telegraphone aggressively marketed a version of Poulsen's automatic telephone recorder, but met with little success. The ATC telephone recorder functioned much like today's answering machines. The 20-hertz "ring signal" from the telephone central switching office (used to ring the bell at a subscriber's location) activated electromagnetic solenoids, which switched on the electric power to the telegraphone's motors. The telegraphone produced "a little tinkling signal of its own, letting the caller know that recording was taking place.95 The machine did not "beep" to tell the caller when to begin speaking, but instead recorded from the moment the machine's motors started. A "ring off" signal from the central office acted to cut the machine off. But the telegraphone's recording capability generated something very unlike the practice associated with the modern answering machine.96 Publicity stunts perpetrated by American Telegraphone, Sterling Debenture, or perhaps H.P. O'Reilly and Company garnered widespread attention to the possibilities of a different kind of telephone recording. H. P. O'Reilly, trying to recreate the success at Paris, went to special efforts to engage the public at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Its publicity dubbed the telegraphone, the "telephone with a memory," as the "eighth wonder of the world," Fifteen million telephones, the advertisements claimed, "await the telegraphone."97 The attention the device garnered did not bring fame quite in the way American Telegraphone expected. Instead of picking up the idea of a telephone answering machine, sensation-seeking reporters told instead of telegraphone users who tricked the dishonest into recording damning 75 evidence. American Telegraphone publicizers seized upon the implications of such practices. The idea of using a telephone recorder to ensure "accuracy" did not originate with the telegraphone, but as one promotional piece made clear, the hypothetical value of telephone recording was not only important but (from the standpoint of the spectator) possibly even entertaining. Said Mr. Brown to Mr. Jones: "I never in my life agreed to do anything of the sort!" "and I say that you did!" Mr. Jones replied flatly. "And I say again that I did not!" Just here Mr. Brown brought his fist down with a slam that made things rattle on Mr. Jones's desk. He faced him with a glare of defiance and perhaps a little cunning. "Then I must repeat that you did!" Mr. Jones pursued smoothly. "Last Thursday morning, when we discussed the affair over the telephone, you agreed to do precisely that and nothing else. My plans have been made accordingly, and the fact that you have changed your mind doesn't alter matters a particle." "Jones!" thundered Mr. Brown, "I defy you to prove--" "Hold on!" There was something odd about Mr. Jones's voice. Mr. Brown started a little and stared more. From the queer machine on the desk across the room, the cover was removed, to reveal an instrument of most unusual appearance. Mr. Jones stepped to his own desk and extracted from a drawer a big spool of fine, shiny wire. He hurried back and slipped it into the machine; he pressed the button and the spool began to spin rapidly; he picked up a pair of telephone receivers and listened for a minute. After which, he smiled slightly and said: "If you'll just come over here and listen for a minute-?. .. 98 Machines that were apparently provided to celebrities for the purposes of obtaining testimonials ended up being the basis of just this kind of publicity in the newspapers. The New York Evening Journal in the late summer of 1907 reported how "Miss Robson Laughs at the Bunco Trader." The "bunco trader" was a dishonest grocer who substituted higher priced goods in an order placed by telephone. "Miss Robson" was Eleanor Robson, an actress who secretly had 7 6 recorded her order on the telegraphone and then played it back to the flabbergasted shopkeeper, who promptly apologized.99 1912 saw reports that the famous private detective William J. Burns had helped convict criminals by (illegally) recording their telephone conversations on the telegraphone. "Romance and commercial interest are combined in the plans of the American Telegraphone Company," maintained the Springfield Daily Republican. Burns was given a recorder for use in his personal office, and subsequently used it to gather evidence on the "Rosenthal case," a highly publicized murder in New York City.100 Nonetheless, the technological and regulatory development of the AT&T network in the early 20th-century mitigated against telephone answering machines. In the first place, AT&T proper (as distinguished from the subsidiary local operating companies and Western Electric, the manufacturing branch) was primarily a long distance company. AT&T made it a goal to expand long distance service through interconnection of local systems and improvement of long distance lines. Much long distance calling was severely affected by signal attenuation until well after World War II,101 often required shouting into the telephone for adequate intelligibility. In between the high signal levels of local calls and the low signal levels of long distance calls lay a whole spectrum of possibilities with which any telephone recorder had to cope successfully. Until a telephone recorder could be devised that compensated for these variations in signal intensity, call recording would be limited to local service only or other circuits where adequate signal strength was assured. American Telegraphone expired before the company addressed the problems of signal attenuation. Similarly, numerous other inventors devised 77 automatic telephone recorders (most using the phonograph process) between 1910 and 1940, but none recognized or attempted to compensate for this problem. Two Germans, for example, patented automatic telephone recorders in 1914 and 1915. While one machine was based on a phonograph, another, a wire recorder, was called simply, "telegraphone." The novelty claimed for these inventions was in mechanical design rather than overall function.102 A certain John Paulas invented a wax cylinder-based automatic telephone answering machine, also called a "telegraphone," applying for a patent in 1923.103 Marshall, Ralph, and Annie Reno, all of Pittsburgh, patented a series of improvements to the phonograph in conjunction with a telephone recorder in 1922.104 North Carolinians Robbins Tilden and Thomas A. Tilden devised a telegraphic recorder that would receive morse code messages supplied by an operator, recording the telephone number of a caller for an absent subscriber.105 The recording of telephone signals was obviously a problem that inspired many inventors, but also one that tantalized them, not only because of the technical difficulties involved but because of the almost certain commercial impotency of the idea, in the face of AT&T's corporate policies.106 AT&T's resistance to foreign equipment created controversy on two fronts in the 1920s and 1930s. The recording of telephone calls was not simply the pipe dream of independent inventors after the demise of American Telegraphone. The Dictaphone Corporation, already a substantial business interest in the dictating machine field, began to develop phonograph-based telephone recorders in the 1920s, only to be told by AT&T that the devices could only be used on the very small number of "private lines" not owned by the telephone company, such as the private telephone links used by power 78 companies and railroads or the internal "intercom" lines used by some businesses.107 A second approach was that taken by a host of inventors in the 1930s. By coupling their inventions to the telephone lines "inductively" without a direct electrical connection, these inventors hoped that devices using the telephone lines might proliferate.108 Inventors like William Finch of New York and Manfred Johnson of the Dictaphone Corporation sought to circumvent the telephone company's rules by inventing around them. Finch stated in no uncertain terms that his facsimile system (one of scores of early facsimile proposals) would circumvent AT&T rules: heretofore, it has been proposed to use telephone lines which are usually available at almost any place for the transmission of pictures. Inasmuch as the telephone company, however, generally does not permit any interconnection by a subscriber to its lines, it has been necessary to find some other than physical connection means for transmitting picture signals over the telephone lines.109 So confidant in the viability of his invention was Finch that he quit his job as assistant chief engineer of the Federal Communications Commission to devote his time to facsimile.110 Telephone recording was simply one of a number of technologies for which inductive coupling seemed to hold the key to success. As early as 1932, a group called the Loftin-White laboratories in New York announced its intentions to market a disk telephone recorder coupled inductively to AT&T's telephone lines. The firm would offer a long distance "night letter" service, recording messages and delivering them at night when rates were lowest.111 Among the early entrants in the field was a Swedish machine marketed by the Oerlikon machine tool division of Burle and Company in Zurich. This machine, the Ipsophon, was inordinately complicated even for 79 an automatic telephone recorder, in that it included security circuitry to allow the user to pick up messages remotely by pronouncing a pre-determined code ("5- 2-0" for example). A later machine marketed by the same company, called the Notaphone, substituted electronics for the Ipsophon's electromechanical switching circuits and eliminated the finicky security features. Still, these expensive machines found only a limited market, and they too were dogged by AT&T's persistent efforts to restrict the use of "foreign" equipment. AT&T pressured the Federal government to uphold its policies and non-AT&T devices of all kinds were excluded most effectively by the Communications Act of 1934, title six, section 605 of which banned "unauthorized publication of communications," including call recording.112 It was only after 1946, when regulations were changed, that the use of telephone answering machines began to be more commonplace in America. The Magnetic Recorder in Broadcasting 1900-1930 If there was a bit of genius in Valdemar Poulsen's original conception for the telegraphone, it contrasted with the applications he forecast for his invention, most of which had been articulated years before for the phonograph. That is, all applications except one. Poulsen devised but perhaps never built a telegraphone that included a single recording head but multiple replaying heads. The problem he sought to overcome was that of insufficient volume, reasoning that if the signal reproduced by each of the talking magnets were combined, the overall result would be the sum of all the talking magnets. Two new ideas followed, one of which was neither anticipated by the inventors of the phonograph nor much appreciated by Poulsen's 80 contemporaries. That was the telegraphone's potential for broadcasting. Poulsen cunningly suggested that musical programs might be distributed to subscribers over telephone wires, to be received in the comfort of the home. This technique was demonstrated in late in 1900 in London to a reporter for The Electrical Engineer. "The ribbon telegraphone will be used to transmit plays, operas, lectures, etc. into the homes of hundreds of different subscribers; to repeat sermons into the homes of persons unable to attend services--as well as to distribute stock and other market reports." (Figure 2.8) 113 Wired broadcasting as opposed to true broadcasting in the form of radio or, later, television represented a radical alternative to the system of entertainment distribution that would emerge in the 20th-century. For that reason, it is worth looking more carefully at the implications of Poulsen's suggestion. The delivery of entertainment by wire has been virtually ignored by broadcast historians and broadcasters alike. It is tempting to employ the anachronism of comparing the multiple-speaking head telegraphone to the cable television systems of the late twentieth century. Both represented viable technologies which were passed over, first by the telephone and power companies of the late 19th-century and then (until recently) by the broadcast networks of the 20th. Elliot Sivowich of the National Museum of American History published in 1971 what remains the standard reference on what he called the "pre-history" of 8 1 Figure 2.8: Telephonic Broadcasting Using the Telegraphone One of the uses that Poulsen imagined for his telegraphone presaged telephonic broadcasting or "wired radio" services such as Muzak. In this application, the recording on a single length of wire or tape could be reproduced simultaneously by a series of reproducing electromagnets, transmitted along telephone lines, and heard by a number of telephone subscribers. (William J. Hammer, "The Telephonograph," Smithsonian Institution Annual Report. 1901, p. 310) 82 broadcasting. "The magic of voice transmission over wire," he wrote," led 19th- century innovators to serious thoughts concerning the transmission of news and entertainment simultaneously and instantaneously to multiple receiving points."114 One of the first practical applications to which Alexander Graham Bell applied his telephone was in the delivery of musical programs by wire. His spectacular demonstrations of the telephone in 1876 and later often included musical presentations to audiences. As early as 1906, the Cahill Telharmonium Company of New York attempted to sell musical entertainment (produced by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill's "Telharmonium," a early synthesizer) to subscribers through the telephone. The Bell Telephone company, claiming that company equipment might be damaged, refused to give the company permission to use its lines, and the firm switched to radio technology.115 Telephony was, of course, also possible over power lines, making it possible if not wholly practical to distribute entertainment to every room in an office building or hotel, or to every residence in a region equipped for electric service. While power utilities and electric traction companies can and did use their lines for point-to-point telephony, the technology to do so efficiently did not really emerge until the 20th-century.116 By this time, AT&T was by far the dominant provider of telephone service in the United States, and corporate policy tightly restrained the use of power line telephony. As for the broadcast of music by power line, once again by the time the technology had been improved the commercial possibilities had been nearly eliminated. The FCC specifically forbade this type of broadcasting in the 1930s. That the distribution of music and news to telephone subscribers survived in Europe despite the emergence of "free" radio entertainment in the 83 early 20th-century is testament to the non-technical factors influencing this alternative to radio in the United States.117 With the development and commercialization of vacuum tube amplifiers and efficient loudspeakers in the 1920s, the opportunity for telephonic distribution seemed technologically ripe. But once again, the telephone system proved to be a problem. As AT&T developed its long-distance technology, it did not seek to improve the quality of transmission above that which would allow comprehensible voice communication. When radio networks emerged in the late 1920s, and began linking up via telephone, AT&T came under pressure to develop higher-quality transmission lines. This the company did, but it charged high prices to lease such a line. Radio networks, drawing regional or national advertisers, could afford the cost, but individual stations leased these lines sparingly. Telephonic distribution to residences by 1930 or so thus posed prohibitive cost problems. Nonetheless, the case of the Muzak corporation demonstrates that such a system was viable. Using a variety of music sources including live performances, phonograph records and (by the 1950s) magnetic recording, Muzak in the early 1930s began distributing background music to factories, office buildings, and hotels. The target customers were either users of live performers, such as hotels (who often employed musicians in their lobbies), or companies with large office headquarters or production facilities. The latter could be convinced by Muzak's social scientists that carefully selected background music enhanced worker productivity. In both cases the high cost of Muzak (due in part to the high cost of telephonic distribution) could be borne only by large commercial enterprises. The economics and politics of wired 84 distribution ensured that nothing comparable to a local, independent "station" would emerge.118 Thus it was in this way that one of the democratic possibilities for broadcasting was permanently lost. The increasingly oligopolistic nature of the industry also had implications for Poulsen's invention. Muzak transmitted only recorded programs, but early in the 1930s the company chose phonograph technology to provide that programming. Only in the 1950s would the Muzak network include magnetic recording. Ironically, the people who in 1900 ignored the application of magnetic recording to broadcasting were quick to pick up on the possibility of using the multiple-speaking magnet telegraphone as a telephone repeater. Ultimately, this application proved to be a chimera. Without some kind of amplification, magnetic recording was probably not practical as a long distance relay, for each interaction of a recording brought a slightly lower sound level and slightly more signal degradation. The use of magnetic recording in radio broadcasting itself was a very different story yet one with the same ending.119 The period just before World War I saw the rise of numerous private radio operating firms which competed with overland or submarine telegraph systems. Radio had some advantages in this area, for it did not require the laying of expensive cables. It could be used to communicate with ships at sea, which the ordinary telegraph could not do. On the other hand, anyone with a simple receiver could and often did intercept private messages, and during bad weather any radio transmission was difficult. Telegraph recording equipment, some originally developed for wire-based telegraphy, played an important role in the development of the industry. 85 The recording and replaying of telegraph signals began even before the birth of Morse's telegraph and even in his version of the technology, the transmitter mechanically delivered recorded code to the wires, which appeared in ink as dots and dashes on a strip of paper at the receiving end, to be translated into English later. Although telegraph operators quickly learned to transmit and translate code for themselves, a wide variety of telegraph recorders and automatic transmitters emerged by the end of the 19th-century. Several historians of technology have noted the visual similarities between the appearance of the perforated paper tape recorders of the later 19th-century and magnetic recorders, although the similarity ends there. As radio telegraphy matured in the period between 1910 and 1920, and as traffic increased, radio operators sought mechanical ways to transmit code at high speed and record it at the receiving station for later translation. Paper-tape machines could and were adapted to this purpose, but the telegraphone also found an unexpected market in radio telegraphy. American inventor Lee De Forest with several investors set up a group of radio companies around 1907 to exploit his recently-invented Audion, a three element vacuum tube which he proposed to use as a "detector," or rectifier of radio waves. Although the company was doing poorly, De Forest came to the West Coast around 1911 to supervise several transmitter installations and it was there that he cultivated a relationship with Cyril Elwell of the Federal Telegraph Company. When the De Forest companies declared bankruptcy, De Forest decided to stay out west, taking a $300 a month job working with Federal's radio telegraph operations.120 86 One of De Forest's projects was the development of high speed transmitting and receiving equipment suitable for use with Federal's radically new continuous-arc transmitters (a technology which, incidentally, was developed by Valdemar Poulsen and Peder Pedersen and licensed to Federal in 1908). At two experimental Federal Telegraph stations in Sacramento and Stockton, Valdemar Poulsen and several associates installed a patented, perforated tape code transmitter and a photographic receiver, given to Federal as part of a package deal for the arc transmitter.121 De Forest struggled with the photographic printer for recording high speed radio telegraph pulses, but to little avail. Then, as he remarked in his autobiography, he attempted "to cut the gordian knot with a simple fine steel wire." H. P. O'Reilly of the western ATC sales office was only too pleased to supply the inventor with a wire-type telegraphone for experimental purposes.122 Modifying the machine to record at high speed and play back at a reduced speed, De Forest found that it was possible to make a good record of high speed telegraph signals. The "tikker" type radio receivers used by Federal, on the other hand, did not provide an electrical signal of enough intensity to make a good recording, so De Forest and another Federal technician, Charles V. Logwood, set about, in De Forest's recollection, making an amplifier. The idea was probably suggested by Cyril Elwell, but at any rate De Forest had by 1912 devised a multi-tube cascade amplifier which could intensify the tikker signal sufficiently. Using a paper-tape Wheatstone transmitter and a 12 kilowatt Poulsen Arc generator, De Forest broadcast telegraph signals at a rate of 60 words per minute. Recorded at a wire speed three times higher than normal and replayed slowly, the tone of the recording 87 was correspondingly very low, although a faint "paper tearing" sound was intelligible. The telegraphone-based system was in operation for several months between Federal's Los Angeles and San Francisco stations. The service was discontinued when redundant stations were built, decreasing the need for high-speed transmission.123 While De Forest subsequently published an account suggesting the use of the amplifier in conjunction with magnetic recording, the history of the audio tube itself has overshadowed this connection in the historical literature. De Forest, realizing the potential of the new amplifier as a telephone relay, went to AT&T in New York to demonstrate the device. Not knowing that AT&T was already at work modifying his Audion and designing a vacuum tube amplifier, De Forest got what he considered to be a lukewarm reception there.124 Meanwhile, HP. O'Reilly insisted that De Forest also visit the Springfield office of American Telegraphone Company. There he was greeted by ATC's lawyer, John Lindley, "honest John" as De Forest sarcastically dubbed him. Lindley and two other investors offered to pay De Forest's salary and finance his research on a system to link the telegraphone to motion pictures, and the inventor left his job at Federal to take up residence in New York. There he was given laboratory space in the building occupied by the Biograph company, a firm historically significant in its own right as a pioneer in motion pictures. The "manager," as De Forest described him, was none other than consulting engineer William J. Hammer, the same man who had reviewed the telegraphone ten years before for the AIEE. Soon, however, the money "dried up," and Lindley refused to provide more. An embittered De Forest wrote, "had that stingy old fool known who was, even then, ready to bid for limited rights 88 under those Audion amplifier patents." Shortly thereafter, De Forest sold his Audion rights to AT&T.125 De Forest's experiments were only the beginning of a series of experiments linking magnetic recording and radio (and also to motion pictures). The German government, for example, purchased six telegraphones for radio work in 1914-1915. Shortly before the beginning of World War I, American Telegraphone shipped a number of telegraphones to Germany at Rood's direction, perhaps for use in radio. A second set of telegraphones went to the German-owned Atlantic Communication Company station at Sayville, New York. Atlantic was the American arm of Telefunken Wireless Company, a joint venture between Siemens and Halske and Allgemeine Elektrizistats Gesellschaft, the two largest electrical manufacturers in Germany. Reflecting the "point-to-point" mindset of the times, the station was licensed by the American government to transmit between Sayville and Nauen, Germany and Sayville and Cartagena, Colombia.126 The station was subject to military censorship early in the war, but the Germans apparently found a way to send coded messages even under American scrutiny. Further, in early 1915 the Germans installed a transmitter with about three times the power of the original, to 100,000 watts. American Telegraphone Company apparently supplied this station with one or more recorders, presumably for high speed transmission.127 In July of 1915, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels seized the station, claiming the Germans had violated neutrality by using the facility to transmit war-related information. The station, along with another German- owned station in Tuckerton, New Jersey, continued to operate but under direct government control.126 While not reported widely in the newspapers, there 89 were allegations that the takeover of the Sayville station had been prompted by the actions of one Charles Apgar (1865-1950). Initially described as an independent radio experimenter, Apgar was actually an employee of the American Marconi Company, and may have been working for working for patriotic reasons to sway American public opinion in favor of the British in the war. Apgar had been the operator of a small station, W2MN, before wartime restrictions on broadcasting were put in place by the federal government. He developed an electronic amplifier using a DeForest Audion, using it to feed a radio loudspeaker. The amplified code transmissions, blaring from the loudspeaker, were recorded on a Dictaphone, and Apgar later turned the cylinders over to the American government, showing how a secret code was imbedded in the messages. The telegraphones were last seen being loaded onto a German submarine shortly before the American declaration of war.129 Before the war's end, the United States Navy (or the Signal Corps according to one source) bought four telegraphones, presumably for the same purpose. Experiments in magnetic recording, possibly using the telegraphone, resulted in the development of "high frequency biasing," an important noise reduction technique.130 After the end of World War I magnetic recording seemed poised on the edge of becoming a practical technology for radio. Radio, however, was changing. While radio telegraphy remained an important industry, the development of the vacuum tube and the establishment of entertainment networks in the 1920s had two important consequences for magnetic recording. The vacuum tube amplifier, commercially available after World War I, made it easy to amplify weak radio signals and record them mechanically, on paper tape for example. The telegraphone was an expensive 90 alternative to cheap mechanical recorders, and it is not surprising that very little interest in its use or high speed signaling is in evidence after about 1920.131 The second factor to consider is the circumstances under which the American radio networks emerged. While voice transmission of entertainment predated the formation of networks by a few years, the real explosion of commercial radio entertainment came with the linking of geographically distant stations. AT&T, initially a major participant in network formation, set the model for future networks by establishing a system of telephonic links and live entertainment, broadcast from centralized studios. This, combined with copyright restrictions on the broadcasting of phonograph records, discouraged the use of recorded material over the rapidly-growing networks. While the complex factors contributing to the persistence of a standard phonographic recording technology for use in radio is part of a later chapter, it is worth following the course of magnetic recording technology a little farther here. Like telephone recording, many inventors tried to encourage the use of magnetic recording or other recording technologies in radio, to no avail. American radio rapidly came to be dominated by a few large networks, and their corporate policies excluded technological alternatives just as effectively as AT&T's policies excluded telephone recorders. The dozens or scores of different recording techniques devised from the 1920s to the 1940s should be seen as marginal technologies, completely overshadowed by the use of the phonograph in commercial radio. Little is known about the inventors who patented alternatives to the phonograph, as many were independent or not affiliated with the new centers of audio technology research, places like General Electric and Bell Telephone 9 1 laboratories. Two brief case studies also suggest that magnetic recording's promoters failed to devise products that suited radio or represented clear advantages in the context of American broadcasting. In the late 1930s a certain Thomas J. Molloy gained lasting notability by publishing an extensive article on magnetic recording in the trade journal Electronics. His wire recorder employed many novel features, such as an improved recording head which he claimed could record frequencies as high as 6,000 cycles per second and a special guide to prevent mechanical vibrations from affecting the recording wire.132 Molloy was far from the New York-Chicago corridor of the American electronics industry. He was an executive of the Inter-State Grocery Company and the postmaster in his hometown of Joplin, Missouri and thus a well-known figure in civic affairs. He was neither an engineer nor scientist by training, but was instead an archetype of the mythical American "lone inventor," tinkering down in the basement in his off hours for seven years before patenting his machine in 1937. There is no doubt that Molloy's invention worked much as he described it, but it would never see use in the radio industry. 133 The attention that Molloy received following the announcement of his recorder faded even more quickly than the echoes emanating from the walls of the Joplin auditorium where he staged public demonstrations before the Kiwanis Club.134 Malloy demonstrated his machine to radio stations in Chicago and Cincinnati, but failed to attract financial backers. Unbeknownst to him, Bell Laboratories, the Armour Research Foundation, Brush Development Company, and others monitoring the technical literature took note of his achievements, but Molloy's ideas languished.135 92 In part, Molloy's recorder, like the many non-phonographic sound recorders that appeared after about 1930, failed to present a persuasive argument for any particular utility. Most of these machines, including Molloy's recorder design, were inherently complex and thus expensive, requiring not only specialized electronic apparatus similar in expense to a radio receiver but also a mechanical section roughly comparable to an electric phonograph changer. They were very rarely anything more than modifications of either magnetic, optical, or mechanical-phonographic sound recording. American inventors tended to be less clever in thinking of new applications than they were at devising new techniques. Molloy was a notable exception. Disappointed but still proud of his accomplishment, in 1947 as postmaster he used the wire recorder in a way, ironically, that presaged one of the important early commercial applications of wire and tape recorders after World War II. After making long recordings of bird singing, Molloy hid his recorder behind a post office display promoting air mail service. The bird songs attracted passers-by, clearly anticipating a later technology, the "point-of-sale" magnetic reproducer.136 The lack of commercial sponsorship for magnetic recording was the paramount reason for failure of this new technology to take hold in America. But the way that "lack of sponsorship" played out was crucial to the continued invisibility of magnetic recording during the next twenty years. American commercial radio during the 1920s shifted focus from a business-oriented telegraph service to a consumer-oriented voice and music service. Radio networks linked by telephone cables delivered a large proportion of American radio programming through the end of World War II, and nearly all of these 93 networks followed the example of the National Broadcasting Corporation in that they delivered only live entertainment. Live broadcasting's novelty was one of the initial attractions of the networks, and innumerable network stunt broadcasts sought to engage listeners from the air, under the sea, or from two distant places at once.137 By the time the corporate structure of the national American networks stabilized, the viability of the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadcasting Company in particular depended on live broadcasts. Recording technology undermined the very basis of the networks, allowing potential upstarts the opportunity to distribute programming more economically through the mail. If for no other reason, then, the largest networks tried to maintain their relative positions by producing shows that could not easily be imitated by using recordings. Massive studio complexes on both coasts138 hired the largest orchestras and most famous stars, employed the most elaborate audio technology, and in general outclassed small competitors in general and recording-based networks in particular. Individual stations began to fill time not occupied by network programming with locally generated programming, which by the 1930s was also often live because radio operators seemed to believe that live programming held the widest appeal. Thus recorded music was relegated to a marginal position in radio stations. Additionally, radio stations uniformly purchased the large "transcription" phonographic recorder/reproducers, in part because "software" in the form of syndicated programs was offered in that format and in part simply because of the availability of this proven technology. As early as 1927, the AT&T subsidiary Electrical Research Products Incorporated held 90% of the sound recording equipment market, capturing 94 nearly all the significant buyers of sound recorders through national advertising, servicing, and sales. While the details of this system are discussed in a later chapter, here it would be useful to contrast a few case studies of American experiments with alternative recording technologies to the radically different situation in Europe. The radio broadcasting situation in Europe was in many ways similar to that in the United States. European countries nationalized and rationalized broadcasting even more quickly than the United States. But more so than their American counterparts, European radio networks were more willing to experiment with new kinds of recording devices. The British Broadcasting Corporation took up both optical and a magnetic recording/reproducing systems in the early 1930s in part because the organization was looking for better ways to record and rebroadcast long radio programs. Over the period 1929-1932, the Corporation purchased four improved magnetic recorders from the Ludwig Blattner Picture Corporation, a British motion picture studio,139 and at about the same time that it purchased a "Millertape" sound-on-film (optical) recorder from the Dutch firm Philips. Both systems were used extensively during the 1930s for the BBC "Empire Service," a time-delayed short-wave program broadcast toward Africa, Asia, Australia, and North America. BBC engineers made numerous improvements to the machine, creating a distinctive version of the technology by the mid 1930s. The BBC tape recorders were not a commercial product, but their successful use in radio established the practicality of magnetic recording in broadcasting. For a brief time during the early 1930s, magnetic recording represented the BBC's only alternative for making high-quality instantaneous recordings- that is 95 recordings that could be made and immediately played back. But by the mid- 1930s, direct disk recorders had been improved to the point of practicality, and subsequently most BBC recording through the late 1940s was done on disk. Machines similar to the "Blattnerphone" and the BBC tape recorder were used in other countries including Canada, but not in the United States.140 Germans were particularly active in the development of magnetic recording devices for radio use beginning in the early 1930s. The German radio authority under the Nazi regime implemented the regular use of tape recording equipment in its broadcast network. German stations by the later 1930s had adopted the Magnetophone, a tape recorder manufactured by the former Edison lighting company in Germany AEG. Using a plastic tape coated with iron oxide particles, the Magnetophone resembled the modern tape recorder in many ways, and its design was influential in the United States after 1945. Before that period, however, it was not used in American broadcasting. It is not clear why the Magnetophone was never marketed in the United States., although another European technology did try and failed. This was the Phillips-Miller system that had long since become a standard feature at the BBC and other places, such as Radio Luxembourg. In America, Miller took the standard approach to publicizing his invention, publishing a number of articles on his own and generating numerous others through press releases. The Mutual Broadcasting System agreed to use the system in 1940 for rebroadcasts of the popular show Kay Kaiser's College of Musical Knowledge, which originated from one of the major networks. Similarly, WQXR, a leading "longhair" station in New York dedicated to classical music and high fidelity, used the Phillips-Miller recorder for a while in the late 1930s. In both instances 96 the recorders proved their mettle, operating reliably, delivering high quality sound, and offering the possibility of easy editing and long program time not available on disk. Still, these carefully staged demonstrations failed to engender a market. The Phillips-Miller cases are useful because they illustrate both the power of networks resistance as well as the local stations reluctance or inability to modify their programming practices.141 The Unexploited: Scientific and Industrial Users of Magnetic Recording As with early radio broadcasters, many purchasers of the telegraphone came from outside the fields of telephone recording and business dictation. Just as American Telegraphone had paid little heed to the radio market, later promoters of magnetic recording seemed oblivious to a wide interest in magnetic recording outside of the most obvious applications. American graduate students contributed to the ongoing scientific interest in magnetic recording in the 1930s. David E. Wiegand was a student from Chicago who received his Bachelor's, Master's and Ph.D at the University of Illinois in Urbana between 1931 and 1935. Wiegand prefaced his dissertation with the prophesy that magnetic recording would someday be a strong competitor in office dictation and radio broadcasting, but not in the home phonograph field (because he believed the records were too difficult to duplicate in great quantities). Wiegand used a telegraphone apparently owned by the university to make experiments of the magnetic recording process.142 Wiegand devised new applications for the magnetic recorder which extended beyond those proposed earlier. A loop of steel tape was to be used to generate a constant audio frequency, for example, to create a new kind of 97 signal generator. Signal generators using vacuum tubes to sustain electrical oscillations were already in use for that purpose. Wiegand's involvement in magnetic recording would continue at least through the 1950s. In the 1940s he took a research position with the Armour Research Foundation of the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago and he was central in the development of post-World War II consumer wire recorders. A more intriguing potential use for magnetic recording emerged in 1938, when a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated magnetic recording. This was one Curtis Hillyer, Jr., a master's degree student working under MIT electrical engineering professor Louis F. Woodruff. Woodruff suggested that magnetic recording might be used to record the first few moments of radio programs, in order to monitor the use of the radio. Hillyer imagined a complex arrangement whereby any motion of the tuning mechanism of a broadcast receiver would cause a minute or so of audio to be recorded on a steel tape. His experiments merely analyzed the problems of constructing and operating an endless-loop tape recorder, and he did not construct a practical device linked to a radio as he proposed. Nevertheless, Hillyer's work suggests the broadening applications of sound recording. He noted in his thesis that if a machine to measure accurately the behavior of radio listeners could be devised, "the information provided would be well worth the necessary expense," even if the unit costs of the machines remained quite high.143 Louis Woodruff, his mentor, himself invented a machine that would record data (but not sound) about radio station listening on a paper tape. Responding to the failure of the efforts by radio researchers like Frank Stanton 98 to measure listenership accurately, Woodruffs machine bypassed the imperfect memories of listeners. Woodruffs invention, dubbed the "audiometer," became the basis of the Nielson company's successful audience measurement service. Radio audience measurement quite naturally followed the industry's shift to consumer entertainment services, emerging at first in the form of researchers using telephone surveys. Hillyer's interest in magnetic recording as a data recording tool also persisted after his graduation. He took a job with Fairchild instrument some time in the early 1940s, and after World War II pioneered in the field of automatic machine tool control using magnetic tape.144 The sound recorder as a home product was an oft noted but unproven marketing concept at the turn of the century, when the home phonograph began to become popular, and even through the 1920s, as the dictation machine rose to prominence in modern offices. Thomas Molloy was one of many recorder inventors who envisioned his recorder as a consumer device. He suggested in 1938 that it could be used to record radio programs. While such an application seems obviously useful in retrospect, at the time it was only just emerging in the consciousness of American listeners. While Molloy's product never attracted its hoped-for sponsor, established electrical manufacturers introduced products aimed at consumer radio recording. The perception that people might want to record radio was reflected by the editors of Electronics: Many have been the inquiries to the editors of Electronics during the past year relating to recording broadcast programs or other material on wire. Here [in Molloy's article] is a practical answer to many many [sic] of those questions plus a description of working equipment. 145 99 Instead, it was the more familiar electrical phonograph recording process that emerged first as a consumer radio recorder. Crude electrical recorders (that is, phonograph recording using an electro-mechanical recording stylus) appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but sold poorly. These machines were derived from "electrical" recording phonographs widely used in the making of consumer records. An amplified electrical signal from a microphone or other sound source drove a sensitive electromagnetic "cutter" to record sound on a plastic phonograph blank. Between 1939 and 1941 a number of small, relatively inexpensive sound recorders appeared on the market featuring improved cutters, better motors, high quality microphones, and inexpensive recording blanks. These products sold in relatively small numbers and disappeared at the outbreak of World War II, but they were important in establishing that a radio recording market existed.146 Conclusions This chapter began by suggesting that because it took so long, the period between the invention of magnetic recording and its success America needed to be explained. This is not to imply that commercial success was inevitable, but rather that the utter failure of a product that elicited so much excitement at its introduction seems curious. The failure of the American Telegraphone Company, dismal as it was, was not the reason why it took magnetic recording so long to succeed in the marketplace. Nor is it simply the case that magnetic recording was "ahead of its time." In some ways, the early history of the technology in America suggests that magnetic recording was consistently behind the times. 100 In the field of radio, American Telegraphone and later inventors failed to address the fact that broadcasting changed during the period before 1930. Whereas the telegraphone seemed to hold some promise in the early radio telegraph services, inventors failed to explore the telegraphone's possibilities in this field because for the most part they concentrated on sound recording. But when voice broadcasting emerged, the magnetic recorder still held little appeal, because it merely represented an alternative to the phonograph. As such, it faced a growing resistance to recording technology from American broadcasting networks, and therefore had little appeal to its most important potential customer. Further, as broadcasting in America took shape, between 1925 and 1930, recordings were less favored than live programs, which had a certain novelty and which exploited the centralized "network" concept. Recordings were initially rejected as ways of distributing network programming because of their low sound quality, so networks used the telephone lines. When the quality of sound recordings improved, the networks very presciently "outlawed" their use, recognizing the threat that they represented to the their corporate position. The magnetic recorder in radio work was simply a "non starter" after the late 1920s, as were dozens if not scores of other more obscure recording methods. Although magnetic recording was present during the developmental years of office dictation, the phlegmatic way in which the telegraphone was commercialized gave promoters of the rival phonograph the time they needed to institutionalize their technology. The type of dictation system they created relied on relatively simple, decentralized hardware (the desktop dictating and transcribing machines) but a highly organized system of dictation practice. The 101 two leading manufacturers of dictation phonographs, Thomas A. Edison Company and Columbia Phonograph Company (later Dictaphone Corporation) gained the favor of scientific management boosters, and between themselves carved up a national market between 1900 and 1920. When American Telegraphone introduced a practical office system in the 1910s, it relied on both scientific management principles and the centralization of the hardware, a somewhat different approach than that of the phonograph manufacturers. While the telegraphone system mirrored some of the dictates of scientific management, it is unclear whether the telegraphone system would have worked in any but a few special corporate situations. Further, the necessity of using telephone connections for the telegraphone introduced special considerations, not the least of which was the requirement that wires other than those used for outside telephone service be used. It was in those very telephone lines that the magnetic recorder, not to mention all types of sound recorder, became most inextricably tangled. The idea of a telephone recorder tantalized inventors from an early date, but the practicality of such a device was problematical in the United States. Even if AT&T had not resisted the use of telephone recorders, the inventors of such devices would have still faced huge technical obstacles. The numerous uses of sound recording suggested by amateur experimenters, foreign companies, and scientists represented significant harbingers of the diverse contemporary applications of magnetic recording. For whatever reasons, no firm attempted to exploit the possibilities made manifest by these diverse individuals and groups. Instead, inventors and boosters pounded away at the fortress-like entities of the American Telephone and 102 Telegraph company, and the broadcast networks. By the second and third decades of the century, the walls of these fortresses had become impenetrable. The process of technological negotiation and accommodation in which were engaged the various inventors, boosters, and rival interests of magnetic recording did not result in a successful product before 1930. The little machine that had so excited European and American engineers and scientists at the turn of the century continued to languish, although in Europe and other places it became the basis of considerable experimentation. The following chapters explore the efforts of Americans to rework the notion of the magnetic recorder and improve upon its technical details, efforts that led to the commercial successes of the post-1945 period. 103 ENDNOTES 18Oberlin Smith, "Some Possible Forms of the Phonograph." Electrical World 8 September 1888): 116; Arthur J. Cox and Thomas Malim. Ferracute: The History of an American Enterprise (Bridgeton, N.J.: Cowan Printing Co., 1985), 112-115. 19Edison's microphone was based on the principle of variable resistance. Sound waves acting on granulated carbon cause it to compress and decompress. If a small electrical current is run through the carbon, the compression-decompression activity effectively changes the electrical resistance of the carbon in a way that mimics the original sound waves. Thus if a steady current is supplied to the "input" of a carbon microphone, a current that varies according to the sound waves appears at the "output." 20Mark Henry Clark, "The Magnetic Recording Industry, 1878-1960: An International Study in Business and Technological History," (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1992), 13. 21S. J. Begun, Magnetic Recording (New York: Murray Hill Books, 1949), 3; William Charles Lafferty, "The Early Development of Magnetic Sound Recording in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures, 1928-1950," (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1981), 10-11; Clark, "Magnetic Recording," 32, 32n. 22See for example, George D. Aspinall Parr, Practical Electrical Testing in Physics and Electrical Engineering (London: Longman's, Green and Company, 1901); J. A. Fleming, A Handbook for the Electrical Laboratory and Testing Room (New York: D. Van Nostrand and Co., 1901), volume II; Henry Crew. Elements of Physics: For Use in High Schools (New York: MacMillan Company, 1899), 228-231; Eleuthere E. N. Mascart, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (London: De La Rue, 1883), 666-7; Alfred Daniell [sic], A Text Book on the Principles of Physics (New York: MacMillan Company, 1895), 674-675; Charles S. Hastings, A Text-Book of General Physics for the Use of Colleges and Scientific Schools (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1899), 361-362. 23Bell in 1880 was awarded the Volta prize by the French government for the invention of the telephone. He used the $10,000 prize to set up an experimental laboratory in D.C. He had hired Tainter the previous year as an assistant. Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973), 335-340; Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph. 33-34. 24Laboratory notebook of Charles Sumner Tainter, volume 3 (July 3 to November 19, 1881), entry for November 1,1881. Charles Sumner Tainter Collection, Archives, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C, Box 1. 25See the Tainter notebooks, volumes 1-2; U.S. Patents 341,214, Charles Sumner Tainter; 341,287 (4 May 1886), filed 20 August 1885. Sumner Tainter, "Recording and Reproducing Sounds". 26See, for example U.S. Patents 900,392 (6 October 1908), filed 18 November 1899. Georg Kirkegaard, "Sound Recording and Reproducing Instrument." ; 934,600 (21 September 1909), filed 2 May 1908. Percy W. Fuller; 1,152, 562 (7 September 1915), filed 16 December 1913. John C. Sherman, "Process of Producing Sound Records"; 1,815, 010 (14 July 1931), filed 1 November 1929, 9 November 1928 in Great Britain. Archibald Fulton Pollock, David Alexander Pollock. 1/3 assignment to Edwin King. "Recording and Reproducing Sound."; 1,941,036 (26 December 1933), filed 15 October 1931, 20 October 1930 in Austria. Wilhelm Lenk, "Device for Magneto-Electric Generation of Alternating Currents for Sound Production."; 2,509,780 (30 May 1950), filed 29 April 1948. Dorothy O'Dea assigned to RCA. "Magnetic Recording and Reproducing Systems". 104 27Erik R. Madsen, "Loan Collections Honor Danish Audio Pioneers." Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 22 (July 1974V. 438. 28"Phonographic Telephones," New York Sun 17 December 1899; Madsen, "Loan Collections, 439. 29Clark, "Magnetic Recording," 30; Madsen, "Loan Collections," 439. 30"Poulsen's Telegraphone," Scientific American 83 (22 September 1900): 178; U.S. Patents on the telegraphone include 661,619; 699,630; 752,858; 788,728; 788,790; 789,336; 819,670;822,222; 836,339; 873,024; 873,541; 873,078; 873,083; 873,884. 31 See for example a paper written by Poulsen that described his invention as one that "permet d'enregistrer a distance." V. Poulsen, "Sur Le telegraphone," Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires Pes Seances 130 M900): 1754-1755 32The "Telephonograph," one of several of inventions going by this name, was described alongside the telegraphone in "Recording Telegraphones." Nature LXII (16 August 1900): 371- 373. 33peder O. Pedersen (1874-1941), born in Sig, Jutland was a civil engineer who began his association with Poulsen in 1899. Per V. Bruel, "Peder O. Pedersen," in "Loan Collections," 440 34ciark, "Magnetic Recording," 42. 35lbid., 43, 45, 49; A group called the telegraphone Syndicate hawked the device in England at least until 1901. "The Telegraphone." The Electrician 47 (26 April. 1901): 5. 36Magnetic "hardness" refers to the magnetic permeability of a ferrous metal. Iron is usually described as soft because a magnetic force applied to it easily magnetizes it (that is, only a small "coercive force" is necessary to magnetize it), but when the force is removed the iron does not retain much magnetism (that is, its remanent force is low). Steel is magnetically hard: more difficult to magnetize but tending to retain a higher level of magnetization. 37Valdemar Poulsen, "Das Telearaphon."" Annelen der Physick 3 (1900): 754-760; V. Poulsen, "Sur Le Telegraphone," Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires Pes Seances 130 (1900): 1754- 1755; Poulsen, Valdemar. "The Telegraphone: A Magnetic Speech-Recorder." The Electrician 46 (30 November 1900): 208-210. 38"Awards to American Exhibitors at Paris." Scientific American 83 (22 September 1900): 178. 39"Phonographic Telephones," New York Sun 17 Pecember 1899; Jul. H. West, "Per Telephonograph von Poulsen," Prometheus 11(1900): 743-748; "Pas Telegraphon," Elektrotechnischen Zeitschrift 20 (1900): 1-3; Systeme Pucoousso, "Transmetteurs et Recepteurs Telephoniques," Revue Internationale Pe Electricite 343-347; M. Aliamet, "Le Telegraphone de M. Poulsen," Electricien 2nd series, v. 19 (June 2, 1900): 337-338; "Le Telegraphone," La Nature (23 June 1900): 49-50; Louis Olivier, "Une Revolution en Telephonie." Revue Generate des Sciences 11 (30 June 1900): 770-775; "Le Telegraphone," Revue Scientifique 2 (14 July 1900): 58; Telephone Improvements in Germany," Consular Reports 63 (August 1900): n.p.; "Recording Telegraphones." Nature LXII (16 August 1900): 371-373; "Recording Telephone the Latest Remarkable Invention," The Herald (Syracuse, N.Y.), 19 August 1900, n.p.; "The Telegraphone." Scientific American Supplement. 25 August 1900, 20616; "The Telephonograph," Consular Reports 64 (September 1900): n.p.; "Telegraphone is a Wonder," New York Times 2 September 1900, n.p.; "The Telegraphone," New York Times 9 December 1900; "Poulsen Telegraphone." Scientific American. 22 September 1900,181; "Poulsen's Telegraphone." Scientific American. 22 September 1900, 178; "Le Congres International Pe Physique." Revue Pes Questions Scientifiques 48 (October 1900): 582-583; "Electric Traction and Magnetic Records," The Electrician 46 (30 November 1900): 209-210; J. Gavey, "Telegraphs and Telephones at the Paris Exhibition." The Electrician 46 (23 November 1900): 166-169; Carl Hering, "An American Criticism of the Paris Exhibition," The Electrician 46 (28 Pecember 1900): 364-367; "Telegraphs and Telephones at the Paris Exposition." The 105 Electrician 46 (30 November 1900): 210-211: "Sections." Journal of the Franklin Insititute 150 (May 1901): 397-398; Dr. Rellstab, "Der Telephonograph," EIZ 22 (17 January 1901): 57-59; Jul. H. West, "Ueber den Telephonographen von Poulsen," ETZ 22 (21 February 1901): 181-184; Jul. H. West, "Der Telephonograph," ?12 22(14 March 1901): 246; "The Telegraphone." The Electrician 47 (26 April, 1901): 5, 7; William J. Hammer, "The Telephonograph." Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1901): 307-12; "The Poulsen Telegraphone in the United States," Electrical Review (2 February 1901): 161; "Telegraphone," Electrical Engineer 27 (26 April 1901): 590-592; The Loss of A Million." The American Inventor 1 June 1901 n.p.; "The Poulsen Telegraphone Patents." Electrical World 37 (8 June 1901): 892; "The Poulsen Telegraphone." Electrical Engineer 27 (28 (5 July 1901): 1; "A New Phonograph." Journal of the Franklin Institute CLII (August 1901): 108; John A. Lieb, The Telegraphone: A Magnetic Phonograph," The Electrical Age 29 (September 1902): 345-350; Herbert C. Fyfe, The Telegraphone and the British Post Office." Scientific American 89 (25 April 1903): 317-318; The Telegraphone." The Electrician 51 (31 July 1903): 611-612; The New Telegraphone." Scientific American 81 (3 October 1903): 237-238; George M. Williamson, The Poulsen Telegraphone," The American Telephone Journal 87 (24 October 1903): 257-259; K. Strecker, "Uber das Telegraphon," ETZ 25 (7 January 1904): 14-15; The Telegraphone," The Electrical Age 32 (March 1904): 183; James L. Knox," The Telegraphone." The Marconigram (July 1904): 14-15; "The Telegraphone." The Electrician (London) 53 (1904): 269; The Poulsen Telegraphone," The Electrical Engineer 34 (9 September 1904): 365; "A New Phonographic Principle," The Electrical Engineer (30 September 1904): 473; J. Giltay, "Vielfach- Telephonie mittels des Telegraphons," Physickalische Zeitschrift 6 (1905): 572-575; Dr. Z. B. Babbitt, The Telegraphone," Journal of the Franklin Institute 159 (January 1905): 17-21; "Electrical Patents," Electrical Review 20 May 1905): 821; "Electrical Science," Evening Transcript (Boston) 14 October 1905; "Poulsen's Improved Method of Recording Telephonic Massages or Signals." Western Electrician (4 August 1906): 79-81.; E. F. Stearns, "A Spool of Wire Speaks," Technical World (December 1906): 409-412; "To Perpetuate Sound," reprinted from the Boston Herald, n.d. [1907], from Corporate Collection, 45 05 03 File 9, AT&T Archives; "Frozen Speech-A Blow to Mark Twain's Imagination," reprinted from The American Monthly Review of Reviews Advertiser January 1907, from Corporate Collection, 45 03 file 9, AT&T Archives; "Poulsen's Telegraphone: A Scientific Marvel." The Literary Digest Advertiser 9 February 1907, 219-220; "Improved Wireless System." Daily Mail 18 February 1907; The Telegraphone." The Telephone Age (March 1907): 135-136; "Miss Robson Laughs at the Bunco Trader," reprinted from New York Evening Post 26 August 1907, n.p., from Corporate Collection, 80 05 03 Box 3, AT&T Archives; E. Hytten, "Die Neusten Formen des Telegraphons," ETZ 28 (5 September 1907): 870-72; "An Uncanny Machine," reprinted from The Evening Star (Washington, D.C), 1 November 1907, n.p. from Corporate Collection, 80 05 03 Box 3, AT&T Archives. 40|n a later passage, incidentally, "Mr. W. J. Hammer called attention to the fact that the inventor of what Mr. Gavey called the 'microphonograph' strongly objected to this title." "Telegraphs and Telephones at the Paris Exposition." The Electrician (30 November 1900): 210-211. 41 Ibid. 42This publication seems to be affiliated with the familiar Literary Digest, although none of the libraries I consulted kept issues of the Advertiser (the article cited here came from a private collection). It is possible that the latter was comprised of paid endorsements. "Poulsen's telegraphone: A Scientific Marvel," The Literary Digest Advertiser 9 February 1907, 219. 43The Telegraphone." Scientific American Supplement 50 (25 August 1900): 20616. 44Herbert C. Fyfe, "The Telegraphone and the British Post Office." Scientific American 89 (25 April 1903): 317; Poulsen's recording of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and other dignitaries 106 mimicked Edison's demonstration of the improved phonograph at the Paris Exposition of 1899, when he recorded, among others, William Ewart Gladstone. Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: From Tinfoil to High Fidelity (New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1955), 40. 450berlin Smith, "The Paris Exhibition," Machinery 6 (November 1900): 89-90. 46"William Joseph Hammer," National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White Company, 1916), volume 15, 218-219; "William Joseph Hammer," Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), supplement one. 47William J. Hammer, "Report on the Telegraphone." File 2, Box 16, Series 3, William J. Hammer Collection. Archives, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. [hereafter "Hammer Collection"], 2. 48lbid., 8. 49lbid., 8. 50lbid., 10. 51A larger recording medium would have been capable of retaining "more" magnetism, in the same way that a larger magnetic is, all other things being equal, stronger than a smaller magnet. Since the playback volume was directly proportional to the current induced in the playback circuit by the recording medium, it was desirable to record as much magnetic flux on the medium as ossible to get a loud sound in the ear piece. 2Edison recognized the complementary nature of hardware and software in his motion picture system. However, motion picture technology was conceived from the first with the passive viewer in mind. Motion picture cameras for personal use came later. Andre J. Millard Edison and the Business of Innovation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 149-151; Hammer, "Report," 16. 53lbid., 16. 54lbid., 19-20. 55lbid., 33. 56lbid., 26-27. 57George M. Williamson, "The Poulsen telegraphone." The American Telephone Journal 87 (24 October 1903): 259; John A. Lieb, "The telegraphone: A Magnetic Phonograph." The Electrical Age 29 (September 1902): 346. 58ln June, 1901, the American Inventor revealed that a Poulsen patent on the telegraphone had been declared invalid, because it had been issued later than the maximum allowable time between the issue of a foreign patent and the application for an American patent on the same invention. The article went on to say that representatives of certain "capitalists," who had previously offered $1,000,000 for the patent, withdrew their offer when they discovered the anomaly. William A Rosenbaum, who at the time represented the telegraphone interests and whose correspondence with American Bell is cited in another chapter, claimed in the pages of Electrical World that the same investors who made the discovery had purchased the patent "and were quite satisfied with their purchase." Whether some version of this story has a bearing on American Bell's withdrawal invites speculation. "The Loss of A Million," The American Inventor 1 June 1901, n.p.; "The Poulsen telegraphone Patents," Electrical World 37 (8 June 1901): 892. 59Equity 37.690. American Telegraphone Co.. vs. Charles D. Rood. Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, 30 April 1925, [hereafter "Equity Cause"] 14 60Clark, "Magnetic Recording," 63-64. "Equity Cause," 33. 61 J. B. Chasseaud (president, Sterling Debenture company) to E. A. Hawkins (AT&T), 27 November 1906. 45 05 03, no box number, file 9. AT&T Bell Laboratories Archives, Warren New Jersey [hereafter AT&T] 107 62Sterling Debenture, incidentally, published an interesting list of the professions of stockholders, which included 297 U.S. Army offices, 285 Navy officers (including 12 Rear Admirals), 407 engineers, 213 clergymen, 292 lawyers, 588 physicians, 4,720 merchants, 148 architects, 522 railroad men, 283 teachers, and 267 manufacturers in the electrical fields. See F. W. Shumaker, The Descriptive Storv of the Telegraphone. (New York, Sterling Debenture Co., 1907), n.p. TAT Corporate Collection, 45 05 03, no box number, File 9. One stockholder was Stilson Hutchins, founder of the Washington Post. Edward J. Gallagher, Stilson Hutchins. 1838- 1912 (Laconia, N.H.: Citizen Publishing Co.,, 1965), 166. 63The name Ediphone was not actually used until 1914, but all early dictating machines made by Thomas A. Edison Company and marketed through North American Phonograph Company will be referred to this way. See Millard, Edison. 267. 64"A Few Facts about the telegraphone, "(N.D., American telegraphone Co); Stock Announcement, American telegraphone Co., n.d., Hammer Collection, Series 3, Box 16, File 2. S^Uses of the Poulsen telegraphone. (NY: Sterling Debenture Company, n.d.), 17. Ibid., file 1. 66Poulsen's telegraphone (NY: Sterling Debenture Co., n.d. [1907]), n.p. 45 05 03, file 9, AT&T. 67"Recording telegraphones." Nature LXII (16 August 1900): 371: The Electrician also remarked that the phonograph "has remained a scientific toy." The telegraphone." The Electrician 31 July 1903, 612; Edison himself remarked that during the first ten years of its life the phonograph "remained more or less of a toy." Quoted in Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph. 36. 68Columbia was in turn the licensee of the North American Phonograph Company, organized in 1888 by investor Jesse H. Lippincott. Characterized by historian Roland Gelatt as a "misguided skipper," Lippincott purchased the patent rights to both the phonograph and the graphophone and set out organizing the sale of business dictating machines rather than entertainment devices. The machines were troublesome and sales were slow into the second decade of the 20th century. Columbia was one of the few local agencies to survive, profiting from the demands generated from Washington, D.C. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph. 40-44. 69Millard, Edison. 74-75. 70lbid., 258-259. 71C. King Woodbridge, 'Dictaphone': Electronic Genius of Voice and Typed Word (New York: Newcomen Society in America, 1952), 13-17. 72Margery W. Davies, A Woman's Place Is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers. 1870-1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); incidentally, the tasks could be even further subdivided. In 1920 the Greenfield Tap and Die Corporation discovered that a boy could be employed to perform such tasks as interleaving carbon paper and typing sheets or running Dictaphone cylinders from executive's offices to stenographers. R. H. Goodell, "Saving 42% on Routine Work." System 37 (June 1920): 1185. 73Leffingwell died in 1931. See the biographical article in Who's Who in America (Chicago: A. N. Marquis Company, 1942), III, 718. 74W. H. Leffingwell, ed., The Automatic Letterwriter and Dictation System (Chicago: A. W. Shaw, 1918), v. 7^Buried deep in the text was the management expert's name-William H. Leffingwell. "Shall I Have a Central Typing Department?" System 35 (February 1919): 231-232. 76[H.P. O'Reilly and Company], "The Telegraphone." The Shorthand Writer 10 (May 1914): 211- 213. 77William Hammer, incidentally, suggested that if businessmen wanted to sent voice letters, a reel of telegraphone wire "if mailed as merchandise... would cost 29 cents exclusive of packing; if mailed as written matter, 58 cents," for a ten minute record. 78"The New Telegraphone." Scientific American 81 (3 October 1903): 237-238. 108 79Clark "Magnetic Recording," 85-7; "To Make Telegraphones Here," Springfield Daily Republican. 9 November 1910; Senate, Committee on Patents, Hearing Before the Committee on Patents on S. 1301: A Bill to Renew and Extend Certain Letters Patent 72nd Cong., 1st sess., 10 March 1932, 21 [hereafter "Renewal of Letters Patent]. 80"To Make," Springfield Republican. 81 Clark, "Magnetic Recording," 86-90. 82RENEWAL of letters PATENT, 1932, 21. 83lbid., 22. 84"Office Dictating Machines Need Better Fidelity." Electronics 4 (October 1932): 315. 85Margery Davies, Beyond the Typewriter: Office Workers and Office Work. 1870-1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); also see Sharon H. Strom, Beyond the Typewriter: Gender. Class and the Origins of Modern Office Work. 1900-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). 86Double Indemnity. Paramount Pictures, 1944. 87Leffingwell, Office Management. 465-466; compare this to what historian Andre Millard writes about the sales advice given to agents for the Edison system: "Businessmen would rather dictate to a stenographer (who was often an attractive, attentive young woman) than shout into the mouthpiece of a machine.... [Ediphone] salesmen were trained to overcome these objections, yet many potential customers still clung to the old ways of dictation. The office workers of [Thomas A. Edison Company] were no exception. Charles Edison was most annoyed to find out that the division managers did not use the dictating machines provided for them." Millard, Edison. 264. 88"The Municipal Significance of Dictating Machines." American City 54 (March 1939): 7; "Tell it To The Machines," American City 52 (October 1937): 7. 89Perry W. Rodman, "Bridgeport Says it Pays," American City 54 (October 1939): 41. 90"Expanding Municipal Uses of Sound Recording," American City 64 (March 1949); 98; Mae O'Brien, letter to the editor, School and Society 52 (30 November 1940): 563-564; Elwood Street, "Keeping dictation Up-to-Date." The Survey 61 (15 November 1928): 250; E. Howell, letter to the editor, The Survey 58 (15 June 1927): 343; Elwood Street, "Over My Desk," The Survey 63 (15 November 1929): 234; "How to Save Four Days," The Survey 67 (15 October 19310; 101. 91 An installation at Prudential Insurance in Newark in 1953 noted that the previous generation of dictation equipment was supplied to a small group of individuals who used their machines less than 30 minutes per day. A larger group of workers used dictating machines more frequently, but was not supplied with telephones. In the new scheme, both groups were connected via telephone to 48 new recorders, allowing over 700 users to dictate approximately 1500 letters per day. "Talk Away' Your Paper Work," Purchasing 45 (21 July 1958): 82; A system used at the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company's headquarters in Boston used special inter-office telephones (not connected to AT&T's equipment), automatic switching equipment made by the Automatic Electric Company of Chicago, and eight Dictaphone Time-Master telephone call recorders. "Dictating by Telephone," Business Week. 5 September 1953, PP 95-98; In 1939 the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company of Bloomfield, Connecticut instituted a centralized dictation/stenography system, but replaced it in 1957 with a telephone-based system using 26 Dictaphone Corp. recorders. H. J. Rummel, "Centralized Dictation System," Office Executive 34 (September 1959): 42; By 1960, the Soundscriber Corporation had introduced the "Satellit" system, a phonographic telephone-based dictating machine priced at over $800. "Satellite Dictating." Business Week 23 January 1960, p 136. 92Magnetic recording and transistors allowed portability and compactness, leading to the highly portable machines that have characterized dictating equipment since the late 1950s. "How 109 Dictaphone Sired Little Dictet." Sales Management 80 (2 May 1958): 62-65; "Note Taking Can Be Simple." Purchasing 44 (17 March 1958): 136; Robert Dameron, "Care and Feeding of Dictating Machines," American Business 28 (October 1958): 14, 40-42. 93Emile Berliner, letter to the editor. Electrical World and Engineer 36 (1900): 210. 94Fyfe, "Telegraphone," 317. 95"A Spool of Wire Speaks," Technical World. December 1906, 412. 96Early descriptions of the telephone recorder do not mention how the caller was notified that a recorder was in place. Only after about 1904 was this feature noted. Dr. Z. B. Babbitt, "The Telegraphone," Journal of the Franklin Institute 159 (January 1905): 19; "Electrical Science," Evening Transcript (Boston) 14 October 1905, 3; Poulsen applied for a patent on a telephone recorder using the early "drum" recorder and special ancillary circuitry in 1899. The patent was not granted until 1906, but the journal Western Electrician picked up the patent as news. The recorder it described had by 1906 been superseded, but it is interesting to note that it apparently functioned only as a telephone announcer or a recorder, but not both. The automatic circuitry functioned only to cut the motors on and off. "Poulsen's Improved Method of Recording Telephonic Massages or Signals," Western Electrician 35 (4 August 1906): 79-81. 97Eighth Wonder of the World [N.p.: H.P. O'Reilly and Company, 1915], a reprint of "Eighth Wonder of the World," Exhibitor's Weekly Bulletin. 27 March 1915. Box 16, section 3, file 2, Hammer Collection. 98Stearns, "A Spool of Wire Speaks," 409. ""Miss Robson Laughs at the Bunco Trader," reprinted from New York Evening Post. 26 August 1907. tOO-iJses of the Telegraphone," Springfield Daily Republican 15 September 1912; "Gambler Who Defied Police is Shot Dead," New York Times. 16 July 1912 p. 1; "Murder Witness Recants In Fear." New York Times 25 July 1912, p. 1; "Burns Uses Telegraphone," New York Times 2 August 1912, p. 7; Biographers of Burns do not cite the Rosenthal case or the use of the telegraphone, although the New York Times made much of the case at the time. See for example William R. Hunt, Front Page Detective: William J. Burns and the Detective Profession (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990); Gene Caesar, Incredible Detective: The Biography of William J. Burns (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: 1968). 101 Although amplifiers were developed in the 1920s, it took many years to install them throughout the network. 102U.S. Patents 1,168,432 (16 January 1916), filed 28 May 1914. Franz Seelau and Alexander Newman. "Telegraphone"; 1,222,895 (17 April 1917), filed 29 December 1914. Franz Seelau and Alexander Newman. "Automatic Phonograph Responding and Receiving Device"; 1,352,546 (14 September 1920), filed 20 November 1915. Franz Seelau and Alexander Newman. 103U.S. Patent 1,546,310 (14 July 1925), filed 28 May 1923. John Paulas (nee John Papadopoulos), "Telegraphone". 104U.S. Patent 1,560,730 (10 October 1925), filed 30 January 1922. Marshall H. Reno, Ralph M. Reno, Anniew Reno. "Sound Recordation". 105U.S. Patent 1,793,761 (24 February 1931), filed 1 July 1925. Robbins Tilden, Thomas A. Tilden, "Telephone Call Recorder". 106See also U.S. Patents 1,831,331 (7 April 1930), filed 10 November 1931. Benjamin F. Thornton, "Apparatus for Automatically Recording Telephone Messages"; 1,839,187 (29 December 1931), filed 11 August 1930. Harold Warwick "Sound Recording and Reproducing Apparatus"; 1,878,778, (3 March 1930), filed 20 September 1932. Harriet E. Huntington and William A. Booz, "Automatic Answering and Recording Telephone"; 1,920,729 (24 February 1930), filed 1 August 1933. Ernest M. Wilson, assignor to H. A. Hartshorn, William F. Klinker, and Ernest M. Wilson [sic] "Telephone Message Recording and Reproducing Apparatus"; the wax- 1 10 cylinder based machine of one Truman Stevens is discussed in "An Automatic Secretary," The Literary Digest 84 (7 February 1925): 22; "Telephone That Registers Calls in One's Absence," Scientific American 121 (13 September 1919); 261-272. 107U.S. Patent 1,782, 619. (25 November 19300, filed 25 May 1927. Manfred J. Johnson, assignor to the Dictaphone Corporation. "Device for Electronically Recording Telephone Sounds, and System Therefor". 108An inductive coupling uses principles similar to those discussed throughout this chapter. A telephone signal current passing through a wire generates a tiny magnetic field around the wire. If a small coil of fine wire is placed near the telephone line, a current will begin to flow in the coil due to electromagnetic induction. The resulting current flow corresponds exactly to the original telephone signal and can be reproduced as sound in a telephone receiver. Thus, it is possible to "tap" into a telephone wire without a metal-to-metal connection. 109U.S. Patents 2,047,863,14 July 1936 (filed 26 February 1936). William G. H. Finch, "Telecommunications System"; 1,782,619 (25 November 1930), filed 25 May 1927. Manfred J. Johnson, assignor to Dictaphone Corporation, "Device for Electronically Recording Telephonic Sounds and Conversations and System Therefor". "ll^'Telephotographs,"' Electronics 9 (July 1936): 32. 111 "Talking Night Letter' System Proposed," Electronics 4 (April 1932), 139; "Some Novelties in Sound Recording," Electronics 4 (September 1932): 281. 112"The Ipsophone," Life. 21 (12 August 1946): 13-14; "Remote Control Telephonograf," Tele- IfiCJi (April 1947); 69,108; "Hot off the Wire." Science Illustrated 1 (April 1946): 111-112; Leon Laden, "Robot Telephone." Radio News 38 (August 1947): 39-42, 104; "New Telephone Recorder," Radio-Electronics 20 (December 1948): 56; An independent inventor named Joseph Zimmerman devised an answering machine from an ordinary telephone, a phonograph (for the outgoing message) and a Webster-Chicago wire recorder (discussed in chapter 5, below), put into a new cabinet with the requisite switching circuitry and hawked under the name "Electronic Secretary." "Electronic Secretary." Popular Mechanics 92 (December 1949): 229; United States, Federal Communications Commission, The Communications Act of 1934. (Washington, D.C, Federal Communications Commission, 1983), 147-148. 113Valdemar Poulsen, "The Telegraphone: A Magnetic Speech-Recorder." The Electrician 46 (30 November 1900): 209; "The Poulsen telegraphone in the United States," Electrical Review (2 February 1901): 161; "The Telegraphone." Electrical Engineer 27 (26 April 1901): 590-592; Poulsen's telegraphone (NY: Sterling Debenture Co., n.d. [1907]), n.p. Corporate Collection, 45 05 03, file 9, AT&T Archives. 114Elliot N. Sivowich, "A Technological Survey of Broadcasting's 'Pre-History,' 1876-1920," Journal of Broadcasting 15 (Winter 1970-71): 2. 115lbid., 12. 116Carrier technology was championed by the General Electric Company and used extensively by power and traction companies in the early 20th century. B. R. Cummings, "Carrier Current Telephony," Scientific American 129 (August 1923): 100, 142. 117A Dutch wired music system was said to have 340,000 subscribers in 1937. "Muzak Music," Time 30 (1 November 1937): 72. 118Muzak was the brainchild of George O. Squier, a former U.S. Army general who served in the Signal Corps in World War I. The company was originally financed by the North American Corporation, a utilities holding company, and called Wired Radio Corporation. It was inactive until reorganized in 1934 as Muzak Corp. The first transmission in 1934 was a symphonic presentation distributed to the exclusive Lakewood neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. By late 1934, Muzak had shifted its focus to restaurants, and hotels. The firm was purchased in 1938 by Warner Brothers Corporation, and resold in 1939 to a group of investors including William Benton, Waddill Catchings, and Allen Miller. Jerri A. Husch, "Music of the Workplace: A Study of Muzak Culture," 1 1 1 (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1984), 57-64; Dow, Jones and Company got into the wired radio business in 1936, distributing financial news to New York businesses. "Wired Radio System Used By Dow Jones Service," Electronics 9 (July 1936), 38; Waddill Catchings, who was associated with Muzak during its tenure with North American Corporation, demonstrated the system in 1937 to several American executives, including Walter P. Chrysler, J. Paul Getty, and, ironically, Walter Gifford of AT&T. "Muzak Music," Time 30 (1 November 1937): 72-73. 119Gavey, "Telegraphs and Telephones," 166-169. 120High G. J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio. 1900-1930 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 90, 233. 121lbid., 120-121. 122lbid., 107; Lee De Forest, Father of Radio (Chicago: Willcox and Follett, 1950), 276-291. This work has been repeatedly challenged for its inaccurate accounts of the invention of the Audion. However, these criticisms usually center around De Forest's claims that he understood the workings of the Audion from the first, whereas he clearly misunderstood electron discharge phenomena. It seems likely that De Forest's recollections of work on the telegraphone, parts of which are independently collaborated elsewhere, are generally accurate; a slightly different account, based on Elwell's autobiography, does not mention the connection between the Audion and the telegraphone. See Thorn L. Mayes, Wireless Communication in the United States: the Earlv Development of American Radio Operating Companies (East Greenwich, R.I.: The New England Wireless and Steam Museum, Inc., 1989), 52-54; Maye's pamphlet on the history of Federal, although more difficult to find, was published as The Federal Telegraph Company. 1909-1920 (N.p.: The Antique Wireless Association, 1979). A copy is held in the Perham Foundation collection, Palo Alto, California; also see Jane Morgan, Electronics in the West: the First Fifty Years (Palo Alto, Calif.: National Press Books, 1967), 44-67; C. V. Logwood, "High Speed Radio Telegraphy." The Electrical Experimenter 4 (June 1916): 99. 123Aitken, Continuous Wave. 234-235; De Forest, Father. 296-298; Lee De Forest, "The Audion Detector and Amplifier," The Electrician 72 (21 November 1913):287-288; Logwood, "Telegraphy," 99. 124Aitken, Continuous Wave. 242-244; De Forest, Father. 296-297. 12^EIwell was introduced to Poulsen by Lindley some time earlier. Aitken, Continuous Wave. 98; De Forest, Father. 304-306. 126Aitken, Continuous Wave. 283; "Navy Takes Over Sayville Station," The New York Times 9 July 1915, p. 1. 127"Germans Treble Wireless Plant," ibid., 23 April 1915, p. 1; "Twenty or More Americans Lost When Germans Sink the Armenian; Navy May Seize Sayville Wireless," ibid. 1 July 1915, p. 1; "Deny Comment on Wireless Charges," ibid., 3 July 1915, p. 2; "Sayville Messages Refused by Censor," ibid., 2 July 1915, 2; "Germans Defy Wireless Censorship with New Invention, Federal Agents Hear," ibid., 7 July 1915, p. 1. 128E. David Cronon, ed., The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels. 1913-1921 (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 100-101. 129lbid.; "Nation to Take Over Tuekerton Plant," New York Times. 6 September 1914, p. 14; "Opens Wireless Today," ibid., 10 September 1914, p. 6; "Navy Takes Over Sayville Radio," ibid., 9 July 1915, p. 1. 13uHigh frequency biasing is a technique in magnetic recording which is still universally used today. It involves recording an inaudible high-frequency signal along with the normal signal. The exact process is extremely complex and not fully understood by engineers, but the result is that background noise and signal distortion are reduced. U.S. Patent 1,640,881 (30 August 1927), filed 26 March 1921. Wendell L. Carlson and Glenn W. Carpenter, "Radio Telegraph System". 131 Renewal of Letters Patent. 25. 1 12 132T. J. Malloy, "A Magnetic Recorder." Electronics 11 (January 1938): 30-32. 113 133charles Gibbons, "Joplin Man Invented Unique Device in 1937." Joplin Globe 20 September 1987; Marti Attoun, "Inventor Reminisces About Wire Recorder," Joplin Globe. 3 March 1991. 134"'-r eiegraphone' is Demonstrated Here," Joplin Globe 22 September 1937, n.p. 135s. Russell Irish, Jr. "Magnetic Recording of Sound." The Cornell Engineer 5 (November 1939): 26; Curtis Hillyer, Jr., "The Development of a Magnetic Tape Recorder," (M.S. thesis, MIT, 1938), 58. 136Marti Attoun, "Inventor Reminisces," ibid. 137A 1932 article described how the networks had broadcast from a submarine in Long Island Sound, from an airplane in flight, from the site of an erupting volcano on Hawaii, and Niagara Falls. American and British students held a long-distance debate on the air, and the sounds of rattlesnakes and lions were broadcast from zoos. In December of 1931, Marconi's first broadcast was celebrated with a 15-country worldwide linkup. "Broadcasters Roam the Earth in Search of Novelty Acts," New York Times 24 January 1932, p. 14. 138Fioor plans of major network studios in Hollywood California and New York City show how the architecture was dominated by large studio spaces and radio equipment rooms. Only a very small room in the NBC Hollywood studio, for example, was devoted to "reference recording" for archive purposes. The schematic diagram of the studio's audio system did not even show a connection for recording. C. A. Rackey and R. F. Shuetz, "NBC, Hollywood." Electronics 12 (May 1939); 12- 13. 139Biattner's involvement in magnetic recording was brief but significant. He acquired the technology from a German inventor named Curt Stille, who in turn purchased a telegraphone from the Danish telegraphone company in 1903. Stille's improved wire recorder, which included an electronic amplifier, was the basis of the Dailygraph dictating machine marketed in Europe (with marginal success) by the German company Vox. Blattner synchronized the machine to motion pictures and tried to market the system in England without success. Apparently the only customer for machine was the BBC. Blattner's career has been documented by Charles W. Lafferty in "The Early Development of Magnetic Sound Recording in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures, 1928-1950" (Ph.D. Diss., Northwestern 1981), 27-60. 140ln 1934, the British Marconi Company, a radio manufacturer, purchased the British manufacturing rights to the Stille machines following Blattner's business failure and suicide. The first Marconi-Stille machines were a collaborative effort between BBC and Marconi engineers. Edward Pawley, BBC Engineering 1922-1972 (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1972), 131-132, 180-182. 141 Craig Walsh, "Photoelectric Tape Recording." Electronics 13 (May 1940): 16-18; W. E. Schrage, "Play-back Recording Methods for Broadcasting," Electronics 8 (June 1935): 179; Magnetic and the Philips Miller system represent only the tip of an iceberg of sound recording technologies. Several companies in the 20th century manufactured phonograph recorders using plastic tape or wax-coated strips of metal or paper. The Fonda Corporation of New York, for example, marketed an endless loop, phonograph-type tape recorder in the early 1940s. See "Cellophane Tape Recorder," Electronics 17 (March 1944): 146-147; A similar recorder was invented in Germany. "Reich Device Reproduces Recorded Sound at Once," New York Times 21 November 1937, p 38; a similar tape recorder is mentioned in "18 Hours of Radio Recorded on a Spool," ibid., 21 June 1936, sec. IX, p. 10. 142David Edgar Wiegand, "A Study of Magnetic Recording," (Ph.D. Diss., University of Illinois, 1935), 7, 41. 143Hillyer, "Magnetic Tape Recorder," 7. 144"Machines Count Radio Listeners," Business Week. 25 February 1939: 36-37; "Looking Back, Looking Ahead--With an NC Pioneer," American Machinist 121 (March 1977): 46-47. 145Malloy, "A Magnetic Recorder," 31. 146Wilcox-Gay corporation, later a manufacturer of wire and tape recorders, pioneered in the revitalized field of home recording in 1939 with the introduction of the Recordio. Wilcox-Gay was founded in Charlotte, Michigan by Chester Wilcox and Paul Gay as a manufacturer of radio receivers and phonographs. During the 1939-1940 season, the company reported that it had sold about 25,000 Recordios at $74-175 dollars apiece. The machines recorded at 78 rpm onto 2.5 minute recording blanks, which sold for 12 1/2 cents apiece. "Home Record-Maker has Arrived," Business Week. 18 May 1940, 48-50. 114 CHAPTER THREE: AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY AND MAGNETIC RECORDING, 1900-1945 Introduction Valdemar Poulsen left a lasting impression in the scientific and technological communities through the spectacular demonstrations of the telegraphone at the Paris International Exposition of 1900, yet his clever invention did not immediately become a commercial success. The commercial possibilities for the telegraphone seemed quite promising during the first two decades of this century, yet American Telegraphone failed to exploit them. Subsequent chapters explore the fact that some of those possibilities were closed off during the 1920s, but inventors and certain large corporations remained interested in magnetic recording technology even after the stunning failure of the American Telegraphone Company. Among these, the most important by far was the American Telephone and Telegraph, American Telegraphone's erstwhile suitor. AT&T had for the most part ignored American Telegraphone, although the company's engineers had paid close attention to technical developments in the field of magnetic recording. By the later 1920s, with American Telegraphone clearly slipping beneath the waves of bankruptcy, AT&T was entering a period of intensified interest in sound recording technologies. Over the course of a decade, the telephone company would become the center of magnetic recording research and development in the United States. 115 This chapter seeks to explain how AT&T's peculiar style of business and particularly its style of research, combined with its domination in electrical manufacturing had the effect of marginalizing magnetic recording technology, pushing it to the unprofitable periphery of the commercial world. Which is not to say that the telephone company ignored this technology or thought it worthless. Rather, AT&T's intense interest in all kinds of sound recording technology brought magnetic recording to the center of attention at the premier American electrical research facility, Bell Telephone Laboratories. It was AT&T's vision for this technology, its marketing strategy, which was the root of a process of marginalization. By the end of the 1930s, the technology which began as the telegraphone had been transmogrified into a range of new and highly specialized devices which AT&T hoped to sell. This ironic combination of marginalization and centralization put magnetic recording in a limbo from which it did not emerge until after World War II. The Telegraphone and Telephone Research The formation of the original Bell Telephone company in the 1870s antedated the invention of the phonograph and the magnetic recorder by only a few years, and it could be said that these technologies "grew up" together. Alexander Bell's early "broadcasts" of phonograph records over the telephone lines, Thomas Edison's efforts to use the telephone to drive a phonograph recorder, and the telephone recording capabilities of the original telegraphone seemed to indicate that sound recording and telephony would somehow be used together. But as AT&T developed into the premier American telephone service provider and equipment manufacturer after the turn of the century, it began to appear that 116 sound recording would not have a place in the new communications system. Only in the late 1920s, when magnetic recording was improved, when new technologies (in particular electronics and automatic switching) appeared, and when AT&T's corporate goals were redefined did sound recording, and in particular magnetic recording, begin to make sense in the context of AT&T's telephone system. The reasons for the divergence of the telephone and sound recording were specific to the corporate history of AT&T. Alexander Graham Bell and a group of investors formed their first company to exploit Bell's telephone patents. The group attempted to sell their patents outright to Western Union in 1876 only to be spurned, and then decided to manufacture and sell telephones themselves. The period before the turn of the century saw enthusiastic efforts to stimulate the formation of telephone Operating Companies across the country. These firms would supply telephone service under license and, hopefully, purchase the necessary telephones from the mother company. During the course of its first few months of operation, the company expanded rapidly and soon the investors felt compelled to raise new capital and bring in new managers. Theodore Vail, formerly a manager with a railway mail service, was hired to lead the new firm. The company reorganized as the Bell Telephone Company of Massachusetts in 1878 in order to issue new stock. Late that year, additional capital was raised by selling several other large blocks of stock and admitting two new members to the board of directors. This was accompanied by the creation of the National Bell Company in early 1879. Rapid expansion led Vail to believe that new arrangements would have to be 117 made for the manufacture of telephones and switchboards, so several outside companies were offered contracts to make the patented equipment.147 The company eventually acquired Western Electric, a competing manufacturer of telephones and switchboards under non-Bell patents, located in Chicago. Western Electric became the manufacturing division of Bell, a role which it maintains today. This acquisition did not solve Bell's equipment problems, however. The parent, for example, could not completely enforce its quality control standards upon Western Electric. Still, Bell began to put into place a standardized telephone technology in hopes that the interconnection of formerly independent networks, and especially the long-distance connection of major cities would thus be made easier.148 The company expanded its research efforts after about 1909, expanding its Engineering Department at first and later establishing a larger Research Branch. From the turn of the century through the 1910s, Bell engineers concentrated on solving problems of quality control in telephone manufacture, improving manual switchboards, and increasing the efficiency of long distance transmission. After 1909, the Research Branch was also increasingly drawn into vacuum tube research, primarily for use in long distance service but later also for radio telephony.149 Long distance transmission would emerge as both an important corporate activity and the nemesis of those who would try to incorporate sound recording into the evolving Bell system. By the turn of the century, the development of a device called the loading coil had made long distance calls more feasible and reliable.150 Although coast-to-coast calling was not yet possible, distances in the thousands of miles were now within reach. At about 118 this time, the first automatic switchboards were invented, some by inventors outside the Bell companies. AT&T began to see automatic switching as the best way to deal with the rapidly increasing volume of telephone business, and increasingly turned to research in this field. Automatic switching devices designed to decrease the time spent in establishing connections, maximize the operating efficiency of the telephone network, and eliminate human operators evolved rapidly after the mid-1920s, and by 1940 almost all medium and large size towns were equipped with dial telephones and the complementary automatic switches after the early 1930s. The Telegraphone and AT&T Before 1925 In the context of corporate emphasis on long distance calling, technical standardization, and automation, the American Telegraphone Company first courted AT&T. During the period between about 1900 and 1925, AT&T managers and engineers considered the possibilities of the telegraphone several times, although the nature and intensity of their interest varied widely over the years. At the end of this period, however, AT&T still did not see a future for the telegraphone in the telephone network. The announcement of the telegraphone and the attempt to attract investors in the United States brought the telephone company directly into contact with the new technology. Between 1900 and 1903, AT&T executives were involved in negotiations with the various brokers of Poulsen's United States patent rights. In every case, AT&T declined these offers for reasons which are not very clear; perhaps they simply were not interested in manufacturing the telegraphone.151 119 Still, the leaders of the telephone company were interested in and admiring of the new recorder. Its recording quality seemed superior to the phonograph in some ways. It had none of the rough hissing caused by the grainy recording medium of Edison's phonograph, and unlike the phonograph it could be coupled directly to the telephone to record from a distance. Frank Jewett, then Chief Engineer at Western Electric, noted in 1921 that "the telegraphone is, from a physical standpoint, so striking in its method of operation, that it is difficult to convince one's self that it has not important possibilities."152 AT&T purchased several telegraphones over the course of the two decades. One of the devices was put through its paces in 1901 by a senior engineer, who evaluated it thoroughly: the verdict was inconclusive. He reported that the device worked, and worked well, but whether it had a place in the telephone network was an entirely different question. Telephone recording was an obvious possibility, but AT&T's leaders at first did not perceive any demand for telephone recording. Still, there were several internal discussions over the years about obtaining rights to the telegraphone, if for no other reason than to protect the company's future stake in telephone recording should demand arise. The last one took place in the 1920s, at about the time the original Poulsen patents, granted between 1900 and 1905, were set to expire. The company again considered purchasing the rights to the telegraphone outright, if the price were right. Apparently no further action was taken, although AT&T looked into the Poulsen patent situation once more in 1924.153 Simply put, AT&T's engineers and managers believed that the telegraphone did not fit well into the emerging telephone system as the 120 company defined and shaped it before 1920. Because it could not compensate for weak long distance signals, the telegraphone was ill-suited for use by a company for which the promotion of long distance calling was a primary goal. Still, Western Electric might have manufactured telegraphones or sold them under license for local use. However, the recorder was probably too expensive to be leased to average consumers, and such a plan was made more unlikely by its apparent need for frequent maintenance. Although it might have been leased to businesses for internal use, AT&T apparently did not discuss such an application in the 1920s, perhaps because at that time the company did not manufacture many items not directly related to telephone service. The additional uses of the telegraphone suggested by its promoters raised other objections. The recorder could be used, it was said, to save money on long distance telephone or telegraph calls by transmitting a message at high speed and recording it at the far end for replay at a slower, intelligible speed. AT&T considered this on several occasions between 1900 and 1930. Unfortunately, neither the telegraph nor telephone networks of the day could transmit high frequency signals, making high speed voice or data communications difficult. At the turn of the century, telephone lines were good only to a few thousand hertz, while conventional long distance telegraph lines like those of Western Union could handle no more than the equivalent of a few hertz. An additional factor to consider was AT&T's effort to standardize telephone technology. AT&T's history during its first century is a story of almost constant change in transmission and switching technology, but a trend toward a single standard kind of "subscriber" technology (i.e. the telephone itself). The 121 company offered ordinary customers only one type of telephone service, standard voice service, and began to discourage the attachment of equipment made by outside firms, including both telephones and innovative new communications technologies, such a facsimile and teletype. When new services were offered before 1940, almost always offered to businesses only, the new services usually represented AT&T's own technical developments, not innovations from outside firms. This fact reflects the telephone company's focus on standardization and the long-range planning for technical change. For a number of reasons, then, recording devices simply did not fit AT&T's plan. Magnetic Recording and AT&T after 1925 Some of the technical problems associated with adapting the telegraphone to the telephone network would be solved during the 1920s and 1930s, but since by that time American Telegraphone was defunct and could no longer act as a booster for telephone recording, there was little pressure on AT&T to do so. Soon, however, the telephone company's own engineering efforts in seemingly unrelated fields, such as automatic switching and electronic signal amplification, revived AT&T's investigations of magnetic recording. Further, Western Electric moved into non-telephone fields in the late 1920s, creating an atmosphere in which research and development in sound recording technology flourished. From the early 1930s through the end of World War II, Bell Laboratories conducted a systematic research program to develop a commercially practical magnetic tape recorder. It was in this period that AT&T began to take an active role in defining how magnetic recording technology would develop in America, and a corporate 122 conception of the "legitimate" uses for sound recording in conjunction with the telephone system began to appear. Magnetic recording research, now undertaken at the successor to the Research Branch, known as Bell Telephone Laboratories, was part of wide-ranging investigations of sound generation, transmission and recording which ultimately led to a series of commercially significant new technologies. In the late 1920s and through the 1940s, AT&T explored several distinct types of sound recording technologies, including phonographic, photographic, and magnetic methods. From the beginning, Bell Labs researchers matched recording problems to one of several existing recording technologies, on the basis of a belief that each method of recording had peculiar advantages and disadvantages and that a special place in the telephone system might be found which fit each one's advantages. To examine all of Bell Laboratories' sound recording projects in detail is beyond the scope of this project, but magnetic recording serves as a good case study of how research problems and corporate goals affected technological development. On the face of things, sound recording other than the "answering machine" may not seem to fit in naturally with telephone service. In fact, recording was more closely related to telephone service than it appeared to outsiders in the 1930s and 1940s. Long distance transmission remained problematical even after the implementation of electronic amplifiers, and researchers had to devise new ways to test the degradation of signals over long wires. Even in local service, telephones reproduced sound so poorly that any defective telephone, switch, or cable could lead to unintelligible signals. Research in the recording of electrical signals gradually led to a greater understanding of the problems associated with manufacturing and maintaining 123 MICROPHONES, RECEIVERS, AMPLIFIERS, AND OTHER EQUIPMENT USED IN TELEPHONE SERVICE. MUCH OF THIS RESEARCH ALSO CONTRIBUTED TO IMPROVED MEASURING TECHNIQUES AND TO ACOUSTICAL THEORY. IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ESPECIALLY, THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF ACOUSTICS AND OTHER SOUND-RELATED STUDIES TO AT&T WAS REFLECTED IN THE HEAVY AT&T REPRESENTATION IN THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA. ALTHOUGH THIS INVOLVEMENT IN ACOUSTICS RESEARCH PERSISTS EVEN TODAY, BY THE LATER 1920S IT WAS ALREADY BECOMING THE SOURCE OF MARKETABLE PRODUCTS.154 BELL RESEARCHERS AFTER WORLD WAR ONE FIRST INVESTIGATED PHONOGRAPHIC RECORDING IN AN EFFORT TO PRODUCE A MACHINE THAT MIGHT EITHER TRANSMIT OUTGOING MESSAGES (IN ORDER TO REPLACE PART OF A HUMAN OPERATOR'S DUTY) OR RECORD INCOMING MESSAGES. THE RESULTING DESIGN WORKED IN CONJUNCTION WITH NEWLY DEVELOPED AUTOMATIC SWITCHING EQUIPMENT AND WAS INTENDED FOR POSSIBLE USE IN CENTRAL SWITCHING OFFICES. THEY EXPLOITED A NEW RECORDING METHOD THAT UTILIZED AN ELECTROMECHANICAL RECORDING "CUTTER" THAT COULD BE LINKED DIRECTLY TO ELECTRONICALLY AMPLIFIED TELEPHONE SIGNALS. THIS TECHNIQUE WAS SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT THAN THE ACOUSTIC, NON- ELECTRIC RECORDING USED UNIVERSALLY IN THE COMMERCIAL PHONOGRAPH INDUSTRY. AT&T MANAGEMENT WAS ESPECIALLY ATTRACTED TO THE POSSIBILITY OF CENTRAL STATION ANNOUNCEMENT EQUIPMENT BECAUSE IT PROMISED GREATER AUTOMATION. TELEPHONE OPERATORS SPENT MUCH OF THEIR TIME REPEATING STANDARD MESSAGES, SUCH AS NOTIFYING CALLERS THAT LINES WERE OUT OF SERVICE. A CENTRAL STATION ANNOUNCER USING SOUND RECORDINGS MIGHT BE USED TO AUTOMATE THESE TASKS AND REDUCE THE NEED TO OPERATORS. RECORDING FUNCTIONS MIGHT ALSO BE ADDED TO ALLOW CALLERS TO LEAVE MESSAGES AT THE CENTRAL STATION. PROPOSED DESIGNS USED ORDINARY PHONOGRAPH DISKS FOR ANNOUNCING PURPOSES, 124 or soft wax-coated disks for recording, and were completely automatic. These centralized call recorder/announcers apparently never saw commercial use, but Bell Labs engineers suggested a number of possible applications, such as a central office "voice telegram" service.155 A number of technical problems made the phonographic system unsuitable for telephone service, at least in the eyes of Bell Labs researchers. As a call recorder, the device was limited by the need to change disks regularly. As an call announcer, it was limited by the short life span of its records. While the technology of "electrical recording" was rejected within the Bell System, it was successfully marketed outside the company to the manufacturers of phonograph records and motion pictures. The phonograph industry adopted electrical recording as a marketing strategy in the later 1920s, perhaps in response to the growing popularity of radio. By the end of the 1930s virtually all phonograph records were electrical recordings. The motion picture industry used this same technology to create the first "talkies," although phonograph- based sound was used for only a few years before being replaced by a new type of "photographic" sound recording. AT&T continued to develop phonograph technology only until 1934.156 Photographic sound recording was another technology emerging from Bell Labs at about the same time during the 1920s. In this method, electrical telephone signals were fed to a "light valve," which emitted light with an intensity that varied in proportion to the variations in the signal. As a photographic film was passed rapidly before the light, it captured a record of the original signal. After developing the film, the original sound could be recreated by passing the film between a light source and a photo-sensitive vacuum tube, 125 that is, a special tube that responded to light and variations in light intensity. The output of the tube was an electrical signal that varied in proportion to the amount of light it detected through the film, and after amplification the signal could be fed to a loudspeaker to reproduce sound. The advantages of this system to AT&T were that long strips of film could be used to produce a record that lasted much longer than even a large phonograph record. This new technique was more successfully adapted for use in call announcers than was the phonograph. However, because of the extra time and effort involved in developing photographic film, Bell Laboratories engineers did not recommend using it for call recording. Instead, they developed film-based call announcers for exactly the same purposes that they had suggested earlier. This, time, these machines were actually manufactured and sold to the various Operating Companies.157 The call announcer exemplified AT&T's conceptualization of the legitimate uses of photographic recording, and, more importantly for this study, was a portent for later developments in magnetic recording. It was an automatic device that used short recordings on loops of photographic film, and its main application was in the automation of operator tasks related to automatic telephone switching. From the consumer's point of view, the shift to automatic switching involved merely the substitution of dial telephones for the older sets, but the hidden parts of the new system were very complex. In order to make the new system work, AT&T engineers not only had to design automatic switching devices, but also ways to integrate the new equipment with the old, in order to introduce the system first in large cities and then into rural areas. Now when the dial system was in place in larger cities in the early 1930s, it was frequently 126 necessary for rural or small town manual switchboard operators to accept calls from automatic exchanges. A human operator could not decipher the electrical pulses with which the automatic switch used in attempting to establish a connection. Several generations of translating devices were developed to handle this problem. The first of these was the Call Indicator, a device that translated dial pulses into a digital readout on an operator's switchboard. The device was abandoned, however, apparently because it could not be used to accept long distance calls. In 1930 the company designed a call announcer which could store sound recordings of a human voice pronouncing the nine digits plus zero. The call announcer stored "dialed number" codes and then activated individual belts of sound film in the correct order to announce the complete telephone number over the telephone lines to the operator.158 The film loops used in the call announcer tended to wear out with continued use. However, since the device was installed in central stations, it could be conveniently serviced. The machine was appealing to AT&T management for a number of non-technical reasons. In the first place, it made use of a technology refined and developed by the company's research division, Bell Laboratories. It also fit nicely into AT&T's drive for automation, making the difficult transition from operator-assisted to fully automatic switching somewhat easier. Photographic sound recording also proved to be marketable outside the telephone system. Almost as soon as the motion picture industry had converted to the AT&T phonographic or "sound-on-disk" system, Western Electric began hawking its photographic sound system in Hollywood. In 127 contrast to the phonographic technique, the photographic or "sound-on-film" system featured a soundtrack placed directly on the edge of the motion picture film. Reproduction was accomplished through adding a photosensitive pick-up head to the projector. Sound-on-film was a big success, and once more Bell Labs seemed justified in spending large sums of money to develop a technology that to many outsiders may have seemed only marginally related to telephone service. The successful commercialization of both the phonographic and photographic techniques of sound recording developed by AT&T researchers may have helped to renew interest in magnetic recording after 1929.159 However, it is difficult to know with any certainty why research resumed. While there is an abundance of information about the technology developed at Bell Labs, it is often impossible to learn much about the motivations for or ultimate outcome of any particular project. Almost always, Bell Labs records consist of interim project descriptions. The justification for research and the internal struggles that often accompanied research projects are often entirely absent from the corporate correspondence and technical "file cases" (or technical records). Thus any discussion of Bell Labs research that addresses issues of importance to historians is bound to contain a high level of conjecture.160 Clearly, though, a key to understanding magnetic recording research at Bell Labs in the 1930s is to put it into the context of other technical activities there. The most obvious research context into which magnetic recording falls is, as we have seen, phonographic and photographic sound recording projects of the 1920s and early 1930s. Magnetic recording was closely connected to these ongoing projects, and in some ways inherited the legacy of their failure to be 128 integrated into the telephone system. Though magnetic recording was developed with non-telephone applications in mind, it was also seen as the most relevant recording technology to existing Bell System needs. Among these perceived needs, the most pressing involved the continuing evolution of switching systems. Automatic switching is an important type of technology to consider when evaluating the technical context of magnetic recording, since all AT&T sound recording projects initially had strong links to technological developments in automatic switching. AT&T's automatic switching technologies grew much more sophisticated after the mid-1930s, when new technologies like electronics and semiconductors were applied to switching and entirely new systems like the high speed "crossbar" switch were developed. Magnetic recording and automatic switching reached new levels of sophistication by the early 1930s, and the two began to merge. The following section summarizes developments in switching technology, a necessary digression given the unfamiliar technology of automatic switchgear. Internal Needs: Magnetic Recording in the Context of Switching Many technologies developed by AT&T after the turn of the century reveal the company's desire to create a standardized and automated network of interconnected telephone exchanges. The company worked arduously to standardize the basic technology of the telephone itself and its related wiring in the period before the 1920s. After that, AT&T also sought to replace the thousands of operators employed in telephone offices with automatic switchboards. Insofar as the average American was concerned, the last major change in standards related to the telephone before about the 1960s was the 129 introduction of the dial telephone in the early 1930s (which was part of the introduction of automatic switching), but the invisible part of the network changed continuously. Switching devices were much more difficult to standardize than telephones and wires, in part because of the ever-expanding scale of operations, and in fact the development of successive generations of increasingly more sophisticated switching machines continues uninterrupted to the present day. The first generation of switching machines were controlled directly by pulses from dial telephones. Rotating the dial of a telephone sends telegraph like pulses to the central office. There, the pulses act to make a connection between the caller and the person called. In one early version of the technology, dial pulses acted directly on the automatic switch, each dialed digit in succession transferring the call from place to place until finally a ring signal could be sent to a particular desired telephone. These "step-by-step" machines, so called because they completed a connection in stages, were sold to smaller communities for many years and are still in place in some small towns. They were relatively inexpensive, expandable, and fairly reliable, although they slow and difficult to expand to a scale suitable for large cities. AT&T developed other technologies for communities where the density of population demanded larger switching offices. In the late 1930s and 1940s, many communities were serviced by "Panel" equipment. The key innovation in the Panel switch was the use of "common control" devices. These were essentially simple computer-like devices that accepted pulses from telephones, made decisions about call routing, and established the connection between caller and called. This indirect method of controlling the switching machine allowed a flexibility not possible 130 with the directly-controlled step-by-step equipment. Although the Panel switch was superseded, the concept of common control dominated all later developments in AT&T switching. Faster, more reliable, and more flexible switching equipment was introduced in the 1950s in the form of the "Crossbar" switch. By this time, the switch and the equipment used to control it were as distinguishable as a modern computer is from its software. Crossbar switching was not only an attempt to address the continued expansion in the number of calls placed in ever-larger cities, but also allowed the telephone company to offer new incentives to use the telephone. When combined with new equipment specially designed to automate long distance calls, callers could now "dial direct" between most large cities using the new system of "area codes." The Crossbar switch was originally an electromechanical device, but like the computer it was soon transformed into an electronic device. By the late 1950s, faster and more compact electronic assemblies were incorporated into switching equipment. The use of electronics helped AT&T handle the ongoing problem of increased telephone traffic, and additionally helped eliminate some of the few non-automated operator tasks. The process of call switching was becoming more and more invisible; no longer were operators always needed to complete a call, and even the pause and series of audible "clicks" which electromechanical switchgear made were disappearing. Outwardly simpler, the process of call switching had become immensely complex. AT&T contributed to this complexity by offering new services, taking advantage of the new, "smarter" switches. Built into early electronic switchgear, for example, so-called convenience features like "call waiting." or "call forwarding." 131 There were several roles for recording devices in the new switching systems. As switching began to replace some of the more complex tasks of human operators, Bell Labs engineers sought ways to automate the voice, in a sense, of their operators. The new switching equipment, by making new telephone services feasible, also opened up many new opportunities to use call announcers. Finally, by the 1950s, electronics found a permanent place in switching, and devices were sought which could record new kinds of information, in particular digital data. Common control devices in the electronic era became stored-program computers, and magnetic recording played a central role in data storage for these computers. The history of magnetic recording at Bell Labs after 1930 is much more than just the story of researchers looking for a way to duplicate the successes of their phonographic and sound-on-film systems. As we return to the detailed examination of magnetic recording development at Bell Labs, we must keep switching in mind as we include it in all of the other factors related to AT&T's multi-faceted sound recording projects. Technical Aspects of Bell Lab's Tape Recorders. 1930-40 While Western Electric experimented with the telegraphone into the late 1910s before abandoning it in the early 1920s, in early 1930 work with it began once again at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Clarence N. Hickman and Rudolph Mallina161 were the two figures most prominently related to this research in its initial phase. Most of Mallina's laboratory activities are not documented, although his importance is suggested by the fact that he was the author of several papers on the subject of sound recording including magnetic 132 recording. His publications also indicate that he was probably more active in photographic sound recording, the technology used in making sound motion pictures.162 Hickman on the other hand left an laboratory notebook which outlines some of the technical accomplishments of the magnetic recording research team with which both men worked. Hickman began his work at AT&T in the laboratory of Christopher Wente, AT&T's noted acoustics researcher, on the first day of January, 1930. He obtained one of the several telegraphones collected by the company in previous years and began tinkering. His instructions from Wente were to develop a sound delay machine, a tone synthesizer, and a call announcer system based on telegraphone technology. Wente's instructions reflected his own research in acoustics, Bell Lab's inventions in other fields of sound recording, and AT&T's careful monitoring of the research of other companies. In 1929, Bell Labs had sent Rudolph Mallina to Europe to visit the laboratories of electrical manufacturing firms including the Blattnerphone Company in England and AEG in Germany. Both these companies were actively engaged in magnetic recording research or manufacture, and the Bell Labs Apparatus Department purchased examples (or tried to--it is not known from the records) of all available equipment for study.163 It is not clear what knowledge Hickman brought with him to his assignment, but he evidently had some experience in the field of magnetic theory. One of his first modifications to the telegraphone, for example, was to substitute a larger diameter steel wire for the original thin wire. He correctly observed that the thinner wire was reaching magnetic saturation and that a larger wire might allow a stronger signal to be recorded. But Hickman's 133 KNOWLEDGE WAS BASED ON EXISTING ELECTROMAGNETIC DEVICES, SUCH AS ELECTRIC MOTORS AND DYNAMOS, WHICH DID NOT PROVIDE MUCH INSIGHT INTO THE COMPLEX PHYSICS OF MAGNETIC RECORDING. DURING THE EARLY WEEKS OF 1930 HICKMAN (AND, PRESUMABLY, OTHER RESEARCHERS IN THE LABORATORY)164 TRIED OTHER WAYS TO IMPROVE THE OUTPUT LEVEL AND SOUND QUALITY OF THE TELEGRAPHONE BY USING DIFFERENT RECORDING HEADS AND MODERN MICROPHONES. WHEN WORK BEGAN ON AN ENTIRELY NEW RECORDER, THE TEAM ABANDONED THE WIRE EMPLOYED BY THEIR TELEGRAPHONES AND SWITCHED TO STEEL TAPE. ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT CLEAR WHY THEY SWITCHED, THEY MAY HAVE SURMISED THAT A WIDE TAPE WOULD "HOLD" A STRONGER SIGNAL THAN A THIN WIRE, OR THAT TAPE WOULD BE LESS APT TO SNARL. INTRIGUINGLY, THEY DID NOT IMMEDIATELY EXPERIMENT WITH ELECTRONIC AMPLIFIERS, WHICH BY 1930S WERE READILY AVAILABLE.165 WITHIN A YEAR, A PROTOTYPE RECORDER USING NEW HEADS AND A CUSTOM MANUFACTURED TAPE WAS READY FOR DEMONSTRATION TO CHRISTOPHER WENTE AND H.C. HARRISON, ANOTHER BELL LABS RESEARCHER WHO HAD BEEN INVOLVED IN PHONOGRAPH RESEARCH. THE DEMONSTRATION IMPRESSED BOTH MEN AND HICKMAN SEEMED ENCOURAGED. A LATER DEMONSTRATION WAS MADE FOR HARVEY FLETCHER, AN ACOUSTICS RESEARCH DIRECTOR, WHO SEEMED IMPRESSED BY THE LACK OF BACKGROUND NOISE INHERENT IN MAGNETIC RECORDING AS COMPARED TO THE PHONOGRAPH. THE PROTOTYPE MACHINE WAS CONCEIVED AS AN AUTOMATIC TELEPHONE ANSWERING MACHINE, AND A MEMO WRITTEN BY RUDOLPH MALLINA OUTLINING ITS TECHNICAL FEATURES SUGGESTED THAT "IT WOULD BE WELL WORTH WHILE TO BUILD A MODEL OF A MESSAGE RECORDER, AND DETERMINE ITS USEFULNESS BY TRYING IT OUT IN VARIOUS OFFICES AND HOMES. (FIGURE 3.1) 166 134 Figure 3.1: C. N.. Hickman's' Proposed Telephone Answering Machine, 1931 Bell Labs' first magnetic recording devices were conceived as home or office automatic telephone answering machines.(File Case 33251, AT&T Bell Laboratories Archive, Warren, New Jersey) 135 1931 saw Hickman's machines steadily improve in the areas of frequency response, signal strength, and subjective sound quality. As Hickman and company began to realize that the real barriers to improved performance lay in head and tape designs, they soon reached the boundaries of physical theory and subsequently began to contribute new knowledge to it. At the same time, the range of variables with which Hickman and company experimented began to narrow, indicating that the team believed it knew the critical problems. Research on head designs, for example, became focused on "longitudinal" recording using laminated Permalloy structures with carefully controlled recording gaps.167 Whereas the telegraphone had used a very simple iron core wound with wire as its recording/replay head, Bell researchers discovered that very precisely-made heads built up from iron laminations could retain the "details" of a signal such as its higher frequencies and reduce its level of distortion. The "longitudinal" recording technique used a two-piece head with pole pieces lying on either side of the tape and slightly offset, so that the magnetic field passed through the tape at an angle. Bell Laboratories heads of this type used a "clamshell" design, so that the tape could be conveniently placed between the pole pieces and then the two halves snapped together. Permalloy laminations were commonly used for building up the cores of transformers and allowed high saturation levels relative to overall physical size. While the core helped direct magnetic flow through the tape where it was needed, a core with a high saturation levels could also handle higher signal levels and make a strong recording. Laminated Permalloy heads were thus compact and effective. But while transformer and even phonograph recording 136 head practice contributed to research on magnetic recording heads, existing theories and technologies were of little help in refining magnetic recorders. The exact interaction between the recording heads and the medium could not be predicted and was impossible to measure with existing instruments. Similar complexities applied to the steel alloy tapes used by Bell researchers. While almost any steel could be magnetized impressions, the complex waveforms of a signal from a microphone or telephone posed difficult problems. The very act of making a steel wire by the drawing process, or a steel tape by rolling a wire flat changed the magnetic properties of the original material. In fact, the basic magnetic characteristics changed with any mechanical or thermal processing of the metal. Thus, once Bell researchers decided on desirable properties for a steel tape, they had to discover ways to make it in quantity. Research now included the development of manufacturing processes, especially a way to make large quantities of usable tape. Work on the improvement of manufacturing processes, intended to improve the product and to lower its cost, continued through the 1940s and constituted a significant part of the total research effort. Between 1937 and 1940, for example, engineers constructed new high-speed rolling mills designed to make magnetic recording tape from wire at a reduced cost, perhaps 1/10 of the original tapes.168 Between 1930 and about 1934, Hickman tried a number of different steels including chromium- and chrome-nickel steels, before settling on cobalt steel, which worked well in conjunction with the new heads.169 Experimentation with new tape formulations continued through the early 1940s, although in later years the effort was to discover a steel that worked better within 137 previously-set performance parameters. By about 1932, the basic head and tape designs were stabilized and the mechanical details of the new machines were given more attention. In early 1932, for example, a new transport was designed to better control the movement of the tape past the heads. The new transport also addressed problems associated with rewinding and "fast forwarding" the tape without creating a backlash. The mechanical designs also reflected new ideas about commercial applications. One important line of research now focused on an endless-loop recorder with which the team hoped to demonstrate the possibilities of magnetic recording for special purposes such as learning foreign languages. A significant amount of effort was also now put into the electronic portions of the recorder. Phonograph research had resulted in electronic equalizers to compensate for the lower sensitivity of the recorder to the highest and lowest frequency ranges. Even under ideal circumstances, the recording heads and the tape itself did not respond equally to different frequencies. Engineers added to the recorder electronic devices specially designed to amplify the highest and lowest frequencies more than the middle-range frequencies. The new "equalized" amplifier gave the recorder a "flat" or consistent response from 100 to 5000 hertz, or roughly the frequency range of the telephone.170 Other evidence of the maturing of steel-tape magnetic recording at Bell Laboratories can be seen in the increasing amount of attention paid to theoretical work after 1937.171 Bell Labs engineer D.E. Wooldridge, who later became part of the Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge computer firm, produced thorough and competent papers on magnetic recording theory which revealed how Bell Labs now had powerful design and measurement tools at hand. On 138 the other hand, Wooldridge's work pertained only to recording on solid metal media using a recording head with pole pieces on opposite sides of a tape. While much of Wooldridge's papers anticipated currently accepted magnetic recording theory, the generality of his theory was not assured, given that much of the research in magnetic recording outside the Bell system used different techniques or recording media.172 In the end, however, AT&T's patent department suppressed the publication of this work for a number of years, noting that the company's international commercial position in this area would not be secure until a number of then-pending patents were granted. Wooldridge's paper eventually appeared in print in 1943.173 It is clear that progress in magnetic recording at Bell Labs even by 1932 was significant. Clarence Hickman, Rudolph Mallina and others successfully overcame some of the problems of design and construction which had plagued magnetic recording since its inception; the problem of amplification, of suitable recording and replaying heads, and the manufacture of the recording medium itself. By the time the first prototype tape recording devices emerged from Bell Laboratories in the early 1930s, AT&T through its Western Electric and ERPI subsidiaries already dominated sound recording markets of all kinds, and tape recording seemed on the verge of commercialization. Yet AT&T's tape recorders never enjoyed such commercial success. Commercialization Efforts in the 1930s and Early 1940s Part of the explanation for this failure is to be found in AT&T's internal policies regarding the application of magnetic recording. The imperatives of 139 THESE POLICIES TENDED TO BE REFLECTED IN RECORDER DESIGNS IN SEVERAL IMPORTANT WAYS. RESEARCHERS REPEATEDLY POINTED OUT THAT MAGNETIC RECORDING'S PRINCIPLE ADVANTAGES OVER OTHER RECORDING METHODS WERE THE RE-USABILITY OF ITS RECORDING MEDIUM AND THE INSTANTANEOUS NATURE OF ITS RECORDING-THE ABSENCE OF A NEED FOR PROCESSING. A SOFT TRANSCRIPTION PHONOGRAPH DISK COULD BE REPLAYED INSTANTLY, BUT AT THE COST OF RAPID DETERIORATION. LONGER-LASTING DUPLICATES HAD TO BE TURNED OUT ON COMMERCIAL RECORD PRESSES, AN EXPENSIVE AND TIME-CONSUMING OPERATION THAT WAS ECONOMICAL ONLY IN LARGE NUMBERS OF DUPLICATES WERE TO BE SOLD. PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM ALSO HAD TO BE CHEMICALLY PROCESSED BEFORE IT COULD BE REPLAYED, SO THAT INSTANTANEOUS REPRODUCTION WAS IMPRACTICAL. IN THE MINDS OF BELL LABS RESEARCHERS, WESTERN ELECTRIC ENGINEERS, AND ERPI MARKETERS, THEN, MAGNETIC RECORDING'S UNIQUE TECHNICAL QUALITIES WOULD SUIT SPECIAL NICHES, AND THOSE NICHES WOULD HAVE TO BE SOUGHT OUT. AT THE SAME TIME, IT SHOULD NOT BE A COMPETITOR TO THE OTHER TYPES OF SOUND RECORDERS ALREADY MARKETED BY WESTERN ELECTRIC AND ITS LICENSEES.174 FINALLY, AT&T POLICY EXCLUDED A POTENTIALLY LUCRATIVE MARKET FOR MAGNETIC RECORDING IN THE FORM OF CUSTOMER-PREMISES TELEPHONE ANSWERING MACHINES. THIS LATTER POINT, AS PROSCRIPTIVE POLICY RATHER THAN A PRESCRIPTIVE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY, DESERVES SOME DETAILED ATTENTION. THE FOREIGN EQUIPMENT ARGUMENT AND ITS CHALLENGERS AT&T'S AVERSION TO "FOREIGN" EQUIPMENT BEING ATTACHED TO ITS LINES WAS ONE JUSTIFICATION GIVEN SINCE THE LATE 19TH CENTURY TO JUSTIFY THE WESTINGHOUSE MONOPOLY ON TELEPHONE DESIGN. FROM THE COMPANY'S PERSPECTIVE, THE STANDARDIZATION OF THE NETWORK DEMANDED SUCH TIGHT CONTROLS. INDEED, TELEPHONE RECORDERS AND OTHER NON-TELEPHONE EQUIPMENT HAVE SOME POTENTIAL 140 to disrupt service, for if they are not properly designed they may for example malfunction and leave a subscriber's line "busy," or inject damaging voltages into the telephone lines. But AT&T leaders also believed that public trust in the secrecy of telephone conversations might be threatened if the possibility existed that calls could be recorded. Ironically, AT&T apparently never bothered to see if such fears were justified. Since the early 1920s AT&T had received regular inquiries as to the possibility of offering a recording device to the public, and as we shall see, the popular reaction to public demonstrations of telephone recorders was almost overwhelmingly positive.175 However, the machines that Bell Laboratories developed were not intended for household use in the manner of modern answering machines. Rather, they were business machines for large organizations, used only for certain types of business and controlled by a human operator who was instructed to make it clear that calls were being recorded. The Advent of Telephone Recorders The automatic telephone call recorder demonstrated by Bell Laboratories during the early 1930s suggested a commercial application that could take advantage of the special technical characteristics of the medium and that could possibly be sold in quantity to the Bell Operating Companies. Such a recorder could be used to make permanent recordings, but the same medium could also be instantly erased and re-used indefinitely. Further, the metal medium did not require processing (as in the phonograph or photographic film) between recording and replaying. While a central-station recorder or a call announcer 141 along the lines of the earlier, phonograph- or sound-on-film central station announcers suggested itself immediately, Bell engineers also proposed an answering machine to be located on the customer's premises. Senior management at AT&T demanded a stop to all development work on call recorders, but only for a very brief time. Their emphatic reaction is surprising given that the idea of a telephone recorder was hardly new. Management had knowledge of the previous generation of Bell Labs' phonographic call recorders and in any case the company already had demonstrated its ability to exclude particular "foreign" equipment from its network. Nevertheless, in the case of the magnetic recorder, AT&T issued new policy guidelines. However, after a few months the company shifted to a position of accommodation, as Bell Labs researchers worked to design a machine that operated according to the parent company's internally-constructed notions of the "legitimate uses" of such a recorder. The record of AT&T's struggle to accommodate the telephone recorder begins in the 1920s. AT&T and particularly Bell Labs frequently entertained demonstrations of new electrical and electronic devices, including many call recorders. On several occasions in the 1920s and 1930s, the company invited inventors, sales agents, or representatives of manufacturing firms to show their telephone answering machines (which utilized phonographic recording) without offering much encouragement. By the mid-1920s, however, the two American leaders in the dictating machine business, Dictaphone and Ediphone corporations, had designed call recorders and had put them on the market. Because of AT&T regulations, the only customers allowed to use these machines were those with private or non-AT&T telephone lines. Some of these 142 LINES, USED "CARRIER" TECHNOLOGY (I.E. TELEPHONIC COMMUNICATION OVER POWER LINES), AND WERE OPERATED BY POWER COMPANIES AND ELECTRIC RAILROADS. POWER LINES WERE NOT SUBJECT TO AT&T OR GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS AS REGARDS TO COMMUNICATIONS. IN OTHER CASES, HOWEVER, THE RECORDERS WERE CONNECTED TO PRIVATE LINES, NOT CONNECTED TO THE REGULAR TELEPHONE NETWORK BUT LEASED FROM AT&T, SO THAT THE USE OF RECORDING DEVICES CHALLENGED THE TELEPHONE COMPANY'S RESTRICTIONS ON THE CONNECTION OF "FOREIGN" EQUIPMENT.176 AT&T WAS INTERESTED ENOUGH IN THESE DEVICES TO INVESTIGATE THE POSSIBILITY OF MANUFACTURING A SIMILAR PRODUCT. IN 1928, FOR EXAMPLE, A COPY OF THE DICTAPHONE "TELECORD" TELEPHONE RECORDER WAS CONSTRUCTED AT BELL LABS, USING A MODIFIED EDIPHONE DICTATION MACHINE. THE COMPANY DECIDED THAT OTHER FIRMS ALREADY HAD THE LEAD IN THIS FIELD, AND THAT THE MARKET WAS PROBABLY TOO SMALL TO BE WORTH PURSUING ANYWAY. NONETHELESS, THE COMPANY ONCE AGAIN ENTERTAINED A DEMONSTRATION OF AN IMPROVED TELECORD THE NEXT YEAR. THE ENGINEER WHO REVIEWED THE MACHINE NOTED ITS TECHNICAL INFERIORITY TO THE BELL LABS SIMULACRUM AND, IN CONTRAST TO THE OPINIONS OF CORPORATE EXECUTIVES, EXPRESSED OPTIMISM ABOUT THE POTENTIAL PROFITABILITY OF TELEPHONE RECORDING.177 YET TELEPHONE RECORDING STRUCK AT&T OFFICIALS AS BEING PROBLEMATICAL IN A NUMBER OF WAYS. IN THE FIRST PLACE, THE RECORDERS ON THE MARKET WERE SIMPLY NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO REPRODUCE THE ALREADY MINIMALLY-UNDERSTANDABLE TELEPHONE SIGNALS UNDER LESS THAN IDEAL CONDITIONS AND ESPECIALLY ON LONG-DISTANCE CIRCUITS. AS EARLY AS 1930 AT&T ANSWERED QUERIES FROM OPERATING COMPANIES REGARDING THE POSSIBILITY OF ALLOWING THE RECORDERS TO BE ATTACHED TO LINES BY RECITING THE ARGUMENT THAT "FOREIGN" EQUIPMENT MADE BY OUTSIDE COMPANIES DID NOT MEET AT&T STANDARDS AND THUS COULD NOT BE ALLOWED. BUT AN INTERNAL 143 statement by AT&T executive Elam Miller summed up the growing concerns over the use of such devices: Among other objections the connection of recording equipment might tend to break down the public's faith in the secrecy of telephone conversations. Our position is and will continue to be that it is highly undesirable to permit recording equipment furnished by others to be connected to telephone lines and we suggest that all requests for such connection be refused.178 From this kind of statement, and from similar ones made by AT&T executives like Bancroft Gherhardi,179 one might deduce that AT&T suppressed the development of the magnetic recorder. However, there is an important distinction to be made between magnetic recording and telephone call recording. Certainly AT&T suppressed the call recorder just as it suppressed many other innovations (see Chapter Two, above). The technology of magnetic recording, however, was not suppressed. As early as 1931, C. N. Hickman's team had constructed an automatic telephone answering machine. This device was compact, relatively simple, and easy to use. Apparently designed to be used by individual customers, it was never field tested, perhaps because of AT&T objections but also possibly because it would have been much more expensive to produce than the Dictaphone or Ediphone call recorders. Expected cost was no small consideration in the early 1930s, as the worldwide Depression sent AT&T's revenues into a precipitous fall.180 Indeed, AT&T did not offer a customer-premise call recorder until after 1951, when the equipment monopoly exercised by Western Electric ended under a court-ordered consent decree, forcing the company to allow all sorts of "foreign" equipment to be attached to its lines. However, AT&T was not completely unresponsive to outside demand for such things as telephone 144 recorders. Rather, company officials and Bell Labs engineers struggled over the next several years to design a machine that was acceptable from the company's standpoint. Later work on magnetic recording at Bell Laboratories reflected the effort to abide by corporate policy. One possibility for the telephone recorder was some kind of machine to be sold to organizations rather than individuals, but still the company debated the propriety of call recording. The U.S. Department of Justice, undoubtedly desiring to make recordings for evidence, asked the Bell Operating Company in the District of Columbia, the C & P Telephone Company, in the summer of 1930 for permission to connect the Dictaphone Telecord to its Private Branch Exchange [PBX] equipment.181 AT&T had itself been considering the connection of a suitably modified version of its phonograph recording equipment to a PBX or central office switching device since 1926.182 C&P relayed the request to AT&T, and the telephone company held a meeting of its top-level executives to discuss the matter. At first, C&P was instructed to promise an AT&T telephone recorder for Justice Department use, to be delivered in about a year. Later, AT&T advised C&P to stall for as long as possible, in hopes that the problem would go away. Finally, AT&T decided to deny the Justice Department's request outright, once again using the argument that foreign equipment was not allowed on AT&T lines.188 But the matter did not go away. Hounded by requests from the Dictaphone company and by AT&T's own Operating Companies, managers continued to ponder their options. Late in 1930 Gherhardi wrote a memo concluding that the technical objections to telephone recording were no longer valid, but that in the future the devices would not be allowed purely on the basis 145 that would violate public trust in the secrecy of telephone communication. In December of that year company Vice President E. F. Carter went as far as to recommend that AT&T try not to engage the public in a debate over telephone recording, nor should it put the matter to Operating Company executives for their opinion.184 AT&T's suppression of telephone recording apparently reached its height in early December of 1930, long before Bell Labs research activity in magnetic recording had reached its zenith. Frank Jewett, president of the Labs, came to the rescue of telephone recording on 19 December 1930, reminding company officials that the presence of equipment from competitors in America and Europe must necessarily change the telephone company's stance on the matter.185 On the same day, AT&T Special Representative B. F. Craig wrote to C. O. Bickelhaupt, informing him of the now widespread use of telephone recording in the rail and power industries. Craig recommended that AT&T might provide such a service in certain, non-public situations, such as on private lines, or in an office building's internal lines.188 Less than a week later, a staff engineer circulated a memo describing some of the "legitimate uses" to which telephone recording might be put, noting that assurance against "unauthorized use" could be designed into the devices with little effort. At the end of the year's business in 1930, however, AT&T executives decided to take a "wait and see" attitude, to recommend that Bell Labs continue its development of a practical telephone recorder but not to publicly promote the idea. The company reversed its policy regarding the use of the Telecord on "private" (i.e. internal) lines leased by AT&T (in contrast to truly private lines owned by other companies, over which AT&T of course had 146 no control). At about the same time, Frank Jewett apologetically informed the Dictaphone and Ediphone manufacturers that under no circumstances would recording equipment be allowed on AT&T non-private lines.187 AT&T's policy did not go unchallenged for long. Within just a few months, H. A. Frederick wrote to H. D. Arnold, director of research, reiterating the argument that the presence of telephone recorders on the market would force the company to change its policy eventually. Frederick recommended that AT&T put itself in a position to supply such a device, and thought that it should be a magnetic recorder.188 Very quickly, by September 1932, plans were laid out to design abuse- resistant telephone recorders. Either the recorders would be isolated on lines not connected to the public network, or human operators would make connections to the machines, or the machines would have devices that would beep and announce the word "recording" over the line at regular intervals. The latter type of machine was built by 1933, although its status remained problematical. (Figures 3.2 and 3.3)189 As officials debated the possible outcomes, elsewhere at AT&T plans to commercialize the telephone recorder continued. A demonstration of a recorder in several major newspaper offices (discussed in more detail below) prompted one AT&T statistician to devise a way to compare per-word telegraph rates to per-word long-distance sound recording "rates," the idea being that newspapers might be convinced to buy sound recorders if it could be shown that they could save money on their news-gathering. Meanwhile, public demonstrations of Bell Laboratories' new magnetic recorders in non-telephone 147 C. N. HICKMAN 2,006,455 TELEPHONE MESSAGE RECORDING SYSTEM Fil?d March 31. 1932 2 She?t9-She?t 2 ATTORNEY Figure 3.2: Centralized Type of Telephone Recorder In trying to commercialize magnetic recording devices, Bell Laboratories engineers proposed integrating it into existing AT&T systems. This diagram illustrates how a message recorder was to be combined with a switching device, probably a private branch exchange. (United States Patent 2,006,455) 148 Figure 3.3: Details of a Centralized Type of Telephone Recorder This diagram further illustrates how magnetic recording devices were integrated into larger systems at Bell Laboratories. The recorder shown here is no longer a free-standing device as in Figure 3.1, but has become a component in a larger automatic switching device. The illustration also shows AT&T's proprietary recording/reproducing head designs (30 and 31), which were of the "clamshell" type. 149 applications seemed to indicate a demand for telephone recorders. Several times between 1935 and 1938 AT&T memoranda mention inquiries from subsidiary companies or other firms, prompted by announcements of AT&T's non-telephone magnetic recorders, but asking about the possibility of obtaining telephone answering machines. Further, the telephone company was constantly reminded of the recording equipment being put to various purposes (including telephone recording) in Europe. After AT&T sent Rudolph Mallina to Europe during the summer of 1935, he returned with a description of the English and German recorders and motion picture equipment undergoing development there.190 In 1935 competing equipment from Europe included the Dailygraph dictating and telephone answering machine, which recorded onto steel wire (a detailed discussion of the Dailygraph appears in Chapter Five, below). The Dailygraph company had recently been purchased by the Carl Lorenz A. G. subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, a company already engaged in tape recorder manufacture. Further, another ITT subsidiary, Federal Telegraph Company, was at the same time establishing facilities to distribute ITT's electrical equipment in New York city, right under AT&T's corporate nose. The telephone company also continued to monitor magnetic recording research at the German firm AEG, which by about 1936 was producing a magnetic tape recorder for use in broadcasting. In fact, L C. Stowell of Dictaphone sent material to AT&T about the AEG Magnetophone in 1935, as if in reply and protest to AT&T's continued dismissal of Dictaphone's telephone recorder. Though Western Electric and its subsidiaries utterly dominated the telephone equipment market in the U.S., the threat from German magnetic recording 150 equipment seemed real enough. In 1935 for example, the New York office of the Associated Press announced its intentions to purchase a magnetic recorder being marketed by the German firm Siemens and Halske for use in conjunction with international facsimile lines.191 Challenges from outside manufacturers took a new twist in the later 1930s. AT&T's regulations specifically banned the making of a metal-to-metal electrical connection between foreign equipment and company lines. By the mid-1930s, equipment was being invented that exploited the telephone lines without a direct electrical connection. Not all of these new devices were telephone recorders, of course. Former FCC assistant chief engineer W. G. H. Finch developed a facsimile system in 1936, the novel feature of which was its inductive coupling to the telephone line, avoiding metal-to-metal contact and the necessity of leasing a dedicated facsimile line from AT&T. Still, AT&T's position on foreign equipment remained firm. It was officially sanctioned in the form of an FCC review in 1936 which found the practice valid and legal.192 Telephone recorders that AT&T deemed acceptable were ready for testing by the mid 1930s. Bell Labs engineers soon found a design that suited the AT&T executives in the form of a the "newspaper office" machine, a centralized, semi-automatic call recorder for business use.193 Engineers demonstrated a tentative recorder design on May 10, 1935 to representatives of The Associated Press and the New York Times Corporation. C.N. Hickman was on duty to show newsmen how local and long distance telephone calls from correspondents could be recorded, and he asked for suggestions as to other ways that newspapers might be able to use the machine. One person suggested that a longer recording time and features to make the tape easier to 151 transcribe (such as foot pedal control and a way to slow down reproduction) would be desirable. AT&T officials told them that while company policy prohibited "the connection of recording devices to toll service or exchange service [long distance or local lines]," they "proposed changing it to permit the use of a Bell System recorder in connection with non-listed telephones used exclusively for the collection of news." 194 This type of recording service was not news to at least one of the press representatives on hand, Frederick E. Meinholtz, who was fully cognizant of similar machines being marketed in Europe. Meinholtz, an employee of the New York Times, mentioned to Hickman that the Dailygraph recorder was in regular service in the Time's Paris bureau. Bell Labs lab manager Oliver E. Buckley, on hand during the demonstration, thought it significant enough to mention Meinholtz's comments in his official report of the demonstration.195 In anticipation of extended field trials, ten modified versions of the machines were quickly constructed at Western Electric's Kearney, New Jersey plant. The Associated Press, United Press International, and the New York Times agreed to receive two recorders each. In each case, one machine was attached to an unlisted telephone line and used for recording incoming calls. The attendant who made the connection to the recorder and listened while the recording was underway also provided the security in the system by ensuring that the caller knew a recording was being made. Another machine was to be used by secretaries for transcribing the calls. A "recorder attendant" operated the machines by remote control, using special switching equipment, and could be connected to the outside line, the attendant's telephone, a PBX,196 or internal lines.197 152 The field trials of these machines in 1936 had mixed results. A memo written during the tests noted that the operation of the two machines installed at the New York Times office had "been reasonably satisfactory for the last four nights," before which recordings had suffered from "erratic and wide variations in level" due to tape problems. All the machines were experiencing rapid wear of the tape head (or "pole pieces" as Bell Labs called them) that varied according to the peculiar surface characteristics of individual batches of tape or even samples within batches. Clearly, technical problems persisted in these field trials, although the results seemed encouraging.198 The overall cost of each machine, less tape, was estimated to be about $500, although it was predicted that production of "thousands per year," might lower the figure to $375. The 5,000 feet of tape (ten minutes) supplied with each machine carried a hefty price tag of $250, with the price expected to drop to $50 with quantity production. The marketing of this machine was discussed in several memoranda, but apparently it never happened.199 The enthusiastic reception of newspaper men had proven two things, however. It suggested that the fear that AT&T executives presumed customers had of having a call recorded might be avoided by making it clear to the caller that a recording could only take place under special conditions. By providing special lines dedicated to the recorder the company hoped to set off call recording as a special telephone service. This impression was reinforced by the presence of human operators who were instructed to make the whole process explicit, acting as disinterested mediators who started and stopped the recording. The field trial itself did not seem to resolve, however, whether AT&T should offer such recorders to businesses or the public, or if the company 153 should allow Dictaphone or Ediphone recorders to be attached to its regular lines.200 As opposed to call recorders, call announcers using magnetic tape faced few policy restrictions. While photographic sound recording led the way in introducing recorded sound into the operations of the Bell System, within just a few years the telephone company had experimentally applied recorded sound, especially magnetically recorded sound, to a whole range of services. AT&T used magnetic recorders in 1934 to demonstrate an automated "bid and asked" service201 to the New York Stock Exchange. Telephone technology was already in use to allow brokers to call into central operators who announced current stock prices. The system was partially automated in that the caller dialed a series of numbers to indicate a group of stocks. With the addition of the magnetic tape device, human operators were no longer required to repeatedly annunciate stock prices to callers. Stock prices changed rapidly, making it necessary for operators to re-record messages frequently, but the magnetic tape medium was well-suited to this kind of operation. After the demonstration the New York Telephone company inquired about a magnetic tape machine for the New York Curb Exchange, and Bell Labs was quick to supply a prototype. Additional requests came from Bell of Canada for installation in the Toronto exchange. The perceived need for a short duration, quick access recorder/announcer of this type encouraged further development at the Labs, and a series of patents related to the use of drum-type recording media were related to work on the stock exchange announcers.202 In 1936, the Labs also set up a special telephone number in Hightstown New Jersey which farmers could call to hear announcements of potato prices 154 and rail car movements, loadings, and holdings from magnetic recordings. The system used, in addition to detailed information supplied by the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, sophisticated switching techniques to connect up to ten callers to the call announcer. Use of the service by farmers was low, in part because the information provided was of use to large producers, whereas it was marketed in an area dominated by small landholders. While the technology proved itself, it was many years before operating companies began using these types of call announcers in any but the largest cities, such as New York and Chicago. Thus while magnetic recording had found a place in the Bell System, its widespread adoption was still many years off in the future.203 Other forms of Magnetic Recording at Bell Laboratories AT&T investigated a number of other ways to commercialize magnetic recording in fields which avoided policy restrictions and did not compete with existing Western Electric equipment markets. One of the first truly public demonstrations of Bell's new technology was at the Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago in 1933. While the actual recorder and its associated amplifier were hidden from view, visitors to the "Hear Your Own Voice" exhibit were invited to speak for a few seconds into a microphone. Their voice would play back almost immediately, allowing a visitor to hear his or her voice as others heard it. The recorder was a simple endless loop recorder equipped with a circuit that would automatically record, replay, and erase a short message continuously. The machine included provisions to signal users to begin and end their messages. It is intriguing to speculate how people reacted to this 155 demonstration, given the well-known aversion most people have to hearing their own voices (or seeing their own images).204 The commercial applications of such a device beyond such novelty demonstrations were only vaguely defined. Almost immediately, though, Bell Labs began to receive letters from academic speech instructors regarding the possibility of obtaining a Hear Your Own Voice recorder.205 One of Hickman's later designs, a portable endless loop recorder, may have reflected an attempt to exploit this market. While the Hear Your Own Voice recorder used a simple Htank,"208transport and a variable message length. Hickman's later Voice Mirror portable endless loop recorder was considerably more refined. Its mechanism permitted only a fixed message length, but could be used in conjunction with a built-in phonograph player, suitable for commercially- available elocution training recordings. It came with a portable amplifier and loudspeaker, and included a microphone and a special signal light to indicate to the user when the machine was switching automatically from recording to replaying modes. (Figures 3.4 and 3.5)207 Not long after, engineers from Bell Labs began actively to promote the Voice Mirror as a voice trainer. It was demonstrated to educators in the New York, to the 1935 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was made a permanent exhibit at the Franklin Institute museum in Philadelphia. It became a standard feature of the AT&T exhibits at expositions and fairs, such as the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939, and one of the demonstration models was sold to Columbia University. In 1936, Christopher Wente reported at length how the Voice Mirror could be used at Teacher's College in New York.208 There, speech defects, mumbling, and 156 Figure 3.4: Long Loop-Type Voice Mirror The Bell Laboratories "Voice Mirror" was intended to be a voice-training device. It utilized a loop of tape and automatic switching between recording and replay functions. This diagram illustrates some of the mechanical details of a proposed design. Note the unusual endless loop arrangement in which tape is pulled from the center of a spool and rewound around the outside of the same spool. This type of recorder is discussed in detail in Chapter Eight. The diagram also shows Bell Labs' record/reproducing head designs (26 and 27), clearly showing how recording occurred through the thin dimension of the tape. (United States Patent 2,003,968) 157 Figure 3.5: Short Loop Voice Mirror The Voice Mirrors which actually went into production at Western Electric Company were apparently of the "short loop" type. In this arrangement, the maximum recording time is limited to a few seconds. Once again, this suited voice training purposes well. This diagram illustrates the general layout of the recorder, which was combined with a phonograph turntable and pickup (the tonearm is not shown). This recorder could be used by language or elocution students in conjunction with commercially-available educational phonograph records. 158 other speech deficiencies were observed, diagnosed, and treated in a way that recalls nothing if not H. G. Wells' vision of future surveillance This kind of instruction is required particularly with small children. At Teachers College the children are placed with an instructor in a special room where they may be observed and heard by others without their knowledge. The Observer takes notes of what the children are saying. These are later used as a basis for general discussion. These discussions are unsatisfactory as it is difficult to describe the various speech sounds uttered by the children. The Speech Department at Teachers College would like to be able to record the whole proceedings, which would be about one half hour long. Of certain parts they would sometimes like to make permanent records. For the temporary record they would find magnetic tape a very satisfactory medium.209 Wente suggested that the most useful recorder for such applications would be an endless loop type with several different loops of varying duration, all driven from a single shaft for simplicity. A phonograph recorder could be added to make permanent recordings, if desired. He estimated that the cost to the labs to develop and build such a machine to be: Table 3.1: Estimated Cost of the Bell Labs Tape Recorder Mechanism, including six magnetic recorder units and one disc recorder $ 700 Amplifier $ 75 Loudspeaker 15 Microphone $ 75 Engineering $1000210 Bell Laboratories may have contemplated a market in the local Bell Operating Companies. Following demonstrations of the equipment at public expositions in 1935 Dallas, Texas and in 1936 in San Diego, California, local Operating Companies began making requests for Voice Mirrors. The 159 Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric company had begun tooling up for Voice Mirror manufacture in 1934 and made a batch of the recorders soon afterward. In all, twelve Bell Operating Companies purchased Voice Mirrors for use in their business offices, and for demonstration at local expositions. Some time afterward, AT&T officials discovered that some of the companies were using the devices for voice training. Apparently in an attempt to evaluate demand for such devices, the company in late 1937 John Mills of Bell Labs sent telegrams to the traffic departments of each of these companies, asking if the machines had been used for training as such. However, Ohio Bell, Michigan Bell, Southern Bell, Indiana Bell, Illinois Bell, Northwestern Bell, and Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph responded that they had not used the Voice Mirror in their "traffic" departments for voice training.211 Several of the Operating Companies did experiment with the recorder, and a few were enthusiastic about their possibilities. One general manager wired to say that his "traffic department has used [the] Voice Mirror for training at Charleston and Parkersburg and plans to cover all large exchanges. They report [the] use of [the] equipment very effective because it dramatizes and arouses interest."212 Western Electric continued its commercialization efforts, and in late 1937 by publishing an operating and service manual for the Voice Mirror. In its final form, the machine consisted of a portable, endless loop recording/reproducing assembly, two spare tape loops, a portable, public-address type amplifier/loudspeaker, a standard telephone, and an indicating light used to alert the user when the machine was recording.213 160 It is unclear why the Voice Mirror subsequently failed to find a market. Certainly the small size of the intended markets was a factor. It was not conceived for marketing to consumers, but rather to companies or schools employing professional speech instructors. Certainly, it was an expensive piece of equipment with a highly specialized function. Further, unlike the phonograph and sound-on-film recorders marketed by Western Electric/ERPI to movie studios radio stations, the intended market for the Voice Mirror was mainly academic institutions or Bell Operating Companies, both of which at the time were financially strapped by the onset of the Great Depression. While both the movie and radio industries suffered economic setbacks in the 1930s, they also depended upon electronic technologies for their livelihood and might have been more likely to buy innovations like magnetic sound recorders. The primary job of speech educators, on the other hand, was instruction, and it is possible that the purchase of new educational technologies may have been passed over during bad economic times. Unfortunately, Western Electric manufacturing and sales records related to the Voice Mirror are not available, making it difficult even to guess at how many recorders were manufactured or sold 21-4 Several possible early configurations of the Bell Labs magnetic recorder never passed beyond the prototype stage. One machine, informally known as the portable recorder, was a two-reel device for general purpose, long duration sound recording. It was designed to be built into a box and had a handle, although the complete equipment was actually quite weighty. While the basic technology was similar to the Voice Mirror, the portable recorder had none of the automatic features of the latter. Instead, it operated analogously to the 161 commercial portable disk and film recorders of the day. The project was justified by the fact that a magnetic recorder could be built that used less power than comparable photographic or disk recorders. The amplifier in the portable magnetic recorder could be powered by flashlight batteries, unlike a disk or film recorder that required much more power. The motive power for the tape transport could be supplied by either an electric or a spring motor. Again, its potential market was not well defined, and one might imagine that the machine might have been promoted as a adjunct to existing commercial equipment for use "on site" motion picture soundtrack use. The utter lack of information about the development of this machine makes it difficult even to speculate as to its perceived market or its eventual fate. Another short-lived application illustrates the effort and imagination that Bell Laboratories engineers expended in their effort to invent a magnetic recorder for the marketplace. (Figure 3.6) 215 Back in 1930, one of Christopher Wente's original suggestions for Clarence Hickman was to build a magnetic recording-based Tone Generator, or tone synthesizer. While this device was actually built it apparently remained just a laboratory instrument. Work on the synthesizer began to take shape in late 1933, growing out of Wente's desire to build a new kind of electronic musical instrument. Every electronic organ, for example, must have a source of sounds, which are filtered, equalized, and otherwise processed to simulate a true organ stops and other functions. Electric and electronic organs of the day, such as the Hammond organ introduced during the 1930s, used vibrating reeds, piano strings, or vacuum tube oscillators to produce the fundamental frequencies corresponding to the notes of the chromatic scale. Reeds and strings required considerable maintenance, and vacuum tube oscillators, at 162 J.15 1.0 1.0 .04 .03 12-14 0 420 AT&T Std., .25-.4 .25-.6 .5 .03 .03 12-14 0 1946 See "Specification LRM 178, Issue I," 27 February 1946. AT&T BTL Coll., case 20872.; Both a 1% chrome steel and a 13% chrome, 0.35% carbon steel tape was used in the "newspaper office" recorder discussed below. T. E. Shea, "Recording Tape for Press-Trial Installation Recorders," 14 November 1935. AT&T BTL Coll., Case 70872; B. A. Kingsbury, "Measurement in Conjunction with the Heat Treating Process of the Recording Properties of Magnetic Tape," 11 December 1935. AT&T BTL Coll., case 20872; J. E. Harris to T. E. Shea , n.d. AT&T BTL Coll., Case 70872; W. C. Ellis, "Discussions with Mr. Webb, W. Wire Works, New Brunswick, N.J. Relative to Supply of 13-Chrome Steel Wire for Processing to Magnetic Recording Tape," 16 November 1937. AT&T BTL Coll., case 20872; E. S. Greiner, "Heat Treatment of 10800 Ft. of Vicalloy Tape for Magnetic Recording," 13 September 1939. AT&T BTL Coll., case 20872. 170hjote that it is not possible from the available information to determine whether frequency response was ultimately a function of the capabilities of the tape or tape heads, or whether it was a function of the electronic circuitry. It was common for electronic amplifiers to have frequency cut offs that differed from those of the signal they amplified. Many radio receivers, for example, had tow frequency cut-off points above 60 cycles per second in order to filter out unwanted noises from the power lines, which carry 60 cycle ac. 171 Mentioned in "Authorizations for Work," 3 Jan 1938, and 3 Jan 1939, case 20872, BTL. 172D. E. Wooldridge, "Noise Reduction in Magnetic Recording," 1 September 1937, case 20872, BTL; D. E. Wooldridge, "Theory of Magnetic Tape Recording-Case 20872," 20 September 1937, case 20872, BTL; also see A. L. Thuras, "An Accurate Method of Measuring 179 Magnetic Flux in Small Areas," 6 June 1935, case 20872, BTL; The Labs also constructed test equipment related to magnetic recording, although it is not well documented. More sophisticated test equipment was developed to measure such things as the magnetic properties of the diminutive recording and reproducing heads. "Authorization for Work," case 20872 n.d. [1941], BTL. 173C. D. Hanscom to M. J. Kelley, n.d. [ca. late summer 1939?], case 20872, BTL; A similar episode took place in early 1934, as the first trials of the Newspaper office telephone recorder were being planned. A paper entitled "Magnetic Recording and Reproducing" was withheld at the insistence of O. B. Blackwell until concerns about telephone recording were resolved. Although those concerns were arguably not resolved, two articles on magnetic recording appeared in the pages of The Bell Technical Journal and The Bell Telephone Quarterly by the mid 1930s. O. B. Blackwell to P. Norton, 30 March 1934, Case 70872, BTL 174This is an appealing theory from the historian's point of view, although it is not documented. But perhaps the lack of magnetic recorder designs which competed directly with existing Western Electric/ERPI equipment could be taken as indirect evidence that such a policy did exist. As early as 1934, C. N. Hickman proposed that magnetic tape by synchronized to motion picture film, an idea that had already been suggested outside the Bell system by those promoters of magnetic recording. But clearly, no such machine was ever built. C. N. Hickman, "Synchronizing Magnetic Tape Records with Motion Pictures," 30 October 1934, case 70872, BTL; 175Margaret Donovan to AT&T, 14 February 1921; J. J. Carry to Margaret Donovan, 19 February 1921, both in accession 800503 Box 3? AT&T; Western Union, which used voice circuits and human operators to establish long distance connections in a way that was similar to long distance telephone service, looked into telephone recording as a way to manage operators. Recordings were to be made of all voice communications between operators in long distance exchanges. When an operator error was discovered, it was proposed that records of the operator's conversations be reviewed to ascertain who was at fault. George M. York [Vice President in charge of engineering, Western Union] to E. B. Craft 24 June 1924, file 6:18, H.D. Arnold Papers, accession 80-02-03, [no box no.], AT&T Archives; Discussing a second request for a telephone recorder by Western Union, J. P. Maxfield wrote to H. D. Arnold that Western Electric was working on a Dictaphone-like recorder which could be attached to telephone lines, and that Western Union would be informed when the machine was ready. J. P. Maxfield to H. D. Arnold 3 October 1924, ibid. 176F. B. Jewett to S. G. Spiro, n.d. [1930], case 33251, BTL; F. B. Jewett, "Memo for Mr. E. H. Colpitts," 11 January 1930, ibid. 177H. M. [sic], "Station Voice Recorder," on the Dictaphone Telecord Demonstration to AT&T, case 33251, BTL. 178Elam Miller to G. H. Jess, 12 May 1930, Box 64, AT&T. 179Gherhardi wrote in November of 1930 that "all of this [informality and privacy] would be changed if in our day-by-day conversational contacts we were always to have a permanent record made either by machinery or by a stenographer, or if we did not know whether or not such a record was being made... it would change the whole character of the words 'conversational contacts.'" B. Gherhardi, memorandum, 26 November 1930, Box 64, AT&T; M. B. Jones to E. F. Carter, 5 December 1930, ibid. 18uThe recorder incorporated an outgoing message that informed the caller that a recording was to be made. The machine would not record both sides of a conversation, but only the incoming portion. Rudolph Mallina, "Automatic Telephone Message Recorder (Magnetic Tape Type)," 14 June 1932. AT&T BTL Collection, case 33251; A prototype of the recorder was used at Bell Laboratories for a period of several months. Rudolph Maliina, "Automatic Telephone Message Recorder- Case 20872-1," 27 February 1934, case 20872, BTL. 181A PBX is a small, semi-automatic switching machine used in large office buildings, hospitals, hotels, etc. It allows a relatively small number (e.g. ten or twenty) of incoming/outgoing lines to serve a larger number (e.g. 100 or 200) telephone extensions. The assumption is that not every 180 telephone will be in use simultaneously. In the 1930s and 1940s, PBX equipment usually required a human operator; C. Wallace, "Voice Recording Equipment-Request of the Department of Justice for Permission to Connect Telecord to P.B.X Station Lines," 22 October 1930, box 64, AT&T. 182H. C. Harrison, memorandum 28 December 1926, case 33251, BTL. 183Q Wallace, "Voice Recording Equipment-Request of the Department of Justice for Permission to Connect Telecord to P.B.X Station Lines," 22 October 1930, box 64, AT&T. 184C Wallace, ibid.; E. F. Carter to C. F. Sise, 3 December 1930, box 64, AT&T. 185p B Jewett "Telephone Voice Recorder - "Telecord" Machine of the Dictaphone Corporation," 19 December 1930, box 64, AT&T. i^B. F. Craig to C. O. Bickelhaupt, 19 December 1930, box 64, AT&T. 187C. A. Burkhard to Elam Miller, 22 December 1930, box 64, AT&T; Frank Jewett to Nelson C. Durand [Thomas A Edison Inc.] 19 December 1930, case 33251, BTL; F. B. Jewett to L. C. Stowell [Dictaphone Corp], 19 December 1930; box 64, AT&T; Keith S. McHugh [a BTL engineer], "Memorandum for Mr. C. P. Cooper, Vice President," 31 December 1930, case 33251, BTL; Elam Miller, "Voice Recorder" memorandum, 26 December 1930, box 64, AT&T; "Voice Recording Equipment-Use On Private Telephone Lines," 31 January 1931, ibid. 188H. A. Frederick to H. D. Arnold 6 April 1931, case 33251, BTL; Memoranda calling for continued development of telephone voice recorders, both magnetic and phonographic, continued for several years. See O. B. Blackwell, "Recording of Telephone Conversations," 3 January 1935. File 8, A. F. Dixon Papers, Accession 48 05 02, AT&T Corporate Collection; Several memoranda touting the use of phonographic methods also appeared late in 1933, just before the phonographic telephone recorder project was closed. This suggests that there have been competition between the phonographic and magnetic research teams. Such competition was apparently common at Bell Labs, and probably warrant further attention by historians. See for example A. C. Keller, "Telephone Voice Recording," 1 January 1933, case 33251, BTL; On internal competition see Morton, "The Magic of Your Dial," note 28. 189[w. H. Martin] "Telephone Recording-Means for Guarding Against Unauthorized Use," 29 September 1932, file 8, A. F. Dixon Papers, Accession 48 05 02 BTL; O. B. Blackwell, "Use of Voice Recorders with Telephone Services," 28 July 1933, ibid. 190R.F. Mallina, "Competitive Recording and Reproducing Equipment," 30 December 1930, case 33251 BTL; Mallina's memo included a brief description of the interesting magnetic sound system for motion pictures, the Blattnerphone. This machine, a German design modified by an English motion picture studio, enjoyed only a limited success. It is discussed extensively in chapter three of William C. Lafferty's "The Early Development of Magnetic Sound Recording in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures, 1928-1950," (Ph.D. Diss., Northwestern University, 1981), 27- 60; Bell Labs engineers intended to see a demonstration of the Blattnerphone in New York in 1930 and to obtain an example of it for study. If either took place it is not recorded. H. B. Ely, "Minutes of Conference for the Purpose of Hearing from Mr. Mallina as to the Trend of Developments in Europe and Other Technical Information Obtained by Him During a Recent Visit- -Cases 32184, 32187, and 34465," 17 July 1929, case 32184, BTL. 1910. E. Buckley to H. G. Knox [of ERPI], 24 September 1935, case 20872, BTL; Rudolph Mallina, "Some Apparatus Seen on Recent Visit to Europe," 23 August 1935, ibid.; Mallina wrote to Hickman about the magnetic recorders, noting that he had been introduced to C. Lorenz's chief tape recording engineer, Dr. Semi J. Begun, through the company's director, an American named Mr. Reinke, formerly of Western Electric. R. F. Mallina to C. N. Hickman, 16 May 1935, ibid.; Dr. Von Braunmuhl to H. A. Frederick [BTL's Transmission Instruments director] 4 July 1934; Frederick to V. Braunmuhl, n.d. [1934], both ibid.; Von Braunmuhl, who wrote on the stationery of the Reichs Rundfunk Gesselschaft (the German broadcasting authority) was also affiliated with I.G. Farben, the manufacturer of recording tape for the I.G. Farben-AEG collaborative venture, Magnetophone A.G.; Stowell of Dictaphone sent the material to Elam Miller of AT&T. W. H. Martin to O.M. Glunt, 9 October 1935, ibid.; AT&T records also record instances where foreign- 181 language technical articles on magnetic recording were translated for the benefit of Bell Labs' researchers. H. Fletcher to L. E. Smith, 23 December 1937, ibid.; A 1944 letter mentions that Bell Labs engineers were in possession of a sample of the radically different German oxide-coated magnetic recording tape developed by I.G. Farben. E. E. Schumacher to E. E. McKibble, 19 September 1944, ibid.; R. D. Parker to A. F. Dixon, 10 January 1935, file 8, Amos F. Dixon Papers, Accession 48 05 02, BTL. 192"Teiephotoqraphs." Electronics 9 (July 1936): 32; Bell Labs engineers became aware of two telephone recorders using inductive coupling in 1933. E. H. Colpitis, "Recording of Telephone Messages," 25 January 1933. 05 02 02, AT&T Collection; The inventor of a new teletype printer sued AT&T in late 1935 to be allowed to sell his equipment to AT&Ts customers. The FCC reviewed the telephone company's policy about foreign equipment, finding it justifiable and dismissing the inventor's complaint. "Seeks New AT&T Rule" New York Times 21 January 1936, p. 14 col. 6; "Bars Private Teletypewriter," New York Times 26 January 1936, sec. Ill p. 1. 1930. B. Blackwell to C. O. Bickelhaupt, 14 January 1935, file 8, accession 48 05 02, Amos F. Dixon Papers, BTL. 194Harty Jeavons, "Mr. W. J. O'Connor: For your information," 21 May 1935. AT&T Corp, box 64; Harvey Fletcher, "Demonstrations of Magnetic Dictating Tape Machine For Recording Press Reports Over Telephone Lines," case 20872, BTL. 1 95Q. r?. Blackwell, "Demonstration of Magnetic Tape for Recording Press Reports over Telephone Lines," 15 May 1935, case 20872, BTL; A few days later, the machine was demonstrated to a representative of the International News Service. Harvey Fletcher, "Demonstrations of Magnetic Dictating Tape Machine for Recording Press Reports Over Telephone Lines," 16 May 1935, ibid. "l^'Private Branch Exchange," the term used to describe the semi-automatic switchgear supplied to offices, hotels, and other large buildings with a multitude of separate telephone lines. The recorder was apparently designed to be used in a PBX-equipped building. 197W. H. Martin, "Service Trial of Magnetic Recorders for Newspapers and Press Associations," 12 June 1935, case 20872, BTL; A. H. Inglis, memorandum 25 May 1935, case 70872, BTL; O. M. Glunt to R. A. Price [of Western Electric], 7 August 1936, ibid. 198W. A MacNair, "Immediate Supply of Magnetic Tape," 4 June 1936, case 20872, BTL. 199Cf. with another estimate that put the price of tape at $0.10 per foot ($500 per 5000 ft. reel) dropping to $0.06 on a 60,000 foot lot, about $0.03 with the improved rolling mill then being developed, and $0.01 cent ($50 per reel) if quantity production at Western Electric were initiated.. Buckley to R. L. Jones, 27 May 1935. AT&T BTL Coll., Case 70872; [?] to W. F. Hofford [of Western Electric] 7 August 1936, case 70872, BTL. 200W. H. Martin, "Service Trial"; O. B, Blackwell to P. Norton, 30 March, 1934, ibid. 201The New York Stock Exchange, one of 20 or so such transaction services in operation in the 1930s, had an elaborate communications system in place to distribute news about prices and transactions. A firm called the New York Quotation Company operated the NYSE's official news bureau. Its services included the translation of accounts of transactions onto a national telegraphic system. Stock brokers and others typically leased private lines to the Exchange and kept in constant voice communication with representatives on the floor. A great deal of repetitious price quoting was undertaken by telephone operators, mostly women, who were called from the offices of Exchange members for current prices, which they would read off of a "teleregister" (an electrically controlled price board, operating somewhat like an automatic scoreboard for football or baseball). Philip C. Bennett, "'Bid and Asked' Communications," Electronics 9 (April 1936): 12-13. 202A. F. Dixon to O. E. Buckley, 15 March 1936, case 70872, BTL. 203(jnattributed memo "Market News and Magnetic Tape Voice Recording," 11 January 1938, file 7, AT&T Corporate Collection, accession, 38 02 02 no box no. 182 204A demonstration of magnetic recording in 1935 was recorded by O. E. Buckley in a 1935 memo. Buckley's reported alluded to the generally unfavorable reaction to hearing one's voice by saying that "this demonstration produced the usual comments of surprise but satisfied the observers as to the faithfulness of reproduction." O. E. Buckley, "Demonstration of Magnetic Tape for Recording Press Reports over Telephone Lines," 15 May 1935, case 20872, BTL. 205-phese inquiries from speech instructors and various laboratories continued for several years. Daniel Noble of Connecticut State College, for example, praised the Labs' efforts and encouraged Harvey Fletcher to see that the device was put on the market immediately. Daniel F. Noble to Harvey Fletcher, 20 December 1934,, case 70872; Arthur J. Shurig, a physics professor at Purdue University, requested information about Bell Lab's magnetic recorders in 1940, mentioning that Purdue was in the process of building a wire recorder for experimental purposes. Shurig to C. A. Lovell, 24 June 1940, case 20872, BTL; The William Allanson White Psychoanalytic Foundation asked for a recorder in 1936 for use in the investigation of vocal behavior. Harry S. Sullivan to Harvey Fletcher, 26 October 1936, ibid.; C. K. Stedman [Boeing Corp.] to John Steinberg, 11 August 1943, ibid. 206A tank system uses to closely spaced, parallel flat surfaces, usually (as in the case of the BTL machine) made of glass or another translucent material. The panes are spaced slightly wider than the width of the tape. A mass of tape simply piles up in the tank, but rarely twists. Since loops of tape tend to pile up on each other they do not have the tendency to become tangled. As a result, the tape can be drawn from the tank, played, and returned to pile up on top of itself without tangling. It is a simple and inexpensive form of tape transport. 207The marketing of Voice Mirrors to speech teachers appears several times in the AT&T records. F. B. Jewett to O. R. Buckley, 25 October 1937, case 20872, BTL; John Mills to V.E. Cooley, 6 September 1939, ibid.; requests for Voice Mirrors continued into the early 1940s. See Charles B. Upp [Electronics Section, Naval Research Laboratory, Anacostia Station, D.C] to Bell Telephone Laboratories, 20 December 1941, ibid. 208Rudolph Mallina, "Endless Tape Recording and Reproducing Machine," 26 February 1934, ibid.; C. N. Hickman, "Magnetic Tape Self Instructor," 3 Jury 1934, ibid.; J. H. McBumey to H. Fletcher, 31 March 1936, case 70872, BTL; H. Fletcher to J. H. McBurney, 7 April 1936, ibid.; The machine was sold to Columbia for $500. R. L. Dickenson, ""Magnetic Tape Recorder- Reproducer for Columbia University," 4 August 1943, case 20872, BTL; "Bell Exhibit Opens at Coast Fair," Headquarters Bulletin 13 (April 7,1939), 6. AT&T Archives, library copy. 209E. C Wente, "Sound Recording Apparatus for Teachers of Speech," case 20872 BTL. 210 Christopher Wente, "Sound Recording Apparatus for Teachers of Speech," 30 April 1936, case 20872, BTL. 211 As of late 1937,16 Voice Mirrors had been sold to various Bell operating companies. John Mills to O. E. Buckley, 29 September 1937, case 20872 BTL; W. C Ellis, "Improvements in Magnetic Recording," 18 October 1934; M. B. Long to H. M. Bascom, 14 September 1937, file 11, AT&T Corporate Collection, accession 417 07 03; W. A. MacNair to J. E. Harris, 23 September 1937, case 20872, BTL; J. E. Harris to W. A MacNair, 13 October 1937, ibid.; The remaining documents in this citation are from file 11, AT&T Corporate Collection, accession 417- 07-03: John Mills, telegram [copy] 7 September 1937; A. F. Hardman [Ohio Bell] to Mills, 10 September 1937; J. T. Sheafor [Michigan Bell] to Mills, 8 September 1937; E. V. Hungerford [Southern Bell], 7 September 1937; H. S. Hanna [Indiana Bell] 7 September 1937; G. K. McCorkle [Illinois Bell] to Mills, 7 September 1937; F. C Builta [Northwestern Bell] 7 September 1937; M. E. Bernett [Mountain States], 7 September 1937. 212E. L. Florance [Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company] to John Mills, 7 September 1937, file 11, AT&T Corporate Collection, accession 417-07-03. 213Western Electric D-99015 Recording-Reproducing System Telephone Voice Mirror (Apparatus used in "Hear Your Telephone Voice" Demonstrations): Operating Data (N.p.: N.p. [Western Electric Company], 29 December 1937, box 267, AT&T WECO Collection, AT&T Archives. 183 214A 1934 memo mentions that ERPI would handle the sales and marketing for Voice Mirrors, although there is no other evidence to suggest that this actually took place. H. G. Knox [Vice President, ERPI] to W. B. Buckley, 6 August 1934, case 70872, BTL; No magnetic recording equipment is represented is Western Electric or ERPI sound equipment parts catalogs and price lists available for the years 1929-1941 in the AT&T archives, AT&T Corporate Collection, accession 288-01 -01; Perhaps the last reference to the Voice Mirror in the AT&T collection was in a 1943 memo which mentioned that Western Electric was manufacturing and marketing the device. M. J. Kelley to Charles B. Upp n.d. [summer 1943], case 20872, BTL. 215Rudolph Mallina, "Portable Magnetic Tape Recorder," 21 January 1935, case 20872, BTL. 216J. F. Muller, "A Harmonic Tone Generator," 25 June 1940, case 20872, BTL; H. Fletcher, "Outline of a Plan to Developing a New Musical Instrument Called the Symphonium," 11 April 1939, ibid.; H. Fletcher, "A New Musical Art," 14 July 1936, case 70872, BTL. 217[Citation on the history of crystal controlled oscillators]; Magnetic tape as a signal source became available when tape loops became the basis of reverberation devices for musical instruments in the late 1950s or early 1960s, such as the "Mellotron" organ, which used loops of tape recorded with tones. 218J. F. Muller, "Pilot Tone Generator," 27 June 1940. AT&T BTL Coll., case 20872; M. J. Kelley to E. W. Adams, 2 August 1940, case 20872, BTL. 219The Bell System: National Service in War and Peace. 298-317. 220R. W. Buntenbach, "A Proposed Flash Telephony System," 6 July 1942, case 20872, BTL. 221C.N. Hickman left the magnetic recording laboratory in July 1940 to conduct research in rocketry. He is credited with the development of the "bazooka" rocket launcher. His work was undertaken at Bell Labs under a contract from the NDRC, and he was given his own laboratory, Section H (for "Hickman"). The ftell System: National Service in War and Peace. 346-347; M. J. Kelley to Charles B. Upp, n.d. [summer 1943], case 20872, BTL. 222The Bell System: National Service in War and Peace. 232-235; 284 223Authorizations for Work, 2 January 1934,1 January 1935, 2 January 1936, case 70872, BTL. 224One memo points out that $34,560 was allocated in 1934 for magnetic recording research exclusively, with an additional $12,300 allotted for the construction of a particular prototype, suggesting perhaps that magnetic recording made up the bulk of these research projects during the 1930s. The same memo cites that only $12,300 was allocated in 1934 for the already- commercialized photographic technology. E. H. Colpitis to F. B. Jewett, 25 April 1934, file 4, box 90, AT&T Corporate Collection, accession 07-05-03, AT&T; a similar memo suggests that $50,000 had been spent on magnetic recording research in 1934. Buckley to E. H. Colpitts, 15 January 1935, case 70872, BTL. 22^Case survey report, "Study an Development of Special Acoustical Instruments," Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1 January 1937; Authorizations for work, "Study and Development of Special Acoustical Instruments," Bell Telephone Laboratories 4 January 1937, 3 January 1938, 3 January 1939, n.d. [1941], 2 January 1942,1 January 1943, 8 October 1943,1 January 1944, all from BTL. 226"Authorization for Work, Case no. 20872," January 1, 1943, case 20872, BTL. 227"Authorization for Work, 1 January 1944, Case 20872," case 20872, BTL. 228AT&T, for example, loaned one of its endless loop recorders to the Columbia University Division of War Research, but nothing else is known about Columbia's intended use for it. Since the university was planning to copy the recorder, it seems possible that AT&T had a potential customer in its uptown Manhattan neighbor. W.B. Snow to J. C. Steinberg, 3 May 1944, case 20872, BTL. 229Department of the Army Technical Manual TM 11-2552A: Sound Locating Set GR-6-A (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1951) [located at U.Ga. Library]4-5; J. B. Little, "Butt Welding of Vicalloy Tape for Magnetic Recording," 23 July 1943, case 20872, BTL; The Bell 184 System: National Service in War and Peace. 214-215; This machine, incidentally, used Vicalloy tape, a mass produced magnetic alloy used in several other telephone applications. 230Munroe H. Hamilton [an AT&T attorney] to E. C. Wente, 18 September 1945, case 20872, BTL; The multichannel recorder was apparently developed for the Psychoacoustic Laboratory at Harvard University under an OSRD project. T. W. Forbes to E. C. Wente, 26 October 1945, ibid. 23lThe Bell System: National Service in War and Peace. 225-227. 185 CHAPTER FOUR THE MECHANISMS OF TECHNOLOGICAL "OSSIFICATION": CORPORATIONS, REGULATORS, LABOR AND TECHNOLOGY IN SOUND RECORDING FOR MOTION PICTURES AND RADIO, 1925-1945. Introduction "Ossification" was the word Karl Marx chose to describe some of the general features of mature capitalistic enterprises. In the ways that they operate, the technologies that they use or produce, and in the social relations they create and reinforce, these enterprises tend to become rigidly fixed. Paradoxically, Marx wrote, at the same time capitalism is constantly innovating, thus tearing down what it has built up. While Marx's analysis of capitalism was seriously out of date by the turn of the 20th century, the suggestive power of his model remains powerful. Something similar to the ossification Marx described happened in the 1920s and 1930s in two American industries using sound recording technology: motion pictures and radio broadcasting. Sound recording in these industries became the focus of efforts to centralize, standardize, and control the use of technology. Eventually those efforts would begin to unravel, opening a door to new recording techniques and practices. Marx suggested that capitalism perpetuates power relationships between those who control technology and those who use it. This case study of sound recording demonstrates some of the ways Americans constructed those relationships. 186 Sound recording is only one small part of the technological structure of motion picture making or radio broadcasting. But it is an excellent place to start looking for the mechanisms of technological ossification- or to see if such mechanisms really exist. Sound recording technology, both in terms of "hardware" and in the ways it was used, was both highly standardized and perennially controversial in these two industries. It was also clearly one of the technologies which Marx would have identified as a locus of the dialectical process-contradictory forces which contributed to the tearing down of the very structures they helped build up. Technological Stabilization and the Maturation of the Motion Picture Industry. 1920-1940 The motion picture industry in the 1920s was characterized by an a high level of corporate vertical integration, especially the consolidation of production and distribution firms, and technological standardization built around a type of film manufactured primarily by Eastman Kodak (originally without sound).232 The notion of a talking picture was an old idea by 1920, and although inventors as influential as Thomas Edison had repeatedly demonstrated ways to link sound with pictures, none of these inventions seemed reliable enough for commercial service until the development of the Western Electric system in the early 1920s. The introduction of this technically superior, phonograph-based sound technology and the subsequent introduction of several other competing sound techniques threw the industry into a difficult period of technological change beginning in about 1926. By about 1930, major movie corporations had once again stabilized motion picture technology. 187 During this same period, the motion picture industry consolidated to form a mature, oligopolistic industry structure, creating five major vertically integrated firms, the "Big Five," and three somewhat less integrated firms, the "Little Three," which utterly dominated the making of feature or "Hollywood" style films (in contrast to industrial or educational films, short films, or newsreels). The choices made by major studios had a powerful, retarding influence on competing sound recording technologies like magnetic recording. The process of ossification, of creating technological stability, contributed to the exclusion of magnetic recording from the mainstream of sound recording technology. In the 1930's the "Big Five" firms included Paramount233, Loew's,234 Warner Brothers,235 Fox236 and RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum, a division of RCA).237 Each owned elaborate production facilities in California (and often in New York), an international distribution organization, and a large chain of theaters in prime urban locations. The "Little Three" had some combination of production, distribution, and exhibition interests; United Artists, for example, specialized in the distribution of films produced by independents 238 Simultaneous with the formation of the Big Five and Little Three was the introduction of sound technology. Western Electric's electric phonographic recording process was initiated at the suggestion of staff engineer H. D. Arnold. This work, which was interrupted by World War I and transferred to the new Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1926, aimed at the design of in a sort of central-station telephone answering machine. While the answering machine was not successful, Western Electric adapted the technology for use with motion picture film and for use as a consumer product in the early 1920s. The latter, named 188 the Orthophonic, was licensed to Columbia Phonograph and the Victor company in 1925 and became the basis of a successful line of home phonographs and records. (Figure 4.1)239 The motion picture sound system was exhibited at Yale University in 1922 and 1924. This system linked a phonograph record and motion picture by synchronizing the motors of both machines to the frequency of their common power supply. The recording speed was slowed from the original 78 rpm to 33 1/3 rpm and the size of the disk was enlarged considerably to make longer recordings possible. Western Electric's system included an advanced electronic amplifier and scientifically designed horn-type loudspeakers.240 Initial efforts the market the system met with skepticism, but in mid-1925, the financially strapped Warner Brothers company decided to try to use the Western Electric system in a last ditch effort to increase revenues. After producing a few talking "shorts," Warner released the immensely popular The Jazz Singer in late 1927, a film which dramatically demonstrated the excellence of the new sound system .241 Warner, like the other major studios, owned not only the means of film production but also a large chain of theaters. The conversion of theaters to sound was thus imposed from the central organization, speeding technological standardization. The Jazz Singer was seen and heard at about 100 theaters with permanently installed sound equipment, which for promotional purposes was renamed Vitaphone. For other shows, sound was handled as a road show, with special teams of technicians arriving several days before the opening to install and operate the sound projector and associated amplifiers and loudspeakers. The new technology was expensive, but theater owners who 189 FIGURE 4.1: THE PHONOGRAPHIC RECORDING PROCESS SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM OF THE PHONOGRAPHIC RECORDING PROCESS. IN THE AT&T VERSION OF PHONOGRAPH RECORDING, AN AUDIO SIGNAL DRIVES A MECHANICAL CUTTING STYLUS, WHICH CARVES A GROOVE IN THE SOFT RECORDING DISK. THESE DRAWINGS REPRESENT THE STYLUS IN PROFILE AND HEAD-ON AS IT CUTS A RECORD. (TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF MOTION PICTURE ENGINEERS 12 (1928): 715) 190 purchased a sound system typically paid for it from The Jazz Singer receipts alone.242 The commercial success of the first sound pictures prompted other firms to adopt the new technology, and the Warner brothers cleverly positioned themselves as the licensors of AT&T's system. While some other production companies like Fox Film Corporation chose to sub-license sound technology from Warner, AT&T moved quickly to establish its own licensing agency, forming a new subsidiary called Electrical Research Products, Incorporated (ERPI). ERPI installed Western Electric equipment at over 4000 theaters during the period between 1927 and 1929, resulting in gross receipts for the company of about $37,000,000 243 ERPI's original licenses for sound technology were soon being attacked as being heavy-handed and unnecessarily restrictive. A studio entering into ERPI contract paid royalties on each of the sound films that it produced using ERPI technology, even if the recording equipment were owned by some other company. All new equipment installations were to utilize only ERPI equipment, and sound films made on that equipment could be distributed only to theaters also using ERPI equipment. The company also forced licensees to purchase expensive service and parts contracts. After enduring ERPI's monopoly on sound for only a short time, RCA officials pointed out that cross licensing agreements between RCA and AT&T drafted a few years earlier, and covering electrical phonograph recording patents, made the ERPI license contracts unenforceable. The two companies agreed in 1935 that ERPI would relax the objectionable contract restrictions 244 While the resulting consent decree between AT&T and RCA ostensibly affected only phonograph recording and reproducing systems, it also gave RCA 191 AN OPPORTUNITY TO MARKET ITS OWN, NON-PHONOGRAPHIC SYSTEM TO THE MAJOR STUDIOS. THE DIFFICULTIES THAT RCA HAD IN FINDING CUSTOMERS FOR ITS PHOTOGRAPHIC SOUND SYSTEM DEMONSTRATED THE WAY STUDIOS HAD CHAINED THEMSELVES TO WESTERN ELECTRIC TECHNOLOGY. TECHNICAL CHANGE. BUT CONTINUED STABILITY: SOUND-ON-FILM USING A PHOTOGRAPHIC, SOUND-ON-FILM SYSTEM DEVELOPED BY GENERAL ELECTRIC, RCA ESTABLISHED BOTH A LABORATORY TO COLLABORATE IN THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE SYSTEM AND A SALES ORGANIZATION TO MARKET THE SYSTEM TO THE MAJOR STUDIOS. SINCE BY THIS TIME THE STUDIOS HAD ALL ADOPTED THE WESTERN ELECTRIC PHONOGRAPHIC SYSTEM, RCA FOUND IT NECESSARY TO ENTER THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY ITSELF. RCA ALREADY OWNED A BLOCK OF STOCK IN THE FILM BOOKING OFFICE STUDIOS, AND THROUGH FBO HAD CONNECTIONS TO A LARGE CHAIN OF THEATERS OPERATED BY THE KEITH-ALBEE-ORPHEUM COMPANY [KAO]245 IN EARLY 1928, FACED WITH A RAPIDLY EXPANDING SYSTEM OF PHONOGRAPHIC MOTION PICTURE SOUND, RCA ORGANIZED THE RCA PHOTOPHONE CORPORATION TO COMMERCIALIZE ITS COMPETING AND RADICALLY DIFFERENT SOUND SYSTEM. THE NEW CORPORATION, OWNED BY GENERAL ELECTRIC, WESTINGHOUSE, AND RCA, PRODUCED ITS FIRST FILM IN MARCH 1928. (ARCHER 331-332) THE DECLINING FORTUNES OF KAO SPURRED A MERGER WITH RCA IN 1928 RESULTING IN AN INTEGRATED FIRM, RADIO-KEITH- ORPHEUM (RKO), AND RCA PHOTOPHONE'S DIRECT ACCESS TO OVER 1000 THEATER SOUND INSTALLATIONS.246 IRONICALLY, WESTERN ELECTRIC SOON DROPPED ITS PHONOGRAPHIC TECHNOLOGY IN FAVOR OF A PHOTOPHONE-LIKE OPTICAL SOUNDTRACK, ALTHOUGH ERPI WAS ABLE TO MAINTAIN ITS DOMINANCE IN THE SOUND EQUIPMENT MARKET. PHONOGRAPHIC SOUND 192 remained in favor for only a few years before theaters once again faced the prospect of purchasing expensive new sound equipment. Citing problems with the reliability of phonographic theater equipment theater owners began turning to the photographic equipment marketed by RCA and Western Electric as early as 1930. The new photographic systems were, just as their predecessors, mandatory upgrades for studio-owned theaters. Industry-wide conversion to sound-on-film was assured by the film distribution firm. Independents found it increasingly difficult to get prints with phonographic soundtracks because distributors simply stopped carrying them, and theaters quickly converted to sound-on-film or left the business.247 RCA and AT&T photographic systems differed in the ways that they modulated their light sources. The Western Electric system, developed by Christopher Wente, Craft, and others, used a "light valve," made of two tiny metal ribbons fixed between two electromagnetic pole pieces. (Figure 4.2) A magnetic field, modulated by an audio signal, varied the physical gap between the two ribbons. A light source was placed on one side of the ribbons, and film was passed on the other side. A record of the sound remained on the film as a black stripe of variable darkness, hence the term "variable density recording." Specialized studio sound recorders used standard sprocketed film to make a sound-only recording, which was later synchronized to the action on the film 248 The distribution prints of a motion picture had a sound track placed along the edge of the film, between the edge and the sprocket holes. Motion picture projectors were constructed with a special sound head to play back the sound, pre-amplify it, and send it to the main amplifiers. 193 Figure 4.2: Western Electric "Light Valve" Light modulation was the main difference between the AT&T/Western Electric and the RCA sound systems. This diagram shows in cut-away form the light modulator for the AT&T variable density system. The pole pieces at the tips of the light-modulating electromagnet radiate a field which is in turn generated by an audio signal fed to the coils of the electromagnet. With no signal present, the tiny metal shutters are held in place between the light source and film. The audio signal causes the shutters to open and close, exposing the film to the light. (Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 64 (June 1955) 194 BY THE MID-1930S, AT&T HAD LICENSED DOZENS OF INDEPENDENT MANUFACTURERS TO MAKE PROJECTORS, MOTION PICTURE CAMERAS, AND OTHER EQUIPMENT USING PATENTED DESIGNS. YET THE DOMINANCE OF A FEW LARGE FIRMS IN THE ACTUAL PRODUCTION OF FILMS CONTRIBUTED TO THE PERSISTENCE OF A HIGH LEVEL OF STANDARDIZATION IN MOTION PICTURE TECHNOLOGY, INCLUDING SOUND RECORDING TECHNOLOGY. AT LEAST THROUGH THE EARLY 1930S, MANY PROJECTORS WERE SUPPLIED WITH BOTH PHONOGRAPHIC AND PHOTOGRAPHIC SOUND EQUIPMENT. AT&T'S ONLY REAL COMPETITOR WAS RCA, AND YET IN THE END THE PHOTOPHONE SYSTEM REPRESENTED NO REAL TECHNOLOGICAL ALTERNATIVE. THE RCA PHOTOPHONE SYSTEM RECORDED SOUND AS A VARIABLY-EXPOSED AREA, RATHER THAN A CONSTANT AREA VARIABLY EXPOSED. IN OTHER WORDS, A NARROWLY FOCUSSED LIGHT SOURCE WITH CONSTANT INTENSITY TRACED A VARIABLE PATH OVER A MOVING FILM TO CREATE A RECORD OF THE ORIGINAL SIGNAL. (FIGURE 4.3) ERPI AND RCA PHOTOPHONE COMPETED TO SELL THE NEW SYSTEMS TO THE STUDIOS AND TO SELL MANUFACTURING RIGHTS TO OTHER COMPANIES. THE PHOTOPHONE SYSTEM WAS ADOPTED BY DISNEY STUDIOS IN 1933, REPUBLIC PICTURES IN 1935, AND WARNER BROTHERS IN 1936. COLUMBIA USED BOTH SYSTEMS AFTER 1936. BUT TO PROMOTERS OF ALTERNATIVE TYPES OF MOTION PICTURE TECHNOLOGY THE DOMINANCE OF TWO COMPANIES REPRESENTED A BRICK WALL TO SUCCESS. STUDIO-OWNED THEATERS ADOPTED SYSTEMS QUICKLY, ACCORDING TO THEIR OWNERSHIP. THE INDEPENDENT THEATERS WERE FOUGHT OVER BY ERPI AND RCA AND THE MULTITUDE OF INDEPENDENT COMPANIES MAKING EQUIPMENT UNDER LICENSE. MOST EXISTING THEATER PROJECTORS WERE CONVERTED TO SOUND BY ADDING A SOUND "HEAD" AND ITS REQUISITE AMPLIFIERS AND LOUDSPEAKERS. (FIGURE 4.4) BECAUSE THE LOCATION AND PHYSICAL DIMENSIONS OF THE SOUNDTRACK WERE STANDARDIZED IN 1930 195 Figure 4.3: Variable Density and Variable Area Recording The two dominant forms of optical or "sound on film" recording are variable density (left) and variable area (right) systems. Reproducing either of these soundtracks involves shining a light through the film and using a light-sensitive photocell on the other side. A varying amount of light passes through the soundtrack, causing an analagous, varying voltage to be generated by the photocell. That electric signal is then amplified electronically and reproduced in loudspeakers. (Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 12 (1928): 477) 196 Figure 4.4: Projector Pick Up "Head" Motion picture projectors for sound-on-film use are equipped with sound pick up Heads" mounted along the film path. This diagram depicts part of a projector as seen from the side, showing the parts associated with the soundtrack. (Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 12(1928): 669) 197 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by representatives of the major studios and the larger equipment manufacturers, a single type of sound head was specified that could reproduce soundtracks of either the variable area (RCA) or variable density (AT&T) type. Organizational Ossification: Exhibition and Distribution The coming of sound-on-film coincided with both the Great Depression, a threat to the demand for consumer services like movies, and the blossoming of the giant movie-providing corporations. In the 1930s all the major studios began producing "A" films in greater number, a type distinguished by its rapidly expanding production costs. Part of what constituted an A film was the elaborate sets and cast of stars, but the studios also experimented with ever grander musical presentations. The Hollywood musical had an increasingly important effect on the adoption of new sound recording technology, but musicals and other expensive A films had the more important effect of ensuring that large firms would continue to dominate in the production of the most successful films.249 The dependence of local theaters on the Hollywood product, and hence Hollywood technological standards, increased in the 1930s as smaller producers left the market. Industry consolidation was helped along by the economic downturn after 1930. The early years of the Great Depression brought about a decline of about 25% in theater revenues, as more and more people turned to the "free" broadcasts of the radio networks. Declining revenues were felt by producers and distributors, but especially by independent theaters. Many smaller theaters began offering give-aways, double features, or 198 other incentives to try to maintain customers.250 The benefits of these promotions accrued mainly to theaters owned by so-called independent chains- -regional chains not affiliated with studios. Among truly independent theaters, and in all the chains, the overall trend was the closing of less profitable theaters, especially those marginal enterprises specializing in non-feature films. Hollywood production companies successfully countered the downward trend by offering ever more glamorous products, which combined with an general economic upturn brought an increase in theater ticket sales by the late 1930s. Although the loss of income from American-owned, European and Japanese theaters during World War II hurt the studios, this loss was offset by soaring movie-going in the U.S. and Great Britain during the early 1940s. Attendance and corporate income peaked in 1946 after which television began to take away increasing numbers of viewers.251 Even before that time, however, it is clear that the definition of a movie theater had been set as the place where Hollywood technology was used to exhibit Hollywood films. Technological standardization was virtually ensured by the dominance of a few large companies in exhibition and in the manufacture and distribution of the "prints," or copies of films. The late 1930s and early 1940s marked the high point of oligopoly in these parts of the industry. Although there were independent producers who contributed films, often very successful films, to the market, the subsidiaries of the major studios dominated in the international distribution of prints, as well as in the ownership of the most profitable theaters.252 199 It was these two necessary functions-distribution and exhibition-that the eight major corporations co-operated to keep out potential competitors. In other words, it was the mundane worlds of movie wholesaling and retailing which provided the Big Five with the necessary muscle to erect and maintain barriers to entry to keep away all serious competitors for two decades253 The important "Paramount" antitrust case in 1938 exposed the way motion picture distribution was controlled, describing it in a way that, for my purposes, is also useful in explaining the technological ossification of the industry. The prosecution in the Paramount case did not focus on technology, but instead on industry organization. In particular, the case against Hollywood was presented in a way that pitted independent producers, or the makers of films which did not also own distribution companies or theater chains, against the vertically integrated majors. But in showing how "the real barriers to independent producers were created in the marketing of films,"254 the Paramount case challenged the ways in which the majors also controlled motion picture technology. The eight major studios owned distribution companies which by the late 1930s controlled a network of nominally independent businesses which functioned as marketers of films in particular geographic regions. These companies negotiated the leasing of films to local theaters, usually in blocks of several films each.255 Distribution was an impediment to the showing of independently made films, because the cost of operating the national distribution offices was exorbitant. Nevertheless, after 1945, a downturn in the industry led to a cutback in film production by the majors. Distribution companies began bidding competitively for independent films-good news for favored independent producers but an even greater deterrent to the establishment of new distribution companies. Further, the estimated overhead 200 costs of running a distribution firm increased 20-35 percent between the late 1930s and 1946, creating a new obstacle for new distributors attempting to enter the business 256 The Big Five were the only Paramount defendants who owned and operated theaters, and while they had concentrated their acquisition efforts on the largest theaters in the largest towns, by 1945 they owned only about 17 per cent of the total.257 The 17 per cent figure disguised the fact that the majors owned 70 per cent of the first-run theaters in almost all the cities in the country with over 100,000 population. Distributors maintained the status of the best theaters by discriminatory practices. As early as the 1930s they had established a fairly stable set of "zoning" and "run" guidelines for the areas that they served. These were mechanisms by which theaters bid on the rights to show A movies first and the length of the run. Larger theaters in big cities had the economic wherewithal to outbid small neighborhood theaters, guaranteeing that the larger theaters could charge the highest admission prices and still expect the best turnout.258 Admission prices were not subject to true inter- theater competition, but were set by contracts between distributor and exhibitor.259 Hollywood, the Federal Government and Labor This level of concentration in the industry, combined with Hollywood's high profile in American culture naturally brought the motion picture situation to the attention of government trust busters. The movie industry had an uneasy and often adversarial relationship with the federal government during the first half of the 20th century. Until the end of the 1930s, however, government 201 policies had the effect of maintaining the industry's basic structures- institutional, technological, and labor. Douglas Gomery argues that while the industry was not badly injured by the various anti-trust suits pursued by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the 1920s, the governmental threat to vertical integration and oligopoly in production seemed to loom over the major firms. A turning point came in the early 1930s. "By lobbying successfully through their trade association, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (the MPPDA or "Hays Office"), these eight firms were able to convince the federal government to enact rules which had the effect of sanctioning their pre-1930 monopolistic trade practices."260 The key to continued stability was the National Recovery Act. The major studios welcomed the passage of the NRA and the governmental sanction to have industries write their own industrial codes of pricing, production, and wages. The NRA commission for the motion picture industry included a group of weak labor organizations and two trade associations, one representing the powerful Hays Office and the other representing independent theater owners. The industrial plan laid out by and favorable to the MPPDA was expected to meet with serious opposition from the Allied States Association of Motion Picture Distributors, representing independent theater owners.261 To virtually everyone's surprise, the Allied States organization eventually accepted the MPPDA proposal almost without revision and it became official policy late in 1933. The code stipulated a standard contract between the studios and the theaters which remained in place for the next few decades. The code specifically outlawed certain types of competitive strategies employed by small, 3rd or 4th run (usually independent) theaters. Although price competition was 202 still legal, give-aways, raffles, and other promotions were no longer allowed. It seems apparent that the theaters most effected by the restrictions on promotions were not well represented by the Allied States organization, which was dominated by the owners of the wealthiest chains of theaters.262 While the industrial code won the support of the studios, labor organization under the NRA was less successful. While many motion picture industry workers had already unionized by 1930, they were organized in about 140 small, weak unions. One of the only major victories for labor involved the relatively large Screen Actors Guild, launched in 1933. The SAG won the right to have unlimited ceilings on actors' salaries, but was unsuccessful in other areas until the late 1930s, after the 1935 Wagner Act strengthened the motion picture labor unions. In the mean time, it was the studios who maintained control over performers' right to work with competing studios, and set working hours and pay rates.263 When the NRA was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935, the effect on the studios' labor relations was slight, since they already controlled the situation. A studio's control over its talent is important in the history of sound recording because many times stars were also recording artists. Most of the studios had recording subsidiaries or were, as in the case of RKO, part of an organization with a recording subsidiary. By controlling the musical careers of the stars, ensuring that they would make recordings at the largest record companies, that those recordings would be released as phonograph records as opposed to some other technology, and that to hear the big stars sing a consumer would have to purchase a phonograph reproducer.264 203 This discussion of labor, as it relates to the structures of corporate dominance, government regulation, and technology established and maintained by the motion picture studios in the 1930s must of course also include musicians in addition to singers. Musician's unions and music publishers were sometimes obstacles to the maintenance of stability in motion picture making in the 1930s, and their agitation contributed to changes in the system of Hollywood dominance by the 1940s. Because most Hollywood films utilized music extensively, motion picture firms were well aware of, if not particularly sympathetic to, the demands of the musicians in their employ. But because the recording of music in Hollywood is closely related to similar branches of radio broadcasting, I have combined the remainder of my discussion of music recording in these two industries in the section on radio that follows. Several changes would contribute to the unravelling of studio integration and top down control in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Antitrust suits, in particular the protracted 1938 "Paramount" case (in which all the Big Five and Little Three were indicted) resulted in the breakup of studio/distributors and theater chains. Although it had little immediate effect on motion picture technology, the disintegration of Hollywood control effectively ended the studios' ability to make system-wide technological decisions.265 With centralized control over product, the mechanisms of technological standardization in motion pictures remained place; from production through exhibition, the industry ossified. The direct ownership of the most profitable theaters was a natural way for a studio to ensure that one film format could be distributed to any theater in the chain. In practice, studios manufactured prints 204 with either the RCA or the Western Electric optical soundtrack formats, since in practice either process could be handled by a single type of projector. The court-ordered divestiture of theaters by production/distribution companies did little to change the technological rigidity of exhibition. In fact, when new sound and film technologies were developed by the studios in the postwar period, they were frequently rejected by financially-strapped theater owners, who claimed that they could not afford the upgrades.266 The integrated structure of the motion picture industry thus put in place a stable system of production and exhibition technology. The imperviousness of the industry to competition-be it competing technologies or competing firms- contributed directly to the exclusion of all sorts of alternative technologies, defining how what a motion picture was (through such things as A films and elaborate musicals), defining what a theater was (through the elimination of smaller theaters and theaters showing non-feature films) and defining a small set of technologies used to make a film. Although there were serious threats to the power of the major studios in the late 1930s and 1940s, much of the technological structure that they established remains in place even today. Sound Recording in Radio Broadcasting. 1926-1940 Technological ossification in radio broadcasting was more complex as compared to the motion picture industry, due the varied functions of the firms within the industry, especially radio stations, and by the very different relationship that radio had in relation to the Federal government. In contrast to the motion picture industry, which used a wide variety of somewhat different production and exhibition technologies before about 1925, the basic 205 technological structure of radio broadcasting was established well before the first commercial stations went on the air in the 1920s. In broadcasting, there was nothing comparable to the conversion to "talkies" until the large scale introduction of television and frequency modulation after World War II. The American system of network radio also had much more explicit policies related to the way technology was to be used than was the case in motion pictures. In the period before World War II, an oligopoly of radio networks in conjunction with electrical equipment manufacturers came to exercise a powerful influence on the various technologies related to broadcasting, including recording technologies. As a result, from the early 1930s to the late 1940s commercial radio broadcasting, except for its sound recording component, remained relatively technologically stable. In the post- World War II period the major networks and equipment manufacturers lost their tenuous control over sound recording as the broadcasting industry changed, and different techniques came to the fore. Consolidation of the Radio Industry Historian Susan Douglas has described how control over radio technology was appropriated by major American corporations in the 1920s. It was in her words a process in which government radio regulators, the military, the press, and certain key corporations sought to "legitimate corporate visions of how radio should be managed, thought about, and used." 267 Radio's heritage, rich with lone inventors and attic tinkerers, was by the 1920s being replaced by corporate capitalism.268 How did those corporations maintain control after the late 1920s, and how successful were they in doing so? 206 Most histories of radio during the 1930s and 1940s concentrate on its programming, rather than its technology. Perhaps one reason for this is that radio technology was relatively stable during these years; advances came in small increments which improved sound quality or broadcasting power but did not modify the overall structure of the system. Certainly the development of television and FM radio in the 1930s represented a threat to this system of broadcasting (although that threat was deflected for many years), but the most serious and persistent challenge to those who tried to stabilize radio broadcasting after 1930 came from recording technologies. Broadcast networks went to great lengths to try to control the use of sound recording in radio, and until the end of World War II they were successful, but that control was hotly contested. Two of the key elements in the stabilization of broadcasting technology after 1929 were the expansion of the national networks and, ironically, the government broadcasting regulations intended to control those networks. While European governments had established wireless communications policies as early as 1903, in the U.S. such policies were not implemented until after 1910. Commercial radio communication in the 'teens was largely point to point, and telegraphic, an emulation of standard telegraphy. News services, businesses, and the military used wireless telegraphy to communicate amongst themselves. Wireless installations on ships represented a large market for equipment manufacturers, especially after the federal government in 1910 approved the Wireless Ship Act, an effort to improve shipping safety by making shipboard wireless equipment mandatory. But the proliferation of radio transmitters in the U.S. was beginning to make it clear that the radio spectrum was like a limited 207 natural resource, and that some sort of centralized control over the use of that resource would soon be necessary to ensure its continued usefulness. The Titanic disaster of 1912, by highlighting the value of wireless communications, strengthened the call for a more systematic control of radio communications. The Radio Act of 1912 moved radio service even more toward centralized control by requiring licenses of all operators, establishing basic frequency allocations, and relegating amateur operators to a specific (and not very useful) portion of the spectrum. Tighter government control over radio came during America's involvement in World War I, under the direction of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. The seizure of German and British stations on the East Coast in 1917 instantly made the military a major center of radio communications. Navy pressure to create an American radio service spurred the formation of the Radio Corporation of America in late 1919, a subsidiary of the General Electric Company and incorporating the assets of the British-owned American Marconi Company.269 Almost immediately, RCA and GE began negotiating with AT&T on the matter of radio service and vacuum tube patents. Both RCA and AT&T owned important patent rights on the vacuum tube diode or triode, and both had ambitions in the field of radio service. As Hugh Aitken has written, "the desired outcome was, therefore, a situation in which GE and RCA would be free from the competition of AT&T and [its subsidiary] Western Electric in certain fields, and AT&T and Western Electric free from the competition of GE and RCA in others."270 The resulting agreements were vaguely worded and would later cause friction between the two companies, but were understood at first to provide for RCA's use of a pool of AT&T, Western Electric, and RCA patents for 208 use in radio telephony and telegraphy to ships, transatlantic stations, and airplanes. AT&T could use these patents to develop land-based radio telegraphy or telephone service. AT&T got the rights to "toll" radiotelephony (understood to be the radio equivalent of long distance service), and the manufacture of transmitters, while GE had exclusive rights to the sale of amateur radio receiving apparatus including vacuum tubes, and broadcasting service . However, while GE representatives like Ernst Alexanderson understood toll radiotelephony as point-to-point service for a fee, AT&T later claimed that "toll" could include commercial broadcasting and promptly set up its own radio station. 271 At about the same time, engineers at RCA were coming to understand that no receiver yet developed could match the performance of the heterodyne- type set developed by Reginald Fessenden, at least for use in wireless telegraphy. Unfortunately for the Corporation, the rival firm Westinghouse held the patent on the efficient heterodyne receiver circuit. So in September of 1920 RCA offered to purchase Westinghouse's radio technology in exchange for a sizable block of RCA stock 272 Westinghouse refused the initial offer, and later in 1920 also acquired the valuable Armstrong patents for the superheterodyne and regenerative circuits (two important receiver innovations suitable for both radio telegraphy and telephony) 273 After lengthy negotiations, Westinghouse was brought into the organization in the summer of 1921 with the understanding that it would act as a complement to Western Electric in the manufacture of equipment for sale by RCA. In the mean time, United Fruit Company, holder of some significant radio patents and operator of several stations, was brought into the group as a major shareholder. The consortium was now expanded to 209 include not only General Electric and AT&T, but also Westinghouse and United Fruit.274 From Point-to-Point Transmission to Broadcasting The focus of radio communications soon shifted from point-to-point service to public broadcasting. In late 1920, Westinghouse began broadcasting entertainment on its Pittsburgh station, KDKA. Seeing the instant popularity of KDKA, RCA leaders, chiefly David Sarnoff, perceived a demand for such service and began reconsidering their commitment to wireless telegraphy. Nonetheless, RCA point-to-point type message services such as transatlantic telegraphy remained profitable for several years to come. Soon afterwards attacks on the new company began to erupt, from both internal and external sources. When several of the member companies became interested in broadcasting to the public, bitter disputes broke out over the right to do so. AT&T in 1921 decided to sell its stock in RCA in order to disentangle itself somewhat from disputes between the member companies. Further negotiations resulted in a 1926 agreement by which AT&T gave up its rights to pursue broadcasting in return for certain concessions. The federal government launched an investigation of RCA at about the same time, looking for violations of the Sherman Act. In 1923 the Federal Trade Commission produced a report on RCA that accused it of restrictions on trade and monopolistic tendencies. Although RCA was the product of Navy Department pressure to form an ail-American radio operating company (in part in reaction to the British-owned American Marconi's dominance in this country before World War I), by 1930 210 RCA was seen as an evil "radio trust." The ICC formally indicted RCA in 1930 and forced company officials to sign a consent decree under which General Electric and Westinghouse divested themselves of RCA stock. Despite these disruptions, RCA flourished in the early 1920s. Broadcasting proved immensely popular, as indicated by the value of RCA's sales of consumer receivers: Table 4.1: Value of RCA Radio Receiver Sales 1921 $1,468,920 1922 $11,286,489 1924 $50,000,000 (approximate)275 In 1930, RCA negotiated with GE and Western Electric for the rights to manufacture receivers in addition to simply selling them. Then, in 1932, the company received permission from AT&T to manufacture and sell transmitting equipment. Already in the late 1920s, the technology of commercial radio was stabilizing. The equipment used at stations, for example, evolved rapidly until about 1925, after which change came in the form of incremental advances; steadily improving sound quality resulting from better microphones, sound processing equipment, transmitters, and antennas. Sound recording equipment had a special place in the radio studio, because stations used phonographs both for playing program material for broadcast and for making original recordings. 211 Yet the recording technology that radio stations used also ceased to be a matter of experimentation after about 1930, though it remained a source of controversy. While there were many alternatives, the 33 1/3 rpm, large-diameter (up to 16 inches) phonograph "transcription" disks and corresponding recorders developed by AT&T for the motion picture industry became the de facto national standard in the early 1930s. RCA's station WOR, for example, used these recorders as early as 1929. But just at the time a high quality phonograph recorder was widely available, the national networks began to restrict tightly the use of such equipment. Why? The answer is to be found in the complex interactions between national networks and the local and theoretically "sovereign" network affiliates. Formation of the Networks A system of program distribution by telephone line was used by all the major networks from the moment of their conception and proved to be a powerful way to control the entire system. The use of telephone wires for creating networks began in the 1923 when both WEAF (AT&T's station) and WJZ (a Westinghouse station) used this technique to broadcast the same program simultaneously.276 Connecting stations in this way gave the same effect as multiplying the power of single transmitter by providing a much broader geographical coverage. Talk began to circulate of linking stations all across the country to provide simultaneous broadcasts everywhere. Here was the key to making commercial radio into a medium of national advertising. In early 1923, AT&T temporarily established a special line between its flagship station WEAF in New York City to station WNAC in Boston. Regular network service began in 212 JULY 1923 WHEN WEAF WAS CONNECTED BY TELEPHONE LINE TO STATION WMAF IN DARTMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS AND AT&T'S STATION WCAP IN WASHINGTON D.C. BY 1924, AT&T HAD BROADCAST SIMULTANEOUSLY THROUGH 23 STATIONS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.277 WESTINGHOUSE, GE, AND RCA SOON FOLLOWED SUIT BUT SOUGHT TO CIRCUMVENT AT&T'S MONOPOLY ON TELEPHONE SERVICE BY USING WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH LINES TO CONNECT THE STATION WJZ Q'OINTLY OWNED BY WESTINGHOUSE AND RCA UNTIL LATE 1923, WHEN RCA PURCHASED IT) WITH A NUMBER OF DISTANT STATIONS INCLUDING GE'S STATION WGY.278 BUT SINCE THE COMPANIES CONSTITUTING RCA HAD AGREED FOR THE TIME BEING TO LET AT&T OPERATE RADIO TELEPHONY FOR "TOLL" (AND THIS WAS LATER INTERPRETED TO MEAN THE ACCEPTANCE OF ADVERTISING), ONLY THE WEAF NETWORK COULD BE OPERATED AS A COMMERCIALLY VENTURE. THE EMERGING NETWORKS BEGAN TO RELY ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ON LIVE BROADCASTS, CREATED AT STUDIOS IN NEW YORK, CHICAGO OR LOS ANGELES OR "PICKED UP" FROM A THEATER OR CONCERT HALL (LIVE PICK UPS WERE ALSO SENT TO THE STUDIOS OVER TELEPHONE LINES). LIVE BROADCASTS IN THE EARLY YEARS WERE A NOVELTY, EXPLOITED FOR THEIR PUBLICITY VALUE BY THE NETWORKS. IN LATE 1926, A HEAVILY PROMOTED NBC BROADCAST USED REMOTE PICKUPS FROM NEW YORK, CHICAGO, AND KANSAS CITY AT A REPORTED COST TO THE NETWORK OF ABOUT $50,000. ANNOUNCERS MADE THE FAR FLUNG PICK UP SITES THE FOCUS OF ATTENTION. MANY OF THE STATIONS BROADCASTING THIS EVENT WERE INDEPENDENTLY OWNED, BUT NBC USED THIS SHOW TO DEMONSTRATE THE AUDIENCE-DRAWING POWER OF ITS LIVE NATIONAL PROGRAMMING.279 IN 1926 THE RCA MEMBER COMPANIES DECIDED TO ESTABLISH A SEPARATE NETWORK OPERATION, THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY. NBC PURCHASED AT&T'S STATIONS, AND THE TELEPHONE COMPANY RETREATED TO A ROLE THAT ALLOWED 213 only for the distribution of NBC programming by wire. This shift proved to be important during later antitrust proceedings, for AT&T's role in maintaining the oligopolistic structure of the industry was masked by its "common carrier" regulatory status. The relationship between NBC and AT&T was cemented by the network's agreement to use only AT&T telephone lines (unless there were no AT&T lines available). The telephone company's revenues from this business were considerable, as the following table illustrates (revenues from radio network service, called "program transmission," are abbreviated here as "Prog. Trans."). Table 4.2: AT&T Income, 1924-1935 Total ($) Telephone Prog. Trans. Telegraph Teletype 1924 10,376,365 1,582,612 205,319 8,048,376 594,058 1924 12,334,965 1,863,554 248,165 9,382,576 840,670 1926 15,006,945 2,302,250 443,425 10,879,515 1,381,755 1927 17,044,412 2,550562 1,209,712 11,285,540 1,998,598 1928 20,496,335 2,908,439 2,032,127 12,010,857 3,544,912 1929 24,599,610 3,736,380 2,837,973 12,283,220 5,742,037 1930 25,664,577 3,888,204 3,442,702 10,736,885 7,596,786 1931 23,424,729 3,085,837 3,618,448 8,901,621 7,818,823 1932 19,991,187 2,578,903 3,921,304 6,696,629 6,794,351 1933 18,122,966 2,496,768 3,304,341 6,648,569 5,673,288 1934 17,824,263 2,740,058 3,374,484 6,291,032 5,418,689 1935 17,727,960 2,912,881 3,576,357 5,933,104 5.305.618280 NBC grew from two affiliated stations in 1924 to 221 stations in 1941.281 In 1927, the company that would soon be renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System was formed, breaking NBC's brief monopoly on network service. CBS started with 16 stations, growing to 113 by 1938.282 Both companies were profitable almost from the start, and they quickly set up competing services in 214 most major cities. Another network, Mutual, was established in 1934 and remained a much smaller organization throughout its lifetime. It was not until 1942 that the country gained a fourth major network, when the American Broadcasting Company, originally part of NBC, was divested by court order. 283 By the early 1930s and especially under the Roosevelt administration, radio was the focus of repeated attempts to rectify conditions which were seen as corporate abuses. New legislation in the form of the Communications Act of 1932 outlined the ways in which the networks could operate. The best known function of the Federal Communications Commission, the government agency charged with enforcing the Communications Act, was the establishment of frequency allocations and "clear channels" (high power stations with unique frequency assignments which could be heard in rural areas at night). FCC regulations also had the effect of hindering the formation and growth of small, regional networks. Telephonic distribution was expensive, since special telephone lines had to be leased from AT&T's Long Lines division. But since the FCC treated AT&T as a common carrier rather than a broadcaster, its monopoly role in the distribution of programming did not become a significant part of anti-monopolistic FCC policies. In fact, FCC policies maintained AT&T's monopoly position in long distance telephone service. Thus, radio's use of the telephone network tended to favor the large corporations that could afford AT&T's high prices for "land lines," as the special wires were called. NBC and CBS operated centralized studios on both coasts and produced expensive music and variety shows comparable to the "A" films produced in Hollywood. After the mid-1930s these shows were often conceived and executed by the sponsors or their advertising agencies, while in other 215 cases they were existing shows produced by the network and later "sold" to national advertisers. Mutual's network operated in a similar way, except that studios were not concentrated in one location. Actual advertising on these shows in the early years often consisted of a name, such as "Campbell Playhouse," sponsored by the famous canned soup company, and of short announcements before and after, although as years passed advertisements became both lengthier and more direct.284 The networks transmitted these programs to local affiliate stations for simultaneous broadcast over all or part of the network. The actual distribution of any particular program grew increasingly complex in the 1930s. The networks and AT&T developed by 1931 a system of telephone lines and switching equipment that allowed advertisers to purchase "prime" advertising time on programs broadcast to select groups of stations in densely populated areas. The traffic manager of NBC in 1940 stated that For the purpose of operation, our network is broken up into approximately 100 units. We use various combinations of these units to get the desired network for any program... Mechanically, I think, out of the 100 units there are something in excess of a million possible combinations.285 The technology of the network was completely controlled by AT&T and the telephone company worked steadily but independently to develop network- related equipment. Early network experiments in the 1920s showed how poor the existing telephone system was for delivering high quality signals. Bell Laboratories developed a type of cable with a "flat" or constant frequency transmission characteristic from 50 to 8000 hertz, encouraging the expansion of telephonic distribution. By 1932 the telephone company maintained 32,500 miles of cable that was being used by the networks 16 hours per day. 216 Additional temporary circuits increased that mileage to a yearly average of 44,000, not counting the 34,000 miles of teletypewriter circuits used by the networks to communicate with stations.288 Local Stations: Independence and Affiliation Local stations interacted with the networks in several different ways. The networks owned and operated the best stations in all the major cities, ensuring that their own programs would reach the widest audience and, therefore, bring in the largest advertising revenues. Ownership was desirable because FCC regulations made the selection of programming the right of the station owner. Stations could theoretically refuse network programming in favor of something else, undermining the ability of the network to predict the size of its potential audience. Where ownership was not possible, the networks employed standard contracts of affiliation (discussed below) to try to ensure that their programs were in fact broadcast. There were two kinds of network programs, "commercial," and "sustaining." The network paid the local affiliate a certain hourly rate to broadcast commercial programs. The stations paid a direct hourly rate or an indirect monthly affiliation fee for sustaining programs, for which they could sell advertising.287 Some stations took network programming on an occasional basis, but were not locked to a single network. Still other stations were independent of the major networks. Often, these stations were independent because they were not lucky enough to secure one of the lucrative network affiliations in a city, or because they served the less profitable rural areas and small towns. These stations relied on local talent or upon the small regional 217 networks that sprang up in the 1930s. The local and regional networks often operated analogously to the majors, but on a smaller scale. Independents also relied on commercial 78 rpm phonograph records, but the low quality of these recordings, combined with competition from flashy network offerings discouraged stations from relying too heavily on the phonograph. The American networks actively discouraged the use of recording equipment by affiliate stations where network programs were concerned.288 Network representatives consistently claimed that the quality of transcriptions was so poor that they could not be used in radio, a myth that has been repeated by historians. As late as 1948, Ned Midgley of CBS, for example, still claimed that stations regularly refused to broadcast programming that originated from transcription disks.289 The NBC standard affiliate contract of the early 1940s, for example, included the provision that a station would not "authorize, cause, permit, or enable anything to be done without our consent whereby a recording is made, or a recording is broadcast, of a program which has been, or is being, broadcast on N.B.C. networks."290 Sometimes advertisers asked that recordings of the shows that they sponsored be made for archival purposes or later replay on non-network stations. In this case, N.B.C. required that the recording be made at the central studios by the RCA Manufacturing company, the recording division of RCA. Why such tight controls on recording? Transcriptions represented a major threat to the viability of the networks as long as they relied on telephonic distribution of programming. Almost as soon as transcription machines became widely available, a few new companies began distributing programming to stations on disk. That a transcription network was not only possible but practical 218 soon became glaringly obvious to the major networks. In 1934, NBC hedged its bets by operating its own transcription service, supplying a variety of music programs to affiliated stations on 33 1/3 rpm disks (but still retaining all rights to their creation and use). Affiliation contracts tended to make independently-produced programming (including that distributed by transcription) more difficult for stations to use. Transcription based networks, following the NBC-CBS model, tried to recruit national advertisers for programs that were put on transcription disk and sent to both independents and network affiliates, which broadcast the programming during the hours when their network contracts allowed them to broadcast what they wished. The profit derived by local stations from this sort of business was sometimes greater than for network programs, and the local stations began exercising their sovereignty by replacing network shows with transcription-based programs. The networks countered this by adding to the contract the provision for "option time," which forced the local stations to guarantee the networks certain key blocks of hours. For example, NBC's option time included Table 4.3: Network Option Time Weekdays 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.291 Sundays 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. 219 Columbia had an option time provision in its contracts from its inception, though NBC did not include one until 1935. Option time typically included the "prime time" hours, when advertising revenues were greatest. Transcription use, then, was restrained in several ways. The networks themselves did not use this technology for regular broadcasts and propagated anti-transcription myths. Affiliation contracts included specific blocks of time during which only live network programming could be broadcast, and these contrasts simultaneously restricted the use of recording equipment by affiliates, banning the recording of network transmissions. Network dominance in radio acted to relegate the use of this technology to locally-generated programming. In practice, larger stations followed the model of the networks when possible by seeking out local sources of live entertainment. They tended to broadcast material from transcription during the times when audiences, and hence revenues, were smallest. Often programs were recorded for rebroadcast as filler material for times when no sponsor would pay for the broadcast. Transcription networks appealed to smaller and rural stations because the programs were less expensive than regular network programming. But the recording of transcriptions by the small stations was undertaken on only a limited basis because of its expense and (in the context of the existing technological system) limited utility. New recording technologies which were offered for sale to these stations were unlikely to succeed, if only because smaller stations were less able to afford new equipment. The Depression was much tougher on the independents than network affiliates. Thus, the new magnetic and photographic recording technologies that emerged in the 1930s and early 1940s received a less than 220 enthusiastic reception in the radio business. There was an artificially limited demand for the existing phonographic technology, which itself was technically "good enough" for the second rate programming it was used to record and did not seem to warrant replacement. The cost of recording equipment was fairly high, and the inability or unwillingness of stations to use it extensively gave it a marginal existence in the radio station. A 1947 FCC report in which the Commission tried to discover what it cost to put a station on the air, gives at least a hint at the relative significance of the cost recording equipment. The total cost of opening a station, of course, varied widely with the location of the station and the power output of the transmitter. Table 4.4: Estimate Cost of Running A Radio Station equipment land buildings all other total Under 50.000 Population Local unlimited 14.5 (x$1000) 3. 11.5 5.5 34.1 Local part-time 15.4 7 15.5 4.8 40.1 Regional unlimited 52.7 16.9 13.5 14 91 Regional part-time 26.0 3.4 11 12.4 52.6 50.000 Population and Over Local unlimited 20.6 7.4 14 11.8 50.1 local part-time 19 7.2 17.5 13.3 55.1 Regional unlimited 48 6.2 15.5 65 133 Regional part-time 32 8.4 18.5 15.9 71292 The cost of a transcription turntable ranged from a few hundred dollars to as much as $2500. Large stations were the primary buyers of new equipment, and most apparently bought at least one unit suitable for permanent installation. This usually meant a recorder from the high price range. A typical example was 221 RCA's Model 73b recorder, which cost $1,650 (with the minimum accessories the total price was $2119)293 Blank recording disks which could be used only once and provided up to 30 minutes recording time, cost $3.00- $4.00.294 From these statistics it is clear that equipment costs were a significant expense to all stations, large and small. The high price of equipment and the bad economic conditions of the 1930s the resistance of the radio industry to technological change. Stations, especially marginal ones, which had already purchased these expensive items had a strong economic disincentive to replace them. Recordings and the American Federation of Musicians The transcription recorder became the center of a major labor controversy in the 1940s which deeply effected radio and motion pictures. The rift between phonograph recording (i.e. consumer phonographs) and musicians dated at least to the 1920s, when the commercialization of the phonograph brought outrage from musicians, who condemned recorded music as being both aesthetically unsatisfactory and a threat to their own livelihood. Musicians were seriously effected by the introduction of sound in motion picture theaters in the late 1920s, where many of them worked in small orchestras. The American Federation of Musicians, the largest such organization in the United States, felt just as threatened by the appearance of radio, and claimed that musicians in public places were being replaced by radio broadcasts. By the late 1920s, the AFM was also claiming that staff musicians who had been hired by local stations were being replaced by phonographs, and the union renewed a decades-old attack on records. The real role of musicians in radio stations 222 varied from station to station, and changed over time. Staff musicians at the semi-fictional west coast station KUKU, portrayed in Jane Woodfin's 1951 best seller, Of Mikes and Men, were on call at all times, and if a remote pick-up failed or a scheduled performer canceled at the last minute, live musical entertainment was always at hand.295 AS radio matured, fewer staff musicians were employed at local stations. The battle between the AFM and users of sound recording culminated in something the press called "Petrillo's War," publicly exposing the growing concerns of musicians regarding transcriptions and consumer phonograph records. James Caesar Petrillo was the foul-mouthed and gritty president of the Chicago local of the American Federation of Musicians. Petrillo was a strong advocate of the AFM's anti-record activities in Washington. At the union's insistence, for example, the FCC issued a rule in 1930 mandating that stations always identify recordings as such, and that consumer phonograph manufacturers label records as being for home use only.296 While the AFM was unsuccessful in getting royalties for records played by radio stations or networks, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, did win such rights.297 ASCAP, incidently, held a virtual monopoly on music copyrights in the U.S., and received royalties wherever its music was played or recorded 296 James Petrillo consistently spoke out against the making and use of recordings, and in 1931 and 1936, he called strikes against the use of phonograph records in local radio stations. While the 1931 strike was quickly settled by reducing the work week for musicians, the later strike lasted well into 1937. AFM's national president, Joseph Weber, agreed to call a conference of 223 phonograph, transcription, and radio companies to discuss the issues of "canned music." The resulting agreements stipulated that the networks and affiliated stations would spend several million dollars each year to employ staff musicians. Later in 1938, similar agreements were struck with the National Committee of Independent Broadcasters. The Justice Department ruled that these contracts were illegal and could not be renewed after they expired in 1940, so the AFM began licensing networks and stations to make transcriptions or consumer recordings late in 1938. No money changed hands under these licenses, but they ensured that only union musicians would be employed to make recordings.299 In June of 1942, Petrillo once again called for a ban on the making of recordings. By this time, he had been elected to replace Weber as leader of the AFM and his ban would be national in scope. The ban actually went into effect on August 1st, 1942, and everywhere transcription recorders stopped moving.300 The Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce called a hearing on the matter in early 1943, in which Petrillo agreed to negotiate with the companies engaged in recording. In February 1943 he proposed that recording companies (those making consumer records or transcriptions for sale to radio stations) and transcription companies (those making transcriptions for archival purposes- i.e. radio networks) pay a per-disk fee to a national fund to support unemployed musicians. All the companies refused, and negotiations were stalled.301 In the meantime, record companies began issuing older recordings from their backlog and libraries. All-vocal recordings, which were allowed under the ban, briefly came into vogue at the recording companies. While these 224 innovations supported the consumer record industry for a while, shortages of the shellac (an Indian product) used for making records were beginning to restrict output. The case also passed to the jurisdiction of the National War Labor Board, which also called for hearings on the matter in July 1943. In the next set of hearings Frank Mullen, executive vice president of NBC testified that about 70% of the network's programming included live musical performances either as the basis of the program or as background, and that the network thus could not operate without AFM musicians.302 NBC signed a recording contract with the AFM which solved the problem temporarily, but it was not renewed when it expired on December 31 1947. In October of 1946, meanwhile, the network had agreed to a 50% increase in pay for musicians used in making transcription recordings. This amounted to $27 per "man" per 15 minutes of recording music in one hour, plus $18 per man per hour additional for rehearsal."303 This postwar AFM ban had an increased disruptive potential because of the emergence of television and FM. Petrillo had gone a step further in his 1947 decrees by banning the appearance of live musicians on television. Frank Mullen argued passionately before the Senate committee that TV would soon be irreparably damaged by the ban. Already, he said, we are forced to cut our television pickups from Madison Square Garden whenever musicians perform. Instances are numerous where a proposed television program has had to b e rejected because music was so intertwined with the rest of the program that the two could not be separated. Telecasters have had to resort to the use or recorded music to served as an accompaniment for singers. 304 Petrillo imposed two further restrictions on television broadcasters that had the effect of completely cutting off their access to music. It began 225 pressuring Hollywood studios to sign contracts that would require union permission before any sound film containing musical sections could be leased or sold to a television broadcaster. Finally, Petrillo banned duplicate telecasting of any musical program originally created for radio. Mullen complained that Toscanini's famous NBC Symphony Orchestra could not be simultaneously broadcast over television and radio channels if Petrillo's ban continued.305 Petrillo's war came to a close as sound recording technologies and practices in radio, the phonograph industry, and motion pictures were beginning to change. The first breach in the network armor had been the formation of all-transcription networks. The transcription recorders developed by AT&T and later manufactured by companies like RCA, Scully, and Presto formed the technical basis of many small regional and even national networks. Instead of broadcasting live, programs were simply recorded well ahead of time and distributed through the mail. This kind of transcription use by stations spread slowly, and its impact was not easy to gauge. RCA/NBC's transcription bureau, though announced in 1934, did not get underway for about a year. A 1936 report by the FCC could only concluded that What effect this will have upon the relative economic welfare of all stations cannot yet be determined accurately. However, it appears to be a source of revenue for all classes of stations, and in many instances enables the public in a community to receive a desirable program which would otherwise not be available to it.306 Recording and the Fall of the Networks By 1938, the FCC reported that the total value of the transcription business in the U.S. amounted to less than $5,000,000, with RCA controlling about 226 $1,300,000 of that total. FCC regulations, however, were changed in the early 1940s in a way that undermined the national network's control of local stations, and hence recording technology. In 1941, for example, the Commission ruled that a station's license would not be granted or renewed if that station had "any contract, arrangement, or understanding, express or implied, with a network organization under which the station is prevented or hindered from, or penalized for, broadcasting the programs of any other network organization."307 This rule made it easier, theoretically, for transcription-based networks to attract customers. In an effort to stimulate competition in local broadcasting, the Commission also began granting new licenses to stations without considering, as it had in the past, the economic effects on existing stations. While wartime restrictions on station building were in effect until 1945, 16 months after those restrictions were lifted there were over 600 new stations on the air or under construction.308 While the Korean war brought another temporary freeze on station building, the growth in the number of radio stations continued in the 1950s, radically changing the ownership patterns of American broadcasting. The distribution of programming through recordings rather than over telephone lines proved to be the only way in which new national networks emerged until well after World War II.309 The first such network was the World Broadcasting System, which leased $182,000 worth of recording equipment from ERPI in 1930. The network created programming at its Sound Studios of New York until 1935, when recording was contracted to ERPI. WBS affiliate stations received transcriptions of program material through the mail, and played them simultaneously with the other stations in the network.310 227 During World War II, the networks began to use transcription recordings in a limited way to bring battlefront news to the airwaves. At the end of World War II, two of the national networks continued experimenting with recorded programming. One was Mutual, which broadcast transcriptions of atomic bomb tests at Bikini and Winston Churchill's visit to the U.S. in 1946.311 At the AFM hearings, ABC (a product of antitrust proceedings, formed from a court ordered split of the NBC network) was represented by its president, Mark Woods. His testimony revealed the new attitudes that networks were developing in the postwar period toward recorded programming. Woods discussed the way that the popular Bing Crosby show was recorded in the studio once a week onto disks which played over the network, and then destroyed. From the point of view of the public, however, it may be a matter of considerable significance as to whether the program is broadcast live or transcribed. For one thing, experience has indicated that the quality of certain programs can be improved if they are presented by transcriptions since any errors in the production of the show can be edited and corrected before the program goes on the air.312 Woods also noted that transcriptions could be used to solve delay problems. Networks were struggling to find an acceptable solution to the broadcast of programs to audiences spread out across a continent. Sometimes, entire programs were broadcast live twice, once for the east coast and once for the west. Other programs were simply not carried nationally, but originated from either Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York were carried over only part of the network. Changes in the system of daylight savings time after the War created additional problems that helped to encourage recorded programming. What Mark Woods called "delay problems" referred to the necessity of multiple rebroadcasts to different time zones.313 How better for a network now cut off 228 from its parent and faced with competition from television to save money on live talent ant to use recordings? That is exactly what ABC did.314 Stations themselves began to break away from live programming in the 1930s. The history of station WQXR in New York demonstrates the effects of network dominance on recording technology as well as the hollowness of anti- phonograph myths. Originally called W2XR, this was an experimental station operated as early as 1935 by electrical engineer John V. L. Hogan. On the air only a few hours a day, Hogan relied on phonograph recordings of classical music exclusively. Encouraging letters to the station and other publicity convinced Hogan and a partner Elliot M. Sanger to petition the FCC for a commercial license. This was granted and the station began operating as WQXR at 1000 watts (low power by commercial standards) on 1550 kilocycles (the uppermost part of the commercial spectrum). Despite these disadvantages, and despite the choice to broadcast only "good music," the station proved to be a viable commercial operation. Operating in a city as large as New York made it possible for a station catering to a specialized audience to survive, or at least subsist 315 WQXR was independent of the major networks (although it occasionally accepted symphonic programs from the network). Like the networks, it used leased telephone lines whenever possible to broadcast live from musical performances. In other cases, the station sent a team of sound engineers with transcription recorders to the sites of concerts, although this was an expensive way to obtain programming. Most of the day-to-day programming came from ordinary phonograph disks, or later purchased transcription programs. The station boasted of its extensive library of recordings and its elaborate system of 229 cataloging them. WQXR's decision to rely on classical music demanded that it also rely heavily on phonograph recordings, and yet this dependence on "canned" music satisfied a discriminating audience of music aficionados. WQXR was one of the few American stations to experiment with new recording techniques. For a time it used a Philips-Miller optical sound recorder similar to those used in motion picture studios, but the experiment was apparently short lived.318 The station's experience undermined the network argument that recordings were too inferior in sound quality to satisfy an audience, and it demonstrated how a station could operate virtually independent of the telephonic networks. In certain aspects of its technical operation and audience specialization, WQXR would prove to be a model for successful radio operation in the post-World War II period of network decline.317 The governmental use of recordings in radio opened up other possibilities. Even in World War II, the Office of War Information had used transcription and magnetic wire recorders318 to create programming for its radio services, and after the war, the Voice of America. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the armed services were among the largest customers for recording equipment, including phonographic, photographic, and magnetic types, for use in broadcasting and audio-visual education. As early as 1941, after Petrillo's War had broken out, the Office of War Information asked Petrillo to back down on his recording ban before it went into effect. Though Petrillo ignored the plea, the fact that the military showed so much concern demonstrates the growing importance of sound recording in the armed forces.319 Another new application of recording technology was in the form of wired entertainment represented by Muzak. The Wired Radio corporation obtained an 230 ERPI lease for equipment and recording rights in 1934. The Muzak network that Wired Radio set up was essentially a radio network without the radio stations. Programs originated from New York studios and were carried over AT&T broadband land lines to remote locations, just like NBC, CBS, or Mutual programs. Instead of being broadcast, however, Muzak programming was wired into hotel and office sound systems; it was "piped in" music. By 1937 Muzak had a library of 7,500 transcriptions and provided a "red" service featuring dance music and a "purple" service of "light concert" music. In 1934, ERPI also experimented with such a service, and attempted unsuccessfully to initiate a transcription library service for Muzak-style entertainment. Muzak would spawn a host of imitators in the 1950s and 1960s all of whom, like Muzak, distributed recorded programming to private customers in a way that competed, more or less directly, with network radio.320 Radio and Motion Pictures After World War II This essay has sought to examine a period of relative stability in the motion picture and radio industries, and the special place of sound recording in building, maintaining and ultimately undermining that stability. The movie and radio industries became reconfigured after World War II, so a postscript to this story is in order. Consumer television receiver sales skyrocketed after 1947, and radio networks quickly expanded their production of television programming. The radio networks transferred their human resources to television at the expense of radio programming, creating a void which stations (and there were more of them than ever) were expected to fill themselves. Stations responded by shifting to new types of programming formats, such as 231 talk radio, or the top 40 formats. Faced with the necessity to generate more locally-generated programming than ever before, radio stations relied more heavily on sound recording devices. At just the same time, magnetic tape recording became generally available. This technology represented a substantial cost savings over disk recording, and was universally adopted in radio by 1950. Tape helped radio stations remain profitable by lowering production costs, and by the mid-1950s tape-based machinery was available that could lower costs even more by partially automating stations. Television was also at the center wrenching changes in the post war motion picture industry. Theaters, now all independent, found it difficult to stay in operation in cities as suburbanization increased. Most large theaters closed, and smaller, multi-screen suburban theaters became the norm. The motion picture industry began to shift into television production, using its studio facilities to make television shows or made-for-tv movies, all shot on film. Falling revenues for conventional movies spurred the studios to decrease the number of features produced per year while attempting to make each movie a major hit. One of the ways this was accomplished was through new technology. The 1950s and 1960s saw a host of wide screen, three dimensional, or multi channel sound films produced. Most of these innovations required that theater owners buy or lease new equipment, a demand that theater owners resisted. Hollywood studios, now more cost-conscious, adopted new production technologies that promised to lower the cost of making a film. Magnetic recording technologies for making sound tracks became instantly popular, because their inexpensive, reusable recording medium was cheaper than photographic equivalents. Magnetic recorder manufacturers were less 232 successful at selling magnetic sound track projectors to theaters, and while the better-off theaters switched to the new technology, even today most theaters rent films with optical soundtracks. Changes in the film and broadcasting industries that began after World War II continue today, so that any new pattern of structural stability that might emerge is not apparent. In equipment manufacture a host of technologies, from videotape to digital transmission, has kept the industry in flux. In Hollywood, studios are parts of international corporations so diversified that generalization is impossible. Broadcasting companies, which successfully dominated television for a while, are now creating new radio networks, but are threatened by videocassette recorders, cable/satellite networks and the prospect of digital entertainment services. Conclusions While the motion picture and radio broadcasting industries between about 1925 and 1945 developed very differently, certain general features of these industries were similar. In motion pictures, Hollywood firms enjoyed a period of relative stability, characterized by corporate dominance and technological standardization. The technologies of production and exhibition chosen by a small group of firms helped to maintain a corporate hegemony. This essay has focussed on sound technology and its contributions to the building of stability. I have shown how, for example, the shift to talkies had the effect of virtually eliminating other types of movies in public theaters- eliminating in other words the kind of movies not produced by large Hollywood corporations. As movie companies moved into the consumer phonograph 233 industry, they manipulated contractual restrictions to ensure that their employees would record on their record labels (the same might be said about the way radio broadcasters handled their talent). Giant corporations possessing the most valuable talent released movies and sound recordings using the technologies that they controlled, ensuring that Hollywood movie technology and 78 rpm records dominated the marketplace and became de facto national standards. In a similar way, the establishment of a few large national radio networks had the effect of crystallizing the definition of what radio "is" and of establishing technologies and practices which were daunting to challenge and difficult to change. Again, sound recording is a useful example because of its centrality to both the maintenance of stability and the eventual undoing of radio's technological structures. As radio networks emerged in the 1920s and early 1930s, the broadcasters, the large equipment manufacturers, and local stations struggled with the implications of disk recording technology. The networks' very existence was built around telephonic program distribution, and companies like AT&T and RCA had financial stakes in the maintenance of that type of network. But at the same time, the allies and some of the corporate stockholders of the networks had a commercial stake in transcription recording. Disk technology lived a precarious existence. Networks refused to use it (except to make the master recordings for consumer records) and curtailed its use at local stations. Local stations, dazzled by the model of flashy live programming set by the networks, themselves limited the use of recordings in favor of live local programs. Finally, the American Federation of Musicians made it difficult for network executives and station owners to know if recordings made today could 234 be legally broadcast tomorrow, making the transcription disk a commercially undependable technology. Transcription networks, new technologies like Muzak, and the purchase contracts of government agencies initiated changes in recording practice, but systematic change came only during the upheaval of the post war period. Do these cases illustrate the social processes suggested by Karl Marx's concept of ossification? The motion picture industry, with its simpler structure of industry integration is perhaps the more clear-cut example. Technological ossification occurred as the decisions made by a small number of firms translated into almost the instantaneous standardization of technological equipment and practice. Certain features of the radio industry also fit this model. The widespread faith in live broadcasts, however, adds a bit of a twist to the story. I would argue that this represented the kind of microscopic, everywhere-at-once creation of social structures which Michel Foucault has explored. His examination of the power relationships established between the sexes might just as easily be used to elucidate how owners and managers of local stations, acting independently, made decisions which collectively helped maintain network dominance. The decision to emulate the networks was of course encouraged by a host of factors. For example, a high level of standardization existed in the manufacture of broadcast equipment, making it difficult to choose non-standard technologies.321 Recording equipment was expensive to purchase and use, and in a period of depression, prevailing notions of economic rationality contributed to the conservative use of recordings. Clearly, the creation and maintenance of technological stability in radio, at the level of sound recording or 235 in the industry in general, was a multi-layered process, representing an amalgam of choices and actions.322 236 ENDNOTES 232Translucent, sprocketed film, 35 millimeters wide was apparently first supplied in 1889 by George Eastman to W. K. L. Dickson, who was a member of Thomas Edison's staff working on motion pictures. While the base materials and photographic emulsions were modified over the years, the physical dimensions of the film remained stable. Kenneth Mees, "History of Professional Black-and-While Motion-Picture Film," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers 63 (October 1954): 134-137. 233Paramount began its corporate live in 1916 as Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. The next year 12 production companies were merged into FPL Corp., and a merger took place with the distribution firms Artcraft Pictures and Paramount Pictures. In 1919 the company began acquiring theaters, buying stock in Southern Enterprises, the owner of 135 theaters in the southeast. Between 1920 and 1926 FPL bought large stock holdings in additional theater chains, including New England Theaters, Inc., the Butterfield Theater Circuit, and Balaban and Katz, with combined holdings of about 170 theaters. The name was changed to Paramount Famous Lasky in 1927 and Paramount Publix in 1930. The company went declared bankruptcy in 1933 and was reorganized in 1935 under the name Paramount Pictures, Inc. By that time, the company operated over 1,200 theaters, and 33 distributing outlets. Its income in 1939 were $100,000,000. United States Senate, Temporary National Economic Committee, Investigation of the Concentration of Economic Power, monograph number 43: "The Motion Picture Industry- A Pattern of Control," (Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), 59. 2 3 4|_oew?s Consolidated Enterprises, formed in 1910, was renamed Loew's Theatrical Enterprises the next year. The company began as an exhibitor, and had acquired control of 56 theaters by 1919. Loew's integrated upward into production and distribution through a merger with Metro Pictures Corporation in 1920, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in 1924, and later Louis B. Mayer Pictures. The firm operated until 1937 as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after which it folded and was taken over by Loew's Incorporated. Its gross income for 1939 was in excess of $100,000,000. Ibid, 60. 23 5Warner Brothers corporation was vertically integrated from its inception in 1923. In 1924 it owned a single theater in Youngstown, Ohio. The next year it acquired Vitagraph, a large distribution firm, and two foreign distribution companies. Between 1925 and 1928, Warner gained control of over 190 theaters and partial stock in over 60 others. Ibid., 60-61. 23 6 pox pj|m Corporation was incorporated in 1915. Ten years later, it acquired a minority interest in West Coast Theaters, Inc., and in 1928 it bought Wesco Corporation, a theater holding company, the Wesco operation went into receivership in 1933, and was reorganized with majority ownership by the Chase National Bank of New York. By late 1935, Chase had gained control of the stock of Twentieth Century Pictures, a production and distribution firm. Fox was merged with this company to form Twentieth Century-Fox. Further integration took place in 1937, when Twentieth Century-Fox purchased the Roxy Theater in New York. By 1940, the company operated 30 first-run metropolitan theaters and over 500 others, and had distribution outlets in 31 cities. Ibid., 60. 2 3 7 Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation was organized in January 1928. The next month it acquired the B.F. Keith and Orpheum Circuit theater chains. RCA acquired KAO in 1928 along with theaters in New York and the Midwest. The production arm of KAO, called F-B-O, was renamed R-K-0 Radio Pictures. In 1931 RKO took over the Pathe Exchange, Inc., (a production firm specializing in newsreels) and the Van Buren Corporation, another production firm. In 1933, 237 RKO went into receivership and was reorganized in 1934. In 1940, RKO operated over 130 theaters and had distribution outlets in 32 cities. Ibid., 61. 23 8ynjted Artists was organized in 1919 by a group of actors and directors including Samuel Goldwyn, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Alexander Korda. UA was a distribution firm, having outlets in 26 cities. The company handled perhaps 1/2 to 1/3 of number of pictures per year as the Big Five companies; Columbia Pictures was incorporated in 1924, and in 1925 acquired C.B.C. Film Sales Corporation. Three production companies specializing in short subject films were purchased in 1928. By 1929, Columbia had a national distribution network as well as international distribution outlets. By 1940, the company was producing 35-55 feature films per year and acting as a distributor of independently produced films, operating exchanges in 32 cities. Universal Pictures Corporation was formed in 1912. By 1928, Universal operated over 300 theaters in Canada and the U.S. The economic downturn spurred the sale of a substantial number of these theaters between 1929 and 1930, before the company went into receivership in 1933. After a reorganization in 1936, Universal Pictures operated only production and distribution facilities. In 1939, the company had assets and income comparable to Columbia and RKO, that is, about 1/3 the size of the smallest of the Big Five. Ibid., 61-62. 2 3 9r?dward W. Kellogg, "History of Sound Motion Pictures," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers 64 (June 1955), first installment. Reprinted in A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television: An Anthology from the Pages of The Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 174-185. 240lbid., 179-80. 24lThe Vitaphone system used a recording process that was significantly more predictable and "scientific" than acoustic methods. Audio signals were picked up with one or more microphones and mixed in an electronic mixing/recording amplifier. The amplified signals were equalized to limit response below 400 hertz in order to avoid over-modulation of the cutter. Amplifier response tapered off rapidly above 5000 hertz in order to lower noise. The recording blanks were metal disks coated with a soft wax surface and brought to a high polish before recording. Ambient temperature had to be carefully controlled during recording in order to obtain a consistent product. In practice, two or three recordings were taken simultaneously to allow the director to replay one immediately on the set. An unplayed copy was sent for duplication. Dubbing was undertaken only on a limited scale, and was so difficult to do that only Warner Brothers ever attempted it on a large scale. Acetate disks were introduced in 1934, but by then the major studios had converted to photographic recording. Transcription machines were used in the 1930s to substitute for live orchestral music during filming. H. M. Stoller, "Synchronization and Speed Control of Synchronized Sound Pictures," Bell System Technical Journal 8 (1929): 184- 195; E. O. Scriven, "A Sound Projector System for Use in Motion Picture Theaters," Bell System Technical Journal 8 (1929): 196-208: H. A. Frederick, "Recent Fundamental Advances in Mechanical Records on Wax," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers 18 (1932): 141-163; H. C. Harrison. "A New System of Sound Recording." Bell Laboratories Record 10 (1932): 389-393; H. C. Harrison and H. A. Frederick, "Vertically Cut Sound Records," Electrical Engineering 52 (1933): 183-188; Nathan Levinson, "Sound In Motion Pictures," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 38 (1942: 468-482; John P. Livadare and M. Rettinger, "Evolution of Scoring Facilities at Columbia Pictures," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 42 (1944): 361-366; G. M. Best, "Improvements in Playback Disk Recording," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 25 (1935): 109-116; Douglas Gomery, "The Warner-Vitaphone Peril': The American Film Industry Reacts to the Innovation of Sound," 119- 135 in Gorham Kindem, ed., The American Movie Industry: The Business of Motion Pictures (Carbondale, III: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982). 242jhere were a number of phonograph based systems competing with the ERPI technology, and while many saw use in theaters none was as commercially successful. David L Parker and 238 Burton J. Shapiro, "The Phonograph Movies," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal VII (July 1975): 6-20. 2 43oiiver Read and Walter L. Welch, From Tinfoil to Stereo (Indianapolis, Howard W. Sams, 1959), 287. 2 4 4 United States. Federal Communications Commission. Report on Electrical Research Products. Inc. (Pursuant to Public Resolution No. 8. 74th Congress. Part II: Trade Practices of the Bell System in Its Relations with the Motion Picture Industry. (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 30 January 1937), 221-222; Gleason Archer, Radio. 394-395. 2 45yne light modulating device used in the RCA variable-area system began as a telegraph recorder developed in the 1920s by C. A. Hoxie of General Electric. A. G. Zimmerman, "Film Recorders," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 20 (1933): 211-227; Gleason Archer Radio. 328-329. 2 4 6[)ouglas Gomery, "Failure and Success: Vocafilm and RCA Photophone Innovate Sound." The Film Reader 2 (1977): 213-221; Gleason Archer, Radio. 334. 247Harold B. Franklin, "A Year of Sound," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers 14 (1930): 302-308. Franklin noted that "the gradual but sure loss of film due to breaks and careless patching frequently throws the disk method out of synchronization"; By 1931 only about 2,000 theaters were equipped for disk reproduction only, while over 12,000 had photographic sound equipment. Perhaps 4,000 remained with no sound equipment. "Sound Picture Statistics for 1930," Electronics 2 (March 1931): 538-539. 2 4 8-J6 millimeter film cameras, used mainly to make newsreels, educational films, and export films, sometimes recorded sound directly on the original "take" of the film. 2 4 Musicals poured out of Hollywood between 1929 and 1933. Pioneering efforts included Monte Carlo (1930), This Is The Night (1932) and Love Me Tonight (1932). John E. Abbott, "The Development of the Sound Film," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 38 (1942): 541-548. 2 50j Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 22. 251|bid.,23. 2 52Ra|pn Cassady, Jr. "Monopoly in Motion Picture Production and Distribution: 1908-1915" 25-67 in Gorham Kindem, ed., The American Movie Industry: The Business of Motion Pictures (Carbondale, III: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982) 253 Douglas Gomery, Studio System. 24. 2 5 4 Michael Conant, Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry: Economic and Legal Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 39. 2 55fjf a total of about 17,000 theaters in operation in 1939-41, the Majors owned or controlled 2,800 or 16%. 80% of these were first run theaters in cities. A survey of 92 cities with a population over 100,000 revealed that the Majors controlled all or most of the first-run theaters in 73 of the cities. Concentration of Economic Power, vol. 43, 9-14. 2 5 6Michael Conant Antitrust. 48. 2571010-1 19_48 258|bjd., 66-76; Concentration of Economic Power, vol. 43. 40. 259Michael Conant, Antitrust. 69. 2 60j Douglas Gomery, "Hollywood, the National Recovery Administration, and the Question of Monopoly Power." Journal of the University Film Association 31 (Spring 1979): 47-52. Reprinted in Kindem, ed., p 206; On the Hays Office see Concentration of Economic Power, appendix II, 239 65-69; A sympathetic description of some of the activities of the Hays Office is Raymond Mo ley, The Hays Office (Indianapolis; The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1945). A section on "mechanical matters," pp 128-131, discusses the non-controversial role of the MPPDA in fire prevention and the standardization of reel sizes. 2 61"The 16 directors of the MPPDA included representatives from Paramount, Universal, Columbia, United Artists, Twentieth Century Fox, Loew's, Vitaphone, and Warner Brothers. 262-pjpQ galio, The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 98- 100; Concentration of Economic Power, vol. 43, 7-8. 2 63DOUg|as Gomery, "Hollywood, the National Recovery Administration, and the Question of Monopoly Power." Journal of the University Film Association 31 (Spring 1979): 47-48. 2 6 4 Richard B. Jewell, "Hollywood and Radio: Competition and Partnership in the 1930s," Historical Journal of Film. Radio, and Television 4 (1984): 125-141; Michele Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 1-6. 2 6 5Michael Conant, Antitrust. 39. 2 6 6sjmon Whitney, "Vertical Disintegration in the Motion Picture Industry" American Economic Review 45 (May 1955): 491-98. 2 6 7Susan Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting: 1899-1922 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 240. 2 68yne |ast holdout of individualism in radio was in radio receivers and to a lesser extent, amateur radio, where experimentation and invention continued for many years. 2 6 9 Hugh G. J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio. 1900-32 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 406. 270Hugh Aitken, Continuous Wave. 437. 271|Did., 440-441; Gleason Archer, Big Business and Radio (New York: American Historical Company, 1939), 4-13. 272Ajtken> Continuous Wave. 465-466. 273ibid., 476. 27 4|bjd., 478-479. 27 ^Thomas P. Robinson, Radio Networks and the Federal Government (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 9. 27 6pcc. Report on Chain Broadcasting Washington, D.C, G.P.O., May 1941, 5-7; Robinson 15-17. 277Report on Chain Broadcasting 6; Gleason Archer, Radio. 19-21, 53-56. 27 83163^ Archer, ibid., 26-7, 58. 27 9christopher Sterling, Electronic Media: A Guide to Trends in Broadcasting and Newer Technologies 1920-83(New York: Praeger, 1984), 107. 2 80ijr,rted States, Federal Communications Commission, Report on American Telephone and Telegraph Company Long Lines Department: Financial and Operating Summary (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 15 April 1936), 33. 2 81 Report on Chain Broadcasting. 15. 2 82ibid., 23; Arthur Judson, "How CBS Got Its Start." American Heritage August 1955, 80. 283Report 0n Chain Broadcasting. 6-7. 240 284C. A. Rackey and R. F. Shuetz, "NBC, Hollywood," Electronics 12 (May 1939): 11-12; "Engineering at NBC," Electronics 9 (November 1936): 1 -7. 285Thomas Robinson, Federal Government. 42. 2 86Robert E. McGinn, "Stokowski and the Bell Telephone Laboratories: Collaboration in the Development of High-Fidelity Sound Reproduction," Technology and Culture 24 (1983): 49-50; Ned Midgley, The Advertising and Business Side of Radio (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1948), 28. 287Report on Chain Broadcasting. 58-59. 2 88The networks themselves used transcription recorders extensively. When new shows were proposed, often a sample episode would be recorded so that it could be demonstrated to potential advertising clients. Albert Williams, Listening, p 56-57. In the largest American cities, where the population could support a large independent station, and at the wealthier network affiliates, transcription recorders were sometimes used to record programs for later rebroadcast. More commonly, stations large enough to support a staff of writers, directors, and program producers simply broadcast locally-generated programming live in the fashion of the networks. Albert N. Williams, Listening: A Collection of Critical Articles on Radio (N.p.: University of Denver Press, 1948), 107-8. 2 8 9Midgley, Advertising and Business. 206-7. To be fair, Midgley noted that technical improvements had made quality less of a problem and that "for the future, wire recordings hold out even greater promise." 29 0Thomas Robinson, Federal Government. 128. 291|bid., 177. 2 9 2ijnited States, Federal Communications Commission, An Economic Study of Standard Broadcasting (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 31 October 1947), 43; compare to "The Dollar Cost of Broadcasting Stations," Electronics 2 (June 1931): 688-689. 2 9 3 Broadcast Equipment Price List 1948 (Camden, New Jersey: Radio Corporation of America, 1948). Trade Catalog Collection, Library of the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. 2 9 4 presto Sound Recording Equipment advertisement, in Radio's Master: Official Parts and Equipment Manual of the Radio and Electronic Industry (New York: United Catalog Publishers, Inc., 1947). Trade catalog collection, Library, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C. 295ijnited States, Federal Communications Commission, Report on Social and Economic Data Pursuant to the Informal Hearing on Broadcasting. Docket 4063. Beginning October 5. 1936 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1938), 26; Jane Woodfin, Of Mikes and Men (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1951). 29 6This rule was made optional in 1935. 297pODert D. Leiter, The Musicians and Petrillo (New York: Bookman and Associates, 1953), 68. 2 9 8ASCAP independently attacked the distributors of transcription programs several times. ASCAP was able to secure special licenses from World Broadcasting System, Columbia, RCA, and other companies distributing transcription libraries. "Platter Programs," Business Week. 8 February 1936, 28-29. 299AFM actions related to recording took place on state and local levels as well. In 1940, for example, the AFM convinced stage hands to strike in support of the union's desire to levy charges for the public performance of opera recordings by a company called Opera on Tour. The company ultimately sued the AFM, but an appellate court affirmed the workers' right to strike. "Current Comment," Air Law Review: 1940 , pp 172-176. 3 QQRestrictive Trade Union Practices. 272. 241 3 01 Robert Leiter, Musicians. 135-137; also see Mary Austin, "Petrillo's War," Journal of Popular Cutturg 12 (Summer 1978): 11-18. 3 02ynjteo? states, House Commission on Education and Labor, Restrictive Union Practices of the American Federation of Musicians (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948), 257. 3 03Ibid., 261. 304lbid., 264. 305lbid., 264-5. 30 6R eport on Chain Broadcasting. 17; also see "Electrical Transcriptions are Being Used by Many Radio Stations," Electronics 1 (1930): 365. 3 07 Report on Chain Broadcasting, 91. 3 08Mae Huetig, Economic Control. 1 3 0 9 Other networking techniques existed and were tried, especially in other countries. The best examples are the power line and water pipe networks. Any electrical conductor (copper wire, water pipes, perhaps even water or the earth itself) can be use to distribute radio programming. Water pipe transmission was banned by the F.C.C., while companies like G.E. experimented with, but never commercialized transmission via power lines. 310United States, Federal Communications Commission. Report on Electrical Research Products. Inc. (Pursuant to Public Resolution No. 8. 74th Congress. Part III: Financial and Operating Data. (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1937), 546; Users of transcriptions included political officials in the 1930s. Perhaps a dozen congressmen, especially those from western states, began regular broadcasts in 1932 from stations in their home states via transcription records. "Congressmen send Phonograph Speeches for Home Broadcasts," Electronics 4 (May 1932): 175. 3 ^Albert N. Williams, Listening. 20-21. 312 Restrictive Trade Union Practices. 281. 313 Ibid., 282. 314 Ibid., 282. 315ElliotM. Sanger. Rebel in Radio: The Story of WQXR. (New York: Hastings House, 1973), 13-18. 316 "Transmission by Tape: N.Y. Station Uses Innovation for the First Time in America," Newsweek 12 (September 26,1938): 27. 317Elliot M. Sanger. Rebel in Radio: Henry F. Pringle, "WQXR: Quality on the Air," Harper's Magazine 1940; M. Lincoln Schuster, Saturday Review of Literature 318wjre recorders use the same principle of magnetic recording used in modern audio tape recorders. Magnetic recorders leave a permanent magnetic "impression" on a steel wire or other magnetizable body. If one records sound signals on a wire or tape recorder, the magnetic intensity of the impression on the recording medium varies in proportion to the original sound. A simpler mechanical analogy is the phonograph, which "stores" sound as a groove that varies in proportion to the original wave. The earliest magnetic recorders, developed in the late 1890s, used a solid steel wire or band. In the 1930s, German companies developed a less expensive medium using plastic tape coated with a magnetizable powder. The German-style tape is the type used today in audio and video recording, computer storage, automatic teller cards, and a host of other technologies. 319 Robert Leiter, Musicians. 132. 3 20wjred music had been suggested as early as 1931 by conductor Leopold Stokowski during his collaboration with AT&T in the field of high fidelity transmission and recording. Robert E. 242 McGinn, "Stokowski and the Bell Telephone Laboratories: Collaboration in the Development of High-Fidelity Sound Reproduction," Technology and Culture 24 (1983): 50; A wired music system was commercially available in Holland in the 1930s. By the end of 1937, over 340,000 Dutch homes had the service. "Muzak Music," Time 1 November 1937, 73-73; By the later 1930s Muzak's competitors included Dow Jones & Company, which began offering a wired news service to business customers. "Wired Radio System Used by "Dow Jones Service," Electronics 9 (July 1936): 38; The use of transcriptions on Muzak lines marked the company for an attack by the AFM. "The exercise of control over wired music, supplied by the Muzak Corporation, has been somewhat more successful, this service consists of a specially prepared transcription played in a central station and sent over the wires to those desiring this music. Under the contract executed between the company and the New York local of the AFM in 1938, the company stipulated that it would not make its facilities available to any establishment if such action would cause the replacement of live musicians. Since wired music is used in many places which might employ small orchestras, in n carious instances musicians have been displaced. This is particularly true of the hotel salon ensemble and the restaurant string orchestra, the union, however, , has feared to exercise its full rights under the contract because Muzak Corporation might substitute ordinary phonograph records for the special records it now uses. Wage rates paid by the Muzak company were not covered by the local contract, since they are based upon the scales set by the national union." Robert Leiter, Musicians. 69-70; Muzak distribution changed over the years. In the 1950s, Muzak and its competitors petitioned the FCC to allow them to distribute their programming by radio. This was accomplished by "burying" in a sense Muzak programming on the unused sidebands of existing commercial FM stations. Ordinary receivers could not decode the Muzak signals, but specially equipped receivers sold by Muzak could. The same technology was utilized later to make stereo broadcasts possible-stations broadcasting in stereo actually transmit three signals at once. Stereo receivers include special circuitry to receive two sidebands corresponding to the two stereo channels. A non-stereo FM receiver detects only the main signal, a monophonic transmission. 3 2 l|n both motion pictures and radio, it would not be correct to say that a few large companies dominated all aspects of the equipment used throughout these industries. In terms of sales the equipment market was in fact dominated by companies like RCA, General Electric, and Western Electric. However, there were scores of small firms competing, often successfully, for the same business. Instead, it was the case that a handful of firms utterly dominated in the design of this equipment- that is, standards for equipment for motion pictures and radio were in most cases set by RCA and Western Electric/ERPI and imitated by licensed outside manufacturers. 3 22 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings. 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), translated by Colin Gordon, 109-134. 243 CHAPTER FIVE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN TECHNOLOGIES OF MAGNETIC RECORDING: TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER Introduction Even before World War II, the role of sound recording in the entertainment industries was changing, but the war years saw a dramatic acceleration of this process. At the end of the war, the very industries which magnetic recording's American promoters had fought so hard to penetrate were suddenly willing to consider this new technology. By 1950 the radio, phonograph, and motion picture industries had embraced tape recording technology and had placed it at the very heart of their daily operations. This chapter explores the complex series of events by which these changes took place, and examines the reasons why tape recorders based on technology imported from Germany ultimately succeeded rather than purely American versions of the technology. The Changing Context of Sound Recording Usage 1935-1940 The use of sound recording during would World War II prove unequivocally how powerful the new medium of radio could be in presenting news. Though some pioneer radio stations had been started by newspaper owners, in the 1930s radio became primarily an entertainment medium.323 And whereas at the outset of the war in 1941, radio broadcasters, especially 244 networks, downplayed news reports for dramas, musical programs, and soap operas, by the end of the war network news was a major part of radio programming and news staffs had expanded. Motion picture studios at the same time intensified the distribution of the non-fiction "newsreel" medium to supplement feature films with war news, usually the self-sensationalizing news of battles. Though the rapid growth in the use of newsreels did not represent significant technical change- in most cases, conventional "sound cameras" were used ~ it demonstrated the lasting power of sensational visual news to entertain and inform.324 News, in other words, did not have to be all that new to draw an audience, if it was presented in an exciting way, preferably with on-the- spot photos, motion pictures, or sound. In a similar fashion, during World War II, radio broadcasters found ways to make recorded radio news exciting despite the absence of a newsreel's visual impact, and it was the Federal government that showed them how. The three national networks, NBC, CBS, and Mutual, were initially reluctant to play recorded material. In the early 1930s, they repeated the argument that conventional phonograph records did not meet their self-imposed high standards for sound quality. But the introduction of high quality "transcription" recorders for professional use undermined that argument, though changes in patterns of usage were slow in the broadcasting community. By the mid-1930s, the national networks specifically forbade the use of transcriptions, preferring instead to originate all regular programming from central studios, while carrying all special "remote" programming live via telephone wires. The national networks chose to pin their corporate viability on live programming and recognized the danger of the transcription recorder. Transcription-based 245 "networks" sprang up, but they operated on an much smaller scale, and entrepreneurs found it difficult to compete with the expensive, elaborate shows produced by the live networks. The debate over the technical quality of live versus recorded programming thus in some ways was moot by the later 1930s, whereas the real issue was centered on competition between corporations in a highly profitable industry. But even in the 1930s, recorded programming was making inroads into the major networks. It was possible for a transcription network to produce a show that, for one reason or another, became very popular. Local stations (often affiliates of the major networks) would then air the program during the hours when their national network allowed non-network programming.325 Such was the case with the Lone Ranger, an enormously successful serial "western" which played for many years and even made a transition into television. The Lone Ranger began as a live program in a 1933 broadcast from WXYZ in Chicago. The success of the program led to a brief period when it was distributed on transcription disc, but soon the show commanded the advertising revenue to justify the more expensive telephonic distribution to stations in Chicago and New York as well as several regional networks. The Lone Ranger in fact became the basis of the third national network, Mutual, which subsequently emulated its two rivals NBC and CBS by running live shows almost exclusively.326 The use of sound recordings took a new and ultimately controversial twist by the early 1940s when New York advertising firms innovated the use of recorded advertisements, or "spots." Instead of simply providing copy for announcers to read, the agencies now hired performers and arranged for the 246 recording of "singing commercials" to be played on-air using transcription records. The most famous of these was a rather nerve-grating spot for Pepsi- Cola known as the "nickel-nickel" advertisement. Edgar Kobak, a New York ad man, in 1939 conceived a singing commercial for Pepsi set to the tune of the English song, "John Peel": "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/ Twelve full ounces, that's a lot/ Twice as much for a nickel too/ Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you/ Nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel/ Trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle/ Nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel... (fades)327 This catchy ditty caught the imagination of both listeners and clients, and Kobak went on to work at station WJZ where he "jingled everything- time signals, station identifications, replies to fan mail, commercials."328 While Kobak moved to a position as vice president at NBC, the networks at least soon tired of jingles. A backlash against this "epidemic of singing commercials," led to their banishment from the networks in 1943, when CBS led the way by removing them from its programming and asking affiliates to curtail their use. Jingles persisted, but the incident highlights the tenuous position of the use of recordings in radio.329 Despite these inroads, until World War II the overwhelming proportion of radio programming was live. Received wisdom in the radio business taught that live programming had a certain extra something that listeners enjoyed, and that most folks would reject "canned" entertainment. The immense success of the national networks seemed to validate this theory, although in fact the theory was generated by representatives of the networks themselves. This was especially true in news and sports reporting, where radio men assumed that only live news 247 could compete with traditional newspapers. But even here, the broadcast of particularly dramatic events in the 1930s began to counter this argument. Zeppelin take-offs and landings in New Jersey by 1937 were as regular as today's space shuttle jaunts, and yet still drew considerable crowds. The majesty of the Hindenberg's arrival in New York in early 1937 inspired office workers from as far away as Manhattan to leave work and travel by train to the New Jersey air field where the giant dirigible was scheduled to land.330 The event was not only photographed but covered by a few local radio stations and a newsreel crew. One station sent reporter Herbert Morrison with a transcription record cutter to narrate a description of the landing. When the hydrogen filled aircraft exploded and crashed, Morrison captured this hideous and terrifying event on disk. While newspapers across the country ran the photographs on the front page, and theaters nationwide carried film footage of the disaster, the three networks made a special exception to their record ban by playing Morrison's frantic remarks for a national audience. The recording became one of the most famous news broadcasts of all time.331 Growing use of phonographs on the National Networks The 1930s saw only a few incidences of the use of transcription recordings in American radio, despite the fact that the technology of sound recording was developing quite rapidly. The National Broadcasting Company [NBC], the Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS], and to a lesser extent the Mutual Broadcasting System [MBS] commanded a national radio audience, drew in the most revenues from the sale of advertisements, and exercised a strong influence over the policies of the many local radio stations carrying their 248 programming. Because these networks were strongly committed to a system of distribution via telephone lines, they resisted the use of transcription phonograph records, preferring to use only live acts at all times. The networks went so far as to try to restrict the use of recordings by affiliated stations, denying them the right to record and rebroadcast network programs. Further, the networks conducted a sort of smear campaign against sound recording technology, spreading propaganda that equated recordings with low quality in a way that recalled musician's turn of the century rejection of "canned" music.332 From the point of view of the general public, the only obvious evidence of this activity was the requirement, sponsored by the networks but imposed by the Federal Radio Commission as early as 1928 that all recorded radio programs (originating from either transcriptions or commercial phonograph records) would have to be clearly identified as such.333 Despite the best efforts of the networks, the frequency of the use of recordings in radio increased, although the categories of uses to which recordings were put tended to remain stable. In particular, local stations often played ordinary phonograph records during times when no sponsors could be found to support more elaborate programs. But perhaps more importantly, the use of transcription phonographs, that is high quality recorders capable of cutting long playing records, was on the rise by the late 1930s. Some stations began making more recordings of broadcasts with historic value, for example the large number of recordings made by station KIRO of Adolph Hitler's radio speeches as they were beamed to North America on short wave. A few stations, such as WQXR in New York, experimented briefly with other forms of sound recording like the innovative "Millertape" sound-on-film equipment. But the complete lack of recorded programs to 249 broadcast made such experiments invariably short lived. Individual stations, particularly those smaller stations which could not always afford expensive telephone connections to remote theaters, arenas or stadiums, used recordings to capture special events for later broadcast. Finally, stations began archiving material for possible use later. Chicago's WOR, for example, like many stations made recordings of important public speeches or descriptions of notable events on transcription disk for inclusion in special news programs. By the middle of the decade, the threat of networks based entirely on such sound recordings rather than live programming was becoming abundantly clear to the broadcasters. While there were many small, live local or regional networks operating in a fashion analogous to the national chains, the high cost of operating a telephonic network kept all of them effectively at bay. Many of these networks operated only part of the day or only during special sports or other events. But networks based on the recording and distribution of transcription phonographs was not only technically possible but easily put into place even in the early 1930s. The number of such networks increased slowly during the decade. The response of the major chains tended to be that of buying the successful shows, which general made the transcription networks. Nonetheless by 1938, about 22% of all programs on the air originated from transcription disk.334 Spread of Use of Home Recorders If change was in the air in the production side of the entertainment business, so too were changes beginning to occur in the consumption of entertainment. As the national economy started to recover from the Depression 250 in the late 1930s, simultaneously there was a small "boomlet" in the use of home phonograph recorders. The phonograph industry had been in severe decline in the first half of the 1930s, though it was on a significant upswing just before World War II. In addition to seeing a revival of the purchase of expensive, higher-quality electrical phonographs, certain firms introduced home recorders. These were not like the office recorders widely available for dictation, but were generally marketed for use in conjunction with the radio or for other entertainment applications. Sales of these machines never amounted to much, for the restrictions placed on phonograph production in the early 1940s precluded the cultivation of this market. However, manufacturers took note of the growing interest in the making of recordings at home. When the war ended, home disk recorders once again became available, although sales remained low and they finally disappeared by the early 1950s.335 Military and Government Uses of Recording Technologies. 1942-1945 Shortly after the disastrous evacuation of Dunkirk, representatives of the Hollywood studios organized a trade organization called the Motion Picture Committee Cooperative for National Defense to serve in defense preparations. On the 18th of December, 1941, shortly after the American declaration of war on Germany and Japan, Roosevelt appointed a newspaperman named Lowell Mellett to turn the direction of the motion picture industry toward the service of the country's national defense. Mellett immediately made the earlier trade association into a Federal War Activities Committee that represented the interests of producers, distributors, exhibitors, and labor unions.336 251 The Hollywood studios themselves produced propaganda films as part of the war effort. The famous director Frank Capra during 1943 and 1944 produced some of the most memorable propaganda films for the War Department as part of a series entitled Why We Fight. But many different wartime agencies also began to produce or use motion pictures. The army's motion picture activities were placed under the direction of the Signal Corps, which used Paramount and Fox studios in New York and Hollywood to produce other propaganda films for public exhibition plus over 1300 army training films over the course of several years. Further, there were new uses for motion pictures, such as the Air Transport Command's Overseas Technical Unit, which made extensive use of film for air reconnaissance and staff reports on film for officers. Very quickly, the government became a major user of film, particularly 16 millimeter film, and acted as a major stimulus to the motion picture equipment industry. The effects of all this would continue to be felt after the war ended.337 The use of motion pictures for journalistic purposes also reached an all time high during the war years. The newsreel format had been extensively developed during the 1920s and 1930s, and all the major studios had newsreel subsidiaries to provide a steady supply of footage for distribution to local theaters. The introduction of portable sound equipment, sometimes built into modified automobiles called "sound trucks" allowed for on-the-spot recordings to be made even in remote locations. Reporters, for example, had captured both images and sounds of the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934, and the resulting newsreel was unrivalled in its impact until the Hindenberg's death throes were caught on film several years later.338 252 Ironically, the war years saw a decline in conventional newsreel production by the Hollywood production companies. The filming of newsreel footage at the fronts was completely taken over by the Signal Corps, using cameramen drawn from industry or hastily trained in academies set up by the Hollywood studios. Government newsreel-related purchases correspondingly expanded dramatically. The War Department spent an estimated 50 million dollars per year during the war, on all types of motion pictures, to which must be added a more limited amount spent by the Navy. This resulted in approximately 5 million feet of film shot by over 20 different government agencies.339 The Armed Forces Radio Network While in general the use of sound recordings by the government increased in conjunction with motion pictures, or at least sound motion pictures, the use of sound recordings of other types also grew explosively after the outbreak of war. The FCC in 1941 set up a monitoring branch for broadcasts originating outside the United States. This organization, called the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, operated four receiving stations in Oregon, Texas, Maryland, and Puerto Rico which recorded broadcasts on disks, translated and transcribed some of the material, and made it available to various government intelligence agencies.340 Later, the newly-created Office of War Information [OWI] initiated a new network of shortwave stations intended to beam propaganda to enemy nations. The OWI arranged for six of the largest American networks, including NBC and CBS as well as smaller networks owned by Crosley, Worldwide Broadcasting, General Electric, and Westinghouse, to establish new shortwave transmitting 253 facilities. The new network eventually utilized 22 stations and broadcast programs originating from OWI studios in New York. The programs themselves were usually live, but in an indirect fashion the shortwave service contributed to the increase in sound recorder use. The FCC modified its rules related to international broadcasts to mandate that all such stations keep an archival record of all transmissions. An engineer for CBS who described his station's facilities in 1943 included information about special transcription turntables designed to make high quality recordings of one-hour duration on each side of a 16-inch diameter transcription blank. The transcription recorder was thus beginning to find its place in network operations.341 A more dramatic and direct assault on the networks' anti-recording rules was the establishment of a transcription based network by the United States government in 1942. Early in the war stories began to filter back about technicians, stationed at remote military bases, who had set up low-powered broadcast stations for entertainment purposes. In response to letters from soldiers, asking for copies of popular network radio programs for use on these stations, and in part because of the growing popularity of propaganda-tainted programs being transmitted by "Tokyo Rose" and others, the OWI began broadcasting entertainment over its shortwave network.342 Arguing that high quality entertainment was well beyond its means to deliver, the OWI shifted this responsibility to a new entity, the Armed Forces Radio Service. This AFRS had a complicated birth preceded by broadcasting- related activities of several agencies including the United Services Organization. By June of 1942, the Office of War Information had gained permission to set up a separate broadcasting branch and had selected Thomas 254 H. A. Lewis to be in charge of the new operation. Lewis was a Union College graduate with a degree in English literature and many years experience in radio and radio advertising, working in the late 1930s for the advertising firm of Young and Rubicam. Lewis, given a commission as major in the army, transferred his advertising experience to this new, non-commercial assignment by ordering an extensive study of soldier listening habits. The resulting survey indicated not only when and how much soldiers listened, but that they overwhelmingly preferred dance music, comedy, sports, and news. 343 The AFRS was a West Coast organization, located near the source of motion picture talent but far from the recording facilities of New York, most notably those operated by RCA and Columbia. Nonetheless, West Coast record firms such as Allied Record Manufacturing Company in Los Angeles were eager to duplicate the AFRS master recordings for international distribution, which by 1945 would mean approximately 200 pressings of each recording. A New York office, under the direction of a Captain Charles Vanda, also made contacts with RCA and CBS, among others, and both centers of operation assisted in getting transcription producers priority to build new production facilities.344 By 1942, AFRS contractors were cranking out large numbers of shows on transcription disks for delivery to both American and foreign military bases. Some of the shows were created by the OWI and recorded at AFRS facilities, some were recordings taken off the air that originated from the American network broadcasters. In the case of the latter, the networks gave up their commercial rights for the war effort. AFRS engineers re-recorded these later, "denaturing" them by removing commercials.345 255 By 1945, production of AFRS transcriptions had increased the estimated Los Angeles-area transcription business from about 500 pressings per month to over 4,000. Between January 1943 and May 1945, 1,108,684 disks were delivered by a variety of transcription companies to the AFRS distribution agency. The "flip side" of these huge increases in transcription production was of course the international radio network they sustained. The Army network, delivering informational and entertainment programming for several hours each day (under ideal conditions) proved that network programming need not be live to be entertaining or effective. In all, the governmental uses of recordings was spectacular in its scope. Based on the surviving records of these agencies housed in the United States National Archives, it is clear that suddenly the uses for recordings had grown explosively. In fact, of all the sound recordings kept by the archives, the majority were cut between about 1940 and 1948. The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence service alone made at least 36,000 recordings between 1940 and 1947; the Office of War Information, 1,115; and the Nurnburg Trials were recorded on 2,056 disks. At least 70 Federal agencies made recordings during these years, and that includes only those agencies who deemed it necessary to preserve their records to the National Archives.346 Wartime Uses of Magnetic Recording The diverse and expanding use of sound recording by government agencies had a monumentally important impact on the commercial success of magnetic recording. American companies that had attempted without much success to sell the new technology found opportunities during the war to bring the new technology to a practical state. Three American institutions comprised 256 the magnetic recording industry after 1943: Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric Company in New York (both part of AT&T), the Armour Research Foundation, and the Brush Development Company. Bell Labs had designed and Western Electric Company manufactured a small range of steel tape recorders, and by 1945 AT&T's steel tape technology was quite sophisticated. Armour Research Foundation, an independent research institution in Chicago (see chapter 6), licensed several manufacturers including General Electric to manufacture sound recorders which utilized steel wire. The third institution, Brush Development Company, was in many ways distinct in its approach to magnetic recording research and in the diversity of its recorder designs. Brush had been part of the Brush Electric Company, an historically significant manufacturer of municipal arc lighting systems.347 |n the 1930s, Brush Development had developed a successful line of microphones and phonograph cartridges (also known as "pickups") using piezoelectric crystals. These crystals generate small voltages across their surfaces when physically deformed- even the minute amounts of energy in sound waves or the groove of a phonograph, acting upon the surface of such a crystal, could cause a small voltage that could be amplified to reproduce sound.348 While Brush researchers did not invent piezoelectric devices, they did develop an excellent line of reliable, inexpensive instruments based on them. This technology gave Brush the opportunity to compete for military contracts, such as the research contract the company won early in the war for a sound- directed torpedo. Expertise in this field also resulted in cooperative research in the field of sonar in conjunction with Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Naval Research Laboratory.349 257 Brush's research staff included Semi J. Begun, a German immigrant who had undertaken important magnetic recording design work in the early 1930s. Begun upon arrival in the United States attempted to commercialize a tape recorder of his own design with little success, but in the later 1930s he went to work for Brush as head of a small department devoted to magnetic recording. The war years gave Begun the opportunity to bring several of his ideas to fruition.350 Under Begun's tutelage, Brush engineers developed a small tape recorder that used a new type of tape; a paper or plastic base, coated with magnetizable iron oxide. This new medium would become commercially important only in the postwar years, but it demonstrated Brush's divergence from both AT&T and Armour Research, both of which were using solid steel media. More important for Brush during the war years was another innovative recording medium; a non-magnetic brass carrier plated with a magnetizable steel coating. While the medium itself was unique in the field, the applications to which it was put were also quite distinctive. The initial practical application was an electronic test instrument called a transient recorder, which could record signals of very short duration. In one version of the Brush transient recorder, a disk-shaped recording medium spinning at high speed received and recorded an electrical signal of very short duration. This signal might be the output of a sensor of a strain analyzer, for example. The disk could then be slowed down to reproduce the signal in "slow motion" for more careful study on an oscillograph or oscilloscope. This was not an audio recorder at all but, in today's terminology, a data recorder. The research also initiated research into 258 ring-shaped heads, which had been invented by other companies but which were a response to the desire to recording on media other than solid steel. Steel tape and wire recorders passed a magnetic signal all the way through the medium. A plated or coated medium was only magnetizable on one side, and there was thus no reason to pass the signal through it. Ring shaped heads put both pole pieces on one surface of the medium, allowing recording to take place only on one surface of a tape, drum, or disk. (Figures 5.1 and 5.2) 351 Brush also developed a plated-wire recorder that was used in combat aircraft to record pilots' voices. At the end of a mission, the recording would be reviewed during debriefing to supplement the memory of the pilot himself. Brush's plated media apparently spurred research in magnetic recording in a range of outside companies both during and after the war. Because of the broad cross licensing of patents during wartime and because of Brush's numerous published technical reports, its technology was duplicated widely in the immediate postwar years in connection with computer memories and telephone equipment.352 Wartime Wire Recording The most visible use of magnetic recording technology during the war was the Office of War Information's wholesale adoption of wire recorders for war news reporting. Designed by Armour Research Foundation and manufactured by a variety of firms including General Electric, these recorders were small enough to be taken almost anywhere and rugged enough to stand up to heat, moisture, and shock. They were apparently first used by journalists following troops in the North African campaign, and later the little recorders were widely 259 rtmi Figure 5.1: Construction of a Ring-Shaped Recording Head The Brush Development Company of Cleveland, Ohio, AEG of Germany, and others developed ring-shaped recording heads by the late 1930s. Unlike earlier heads used with solid steel wires or tapes, this design was created for use with coated or plated media. (F. Shuh, "La Precision Mechanique et L'entreistrement Magnetique des Sons," Revue Generate de Mechanique 34 (July 1950): 259) 260 Figure 5.2: Recording Process with a Ring-Shaped Head Magnetic recording with ring-shaped heads and coated or plated media did not involve recording through the medium but only on the surface of it. This diagram represents the path of magnetic flux through head and medium during reproduction. (Heinz Lubeck, "Die Grundlagen des Magnetophon-Verfahrens," AEG Mitteilungen 9 (September 1938): 456. 261 used in the Pacific theater. The OWI found that it could find exciting news stories by virtue of the portability of the new machines. Edward R. Murrow, the famous wartime journalist, used a wire recorder to narrate an eyewitness account of a bombing mission over Europe, for example. Like the famous "Blitz" broadcasts from London early in the War, the new machines could be used to pick up battle sounds from the front lines in a way that emulated the drama possible with portable newsreel cameras.353 Armour, AT&T, and Brush all collected significant amount of money from the war department and other agencies between 1940 and 1945; AT&T's receipts are not known, but Armour drew in over $867,000, while Brush raked in about $18,409,000 during the same time. The latter figure included several hundreds of thousands of dollars of research and equipment sales unrelated to magnetic recording, but includes at least $1.7 million dollars worth of direct sales to the Navy of wire recording equipment. War Department sponsorship of the production of magnetic recording instruments played a decisive role in establishing this fledgling industry. In the immediate postwar years, Brush and Armour (though not AT&T) introduced wire and tape recorders based on wartime developments. Brush, for example, offered both wire and paper-based tape recorders to the public as early as 1946, while Armour broadly licensed its wire recording technology to manufacturers beginning in 1945. Ultimately, though, after the war Brush dropped out of magnetic recording, in part because of competition from other manufacturers, and Armour's wire recording technology slipped into obsolescence (see chapter six)354 262 Brush, Armour, and AT&T lost whatever technological advantages they may have derived from their long experience in the field of magnetic recording as a result, ironically, of the activities of the Federal government. For while the War Department was busy building up the nascent magnetic recording industry, other agencies were making ready to undermine those gains. European Developments in Wire Recording. 192Q-1945 The events that had acted to marginalize magnetic recording to obscurity in the United States from the 1920s and 1940s were not repeated in Europe. In England and Germany, Valdemar Poulsen's invention was the subject of both intensive study and successful commercialization. While limited mainly to industrial uses, such as centralized telephone recording or radio broadcasting, the magnetic recorder faced little of the opposition that its promoters confronted in the United States. By the end of World War II, magnetic recording was a central feature of telephone systems and radio stations across the Western part of the continent. The use of magnetic recording in Europe had its ups and downs during the 1920s before finding lasting success in the early 1930s. German firms pushing wire recorders for dictation and telephone recording purposes were particularly active in the 1920s, adapting the vacuum tube amplifier for use with magnetic recording early in the decade. The first magnetic recording system to meet with commercial success was that designed by a German inventor named Curt Stille. An independent researcher who was also a clever businessman, Stille obtained several German patents for his recorders and set about 263 commercializing them through a series of patent holding companies in the early 1920s. Stille claimed to have developed and marketed a version of the Poulsen wire recorder in Germany as early as 1903, although it was apparently not successful. After World War I he again marketed a wire recorder, touting its promise in the office as a dictation machine and in the telephone service as a central station recorder.355 For a time in the 1920s, magnetic recording looked as promising as the technologies of the phonograph or optical sound-on-film methods for use in motion pictures, and several inventors patented systems for just this purpose.356 But the first markets for the Stille machines proved to be in just the fields Valdemar Poulsen had envisioned two decades earlier: dictation and telephone recording. By about 1925, with the assistance of Karl Bauer, one of the licensees of his patents, Stille developed an improved wire recorder which he subsequently marketed under the name Dailygraph. (Figure 5.3) As a dictating machine, the Dailygraph seemed to have little appeal in the depressed postwar German business climate. However, the machine attracted a great deal of attention among engineers and the technical press. Both the original Stille machine and the Dailygraph were wire recorders intended primarily for voice recording, employing electronic amplifiers and special equipment for connection to telephones. The later Dailygraph machine also had its wire spools inside a metal shell for easy replacement, presaging the cartridge recorders of the post- 1945 period (see chapter eight).357 By the later 1920s, Stille's successes brought his work to the attention of a man who was one of Britain's greatest motion picture promoters as well as 264 STARTING VISUAL RECORDING STEEL SWITCH INDICATOR HEAD WIRE Figure 5.3: The Dailygraph Recorder The Dailygraph wire recorder was sold in Germany in the 1930s and was intended for use as a dictation machine. From "Recording on Steel Tape," Wireless World 44 (29 June 1939): 611 265 one of the nation's notorious failures: Ludwig Blattner. Commercial film production in Great Britain had been completely overrun by foreign competition by the mid 1920s, British products accounting for less than 5% of the films made.358 British distributors, because of contractual agreements, had to handle large numbers of American films in order to get access to the small number of "hits" each season, a system that duplicated the abusive "block booking" arrangements in the United States.359 Historian William Lafferty writes that"... the booking practices of the renters [distributors] had disastrous effects on British film production as well. Principally through block-booking, British films were kept off British screens; the exhibitors were obligated to absorb so many American films that American films effectively monopolized most independent theaters' and theater circuits' play dates."380 By 1927, when King George V opened parliament with a speech that outlined a plan to encourage the production of British films, it was clear that some sort of government regulation of foreign competition was near at hand.381 By 1928, measures were in place which limited block booking and established quotas for exhibitors, who now had to handle a minimum number of British films each year. The new regulations did not result in a complete revival of British film production, however, they did for a time sustain many new production firms.382 These small production firms depended upon this artificial quota system for their market but this support seemed to allow experimentation with new cinematographic technologies such as color and sound. In this atmosphere, the Ludwig Blattner Picture Corporation became the leading promoter of magnetic sound recording in Britain, and for a time attempted to produce films with soundtracks on magnetized steel wire. 266 Ludwig Blattner immigrated to England from Germany as a teenager but never became a British citizen. As a young man he held various jobs in theater management and became a cinema owner during the early 1920s. He then switched to production with the coming of the 1928 quotas,363 purchasing an existing movie production facility at Elstree and announcing to the press that he would there create "Hollywood, England."364 At about this time, salesmen from Electrical Research Products Incorporated [ERPI], the sales and service branch of AT&T devoted to motion picture sound, began a massive promotional campaign in England. But while many British theaters converted to Western Electric's Vitaphone (sound-on-disk) systems in 1928-29 and a few years later to the Western Electric optical (sound-on-film) systems, others opted for competing systems developed by European and American competitors. The Blattner company originally adopted a phonograph-based system called the Photophone, which was marketed by the British subsidiary of General Electric, but later in 1928 Blattner became interested in a magnetic wire dictating machine being promoted by Curt Stille.365 He purchased the British rights to manufacture and use Stille's inventions, and with the help of engineers from the Vox Company, Stille's manufacturing firm, Blattner designed a recorder for motion picture use, which he dubbed the "Blattnerphone." Later that year, he undertook a publicity campaign to promote the new recorder, but demonstrations of the sound recorder were just that, and apparently did not include sound synchronized to motion pictures. Still, Blattner proved to be an enthusiastic booster. He was, according to an associate, a "lively little man... who would dance with ladies chosen from the audience to a background of music from steel tape."366 267 But the Blattner company was already in financial trouble, having failed to produce profitable motion pictures and finding little interest among theater owners in the Blattnerphone. In hopes of remaining solvent, Blattner shifted his company's focus from the production of expensive American-style feature films to novelty shorts, and adopted the strategy of promoting color and magnetic recording technologies to other firms in the industry. Unfortunately, for Blattner neither strategy worked.367 Blattner's hope that magnetic recording would prove to be a competitor to emerging phonographic and photographic methods in Europe was dashed as the Blattnerphone confronted a new adversary after 1929. In that year the major European developers of sound systems pooled their patents to form a powerful new bloc sponsored by such giant firms as Siemens and AEG. Nonetheless the situation was still very much in flux until the early 1930s and many thought that magnetic recording had a place. Stille himself modified his machines and demonstrated a steel tape recorder for motion picture use in 1929, as well as a telephone recording attachment and a wire recorder for home use, although these too faded after only a few years.368 By 1930 the technology resulting from the patent pool, a version of optical sound-on-film marketed as the Tobis-Klangfilm system, began to dominate in that Germany, while the major English production companies and theater chains all chose the competing American-made equipment (either the RCA Photophone or Western Electric/ERPI optical systems) 369 Certain other British firms also selected the Tobis-Klangfilm system, the competing optical technologies offered by the English Marconi apparatus or, ironically, one patented by the early promoters of the Telegraphone, Valdemar Poulsen and 268 Peder Pedersen. The magnitude of this competition quickly killed the struggling Blattner company, ending film production, equipment manufacture, and, in a few years, Blattner's own life: he committed suicide in 1935. In the end, the British quota system failed to provide a market for smaller producers, either in the field of equipment or films, although larger firms seemed to do quite well.370 In the mean time, in 1931 Blattner had managed to sell one of his Blattnerphones to the British Broadcasting Company [BBC], after a 1929 visit by BBC engineers to Blattner's Elstree studios.371 BBC engineers in conjunction with a representative of the Blattner company372 were soon at work making changes to the equipment for the purposes of radio broadcasting, adding an equalization circuit and a new amplifier with a loudspeaker monitoring capability 373 When the Blattner company folded, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, a major British radio firm, purchased the rights to use Stille's magnetic recording patents. 374 Like the BBC, Marconi engineers modified the Blattnerphone further to suit the needs of broadcasters, incorporating an improved tape transport and different electronic circuitry.375 Six of these machines went into service at the BBC by 1934, and were used through the end of World War II.376 During the next few years, several of these machines were also put in place in Canada, Australia, France, Egypt, Sweden, and Poland. The new recorder, like its predecessor, used a solid steel tape, three millimeters wide on reels almost two feet in diameter. The tape itself was specially made in Sweden, a fact that would create problems during World War II when supplies 269 were cut off. The Marconi-Stille machines were considerably different in their mechanical sections than the earlier Blattnerphones. The tape transport, for example, employed a complex electronic speed control circuit for both supply and takeup reels. Whereas other machines (both earlier and later) allowed the supply reel to drag and ran the takeup reel slightly fast to keep the tape under tension, Marconi opted to keep the tape under conditions of carefully controlled slackness.377 While the number of machines produced may not seem impressive, the fact that the major radio services of Europe would begin using a technology which had been so overwhelmingly rejected in the United States was significant. The BBC, mirroring AT&T's initial attraction to the technology, emphasized the technical features of instant, permanent, yet erasable recordings. The Blattnerphone and "Marconi-Stille" recorders were put into use for the BBC's new "Empire Service" initiated in the 1930s. This was essentially a cost-cutting measure that allowed programs broadcast live domestically to be recorded and rebroadcast by shortwave at time appropriate for Britain's various colonial possessions. The significance of all this was reflected in the 1932 BBC Year Book, which beamed that "in some ways the most important event of the year has been the adoption by the B.B.C. of the Blattnerphone recording apparatus."378 These kinds of services, when considered in the light of the monopolistic security that European radio networks enjoyed, suggest that recordings represented no threat to successful operations as they did in America. In fact, recorded programs became a standard feature of much European Broadcasting in a way that was not duplicated in the United States. In addition to magnetic 270 recording, the BBC also used transcription phonographs and, for a time, the Phillips-Miller optical system- any technology that seemed to suit the organization's immediate needs.379 Another factor in the success of magnetic recording in Europe was its use in telephony. There was among European telephone authorities a willingness to allow the recording of telephone calls which had no counterpart in the United States. The General Post Office in Britain, for example, which regulated not only the mails but all wire communications, apparently allowed the attachment of a later Stille wire recorder, the Textophone, directly to the telephone wires as early as 1939, and while there are no precise figures on telephone recorder use, apparently it was quite common by the 1940s.380 By World War II, according to Semi J. Begun (formerly of C. Lorenz) magnetic recorder installations in Switzerland alone numbered in the hundreds.381 The Textophone was marketed by yet another German company, this one called Echophone, which later developed a more compact wire recorder that proved to be very popular in Europe as a telephone recorder. While the "Dailygraph" machine, which sold for over $2,250 Reichmarks in 1930 (or 198 Pounds Sterling in England in 1939), was not nearly as successful in business offices, it was purchased in large quantities by the telephone authorities of several nations. When the Echophone company was purchased by International Telephone and Telegraph Company [ITT], Echophone was made part of the ITT subsidiary C. Lorenz, a manufacturer of communications and electric power equipment. It was here that the young German engineer Semi Joseph Begun, who would later emigrate to the U.S. to join the Brush Development Company, 271 got his start in the field of magnetic recording. Begun claimed to be responsible for the design of a very successful steel tape recorder called simply the "Steel Tone Tape Machine." By this time, the technical problems of magnetic recording seemed to be fairly well defined, although they presented serious engineering challenges. The steel tapes and wires of the Dailygraph, Textophone, Blattnerphone, and Marconi-Stille machines were not only quite heavy (particularly tapes) and expensive, but difficult to make, requiring the skills of Swedish craftsmen. Further, they tended to have inconsistent or undesirable magnetic and physical qualities which resulted both in uneven recording and playback and high background noise levels. Controlling the heavy reels, especially on tape recorders, was a serious design problem, as was devising a system that could move the tape past the recording and playback heads at a constant speed. The C. Lorenz recorder represented vast technical improvements over earlier types, though it still depended on the special Swedish steel. Begun was instrumental in the design of a second machine using steel tape, modelled on the Blattnerphone.382 jne severe problems associated with driving the heavy steel tape at a constant speed past the recording/replaying heads were addressed by a powerful new transport, but still retained the special imported tape. From 1936 until the early 1940s, Stahltonbandmaschines were placed in German radio stations, in portable sound recording trucks, and in public address broadcasting systems. The latter is a form of communication not usually undertaken by American networks, involving simply broadcasting with loudspeakers and amplifiers. The Reichs Runkfunk Gesselschaft [RRG] recorded and rebroadcast commentary in this fashion on the events of the 1936 272 Olympic games for the benefit of people who could not attend. Like the BBC, the RRG also used magnetic recorders for use in shortwave service to colonial areas and, during World War II, to other areas.383 The use of the Stahltonbandmaschine increased dramatically in the later 1930s, as governmental radio agencies in France, and elsewhere adopted them for regular broadcast service. (Figure 5.4) 384 In purely technical terms the crowning glory of magnetic recording development in pre-war Europe was the German "Magnetophone" tape recorder. (Figure 5.5) The Algemeine Elektrizitatz Gesselshaft [AEG], a firm which began life as the German subsidiary of Edison Electric and later General Electric, became involved in magnetic recording in 1932. AEG purchased the patents of an inventor named Fritz Pfleumer of Dresden, who had devised a magnetic recording tape based not on solid metal but on steel filings glued to a paper strip. Pfleumer's idea for such a coated medium was not entirely novel, having been anticipated in a general way by several earlier inventors, but the approach was distinct from that of existing equipment manufacturers, suggesting that AEG used Pfleumer's patents in a strategic fashion, as a way to enter the business with a device based on a significantly different technology. Historian William Lafferty has also suggested that AEG may have been reluctant to rely on foreign sources, unlike the other manufacturers who had to depend on Sweden for tape.385 After purchasing Pfluemer's patents, AEG made a proposal to the German chemical firm I. G. Farben, suggesting that Farben develop a suitable tape while AEG made the recorder. The linkup was natural: I. G. Farben was not only the dominant chemical firm in Germany but was also the manufacturer of a magnetizable "carbonyl iron" powder used by 273 Figure 5.4: The C. Lorenz Co., "Stahtonbandmaschine" The Stahtonbandmaschine was used in regular service for broadcasting by the RRG and other European broadcasters in the late 1930s before being displaced by the AEG Magnetophone. This diagram shows the general layout of the recorder's tape transport. One indication of the problems associated with the use of solid steel tape is the heavy-duty friction drive between the two reels. A fiber belt around l-e-e keeps the steel tape pressed against idler f, creating the relatively large amount of friction necessary to pull the tape from supply reel a at a constant speed. From "The Magnetic Recording of Sound," The Wireless Engineer 13 (April 1936): 176. 274 Figure 5.5: The AEG Magnetophone The AEG Magnetophone was widely adopted in Europe for broadcasting and intelligence purposes. It is shown here in studio and portable forms. From Magnetophon (Berlin: AEG, nd.) 275 AEG to manufacturer telephone loading coils and cores for inductors used in electronics.386 Farben also had extensive research and production facilities in the field of plastic film, a material that seemed to hold potential as a base for the new tape. An I. G. Farben subsidiary, AGFA, located in Wolfen manufactured photographic films on plastic strips. However, initial research and manufacture of the new tape took place at another subsidiary, the BASF company at its facility in Ludwigshafen, near Mannheim in northeastern Germany.387 During 1933 and early 1934, I. G. Farben conducted research and development towards a suitable magnetic tape: just what constituted a suitable tape is unfortunately not clear, for the final product differed considerably in its mechanical and magnetic characteristics from earlier steel tapes. From patents and other sources, however, it is clear that I. G. Farben envisioned the ideal tape as one with a smooth surface, high tensile strength, and magnetic characteristics that included a relatively low coercive force (a term that relates to the external magnetic force needed to change the magnetic orientation of the metal particles on the tape) but a high remanance or retentivity (a term that describes the ability of a magnetized particle to remain magnetized, or to refrain from self-demagnetization). Production began in July 1934 and 10,000 meters of tape were sent to AEG in August. 388 Initially, the performance of the recorder, dubbed the "Magnetophone" was disappointing. The public debut planned for 1934 was canceled, and engineers returned to the drawing boards 389 During 1935, AEG asked I. G. Farben to develop a new oxide with smaller particles and a smoother surface. The original carbonyl iron particles were on the order of 10-15 microns, and the oxide was mixed with a binder and affixed to paper or plastic film. A later tape 276 mixed the particles with plastic and cast the mixture into a film on a special machine.390 Later, several other tapes were developed using new oxides with smaller particle sizes, one on the order of 1 micron. Only one was put into regular use in German radio, a plastic based tape coated with cubical ferric oxide particles and known as type "C" for its plastic "Cellit" (cellulose acetate) base. By 1943 a homogenous tape was re-introduced, known as type "L" after the name of its manufacturing process, "Luvitherm."391 Since World War II, there has been considerable argument about which tapes were actually used in commercial service. The argument focusses on the use of a particular oxide, acicular gamma ferric oxide, which was simultaneously invented by a number of chemical firms and possibly used by I.G. Farben to make tape. It is significant because in the post-war period it became the standard formulation for tapes in the United States and hence the focus of much commercial attention. It seems clear that several different types of oxides were known to the Germans, but that tapes which gave service deemed adequate and which could be readily made by I.G. Farben were standardized at a time when I. G. Farben also began to face severe restrictions on materials. Americans later interpreted the Germans' choice of arguable less- than-ideal inferior tapes as evidence of their inability to design a superior formulation. It seems more accurate to say that a host of factors including the war played into the decision to stick with tapes which by the early 1940s no longer represented the state of the art. The AEG Magnetophone itself was a complex, sturdy, but compact machine that was eventually modified to serve intelligence, field, and studio uses. The massive mechanism of the earlier steel tape machines was now 277 replaced by a highly accurate, more compact transport suitable for moving a mass of plastic tape that weighed no more than a pound or so. As with some earlier machines, three electric motors were employed; one each for the takeup and supply reels plus one dedicated to driving the tape, which was pulled past the head by friction between two small rollers. With a forced-air cooling system to keep the motors cool and advanced motor technology, tape speed control ceased to be a constant problem with the Magnetophone. The recording and replay heads represented a new approach to magnetic recording, for unlike solid media where a magnetic field was applied literally through the steel, a coated tape required a recording head that could lay down a magnetic record on only one surface of the tape. Like Brush Development Company, AEG developed ring shaped heads and by the 1940s they were capable of delivering a wider range of frequencies than conventional phonograph records. The rising standard of sound quality available through the Magnetophone was enhanced by details such as the construction of the recording/replaying head sub-assembly. The separate erasing, recording, and replaying heads were mounted together in a rigid, removable housing. This made it possible to replace a worn or malfunctioning head assembly quickly without having to align the heads- heads had to lie in exactly the same planes to ensure that the same portion of the tape contacted all three in the same way. Heads were constructed not from solid metal "knife blades" as in all earlier recorders, but from stacks of mu-metal laminations. This type of construction had long been used in making electrical transformers for radios. It allowed for a very compact, efficient assembly.392 278 An improved Magnetophone was finally demonstrated to the public in 1935, both at a radio show in Berlin and in a publicity stunt in Ludwigshafen in which the London Philharmonic was brought in and recorded.393 Between 1935 and 1938, the RRG experimented with several different sound recording systems for radio station use, including the Phillips-Miller system, the C. Lorenz Stahltonbandmaschine, and Magnetophone, and others.394 At the same time, AEG introduced several different Magnetophone models, including the FT2, a console model for studio use and two portable models, the K3 and K4. By 1939, the RRG had apparently replaced its C. Lorenz machines with Magnetophones, although it still apparently used the Phillips-Miller and disk systems as well.395 Table 5.1: Types of Magnetophones Tonschreiber F, FT3 Tonschreiber B Tonschreiber A 1000 L 40, also known as RE3 Tonschreiber C, R.26 office dictation Military high speed version, telephone recording Telephone recording, Naval use in conjunction with intercom system General purpose, broadcasting Tonschreiber D (Army and RRG) HTS, K7 RP7 R2H "Zwillingsgerate" Battery powered portable set, used by High quality audio, used by RRG396 Special Reichspost recorder for telephone monitoring397 Stereophonic Magnetophone Stereophonic music recordings398 279 Although since 1945 many engineers and historians have written that the pre-1945 Magnetophone did not sound as good as disk or optical methods, it had certain advantages which made it attractive for radio service. Its recording medium, which was relatively inexpensive though not remarkably so, could be easily edited by merely cutting out unwanted portions with scissors and gluing the ends back together. Disks had to be re-recorded to be edited, involving a loss of sound quality. A recording could be replayed instantly, unlike optical systems which required developing, and it could be played an indefinite number of times, unlike either optical or phonograph systems which rapidly degraded with use. And unlike any other commercially available medium, tape could be erased and reused, contributing further to its economy; or it could be stored indefinitely. It could be packed up and shipped through the mails without the likelihood worry of damage. It could get wet and still be played when dried. It could sit in the sun (for a while at least) without warping or melting. Even the making of recordings was simple and almost never failed. Whereas a recording engineer had to watch a disk recorder carefully to make sure sudden peaks in the signal did not cause the cutting stylus to break into an adjacent groove, ruining an entire recording, such peaks in magnetic recording tended simply to saturate the tape, creating a type of distortion which most people did not notice unless it was sustained. These features made the Magnetophone valuable in the kind of radio service that the RRG provided, and by the early 1940s the RRG was conducting its own research and development program in magnetic recording. Hans Joachim Von Braunmuhl and Walter Weber of the RRG re-discovered high frequency biasing, which greatly improved the quality of reproduction and 280 reduced background noise. The two took out a total of fourteen patents for improvements to the Magnetophone, which AEG began to incorporate into production machines under license. Within a short time, a special broadcasting model called the HTS became the standard studio equipment in Germany and elsewhere. 399 According to a report written by Von Braunmuhl in 1946, tape recording replaced disk recording "in a remarkably short space of time, in spite of the obstacles of conversion resulting from wartime conditions." RRG recording engineers appreciated the ease of recording and editing capabilities possible with the new technology, and the sound quality was, apparently, indistinguishable from a live performance.400 The agency took full advantage of the portability of the new recorder, airing many man-on-the-street type of interviews, shows captured from a variety of theaters and auditoriums, plus the kind of time-delayed programs that had been pioneered on shortwave. The German radio system, consisting of 26 stations, shared programming via telephone wires but individual stations often played dance music during the times when network shows were not available. The gradually improving sound quality of the Magnetophones by the 1940s appealed to those of the RRG who were responsible for national broadcasts because it seemed ideal for reproducing "serious" classical music with high fidelity. According to one observer, the RRG musical programmers shunned the "light music" often played by the local stations because to them serious music corresponded with German nationalism and victory, light music with foreign interests and defeat. "After all, it is possible to put a dance record on a gramophone with trembling hands." In this kind of situation sound quality took on an added importance, and very quickly, the Magnetophone achieved a level 281 on an added importance, and very quickly, the Magnetophone achieved a level of permanency and familiarity in German radio that was unrivalled even by the BBC studios.401 During World War II, Magnetophone and tape production continued on an expanded basis. Special military recorders appeared, such as the Tonschreiber b, that transmitted telegraph code at very high speed, or recorded high speed code and slowed it down for transcription. As the RRG took over radio operations in occupied countries, Magnetophones were apparently introduced into radio service in those places. In Germany research and development continued, particularly in recording heads and amplifiers. By early 1945 AEG had made ready a new machine called the K7, with a frequency range to nearly 15,000 hz and other improved features, although these did not go into production until after the Allies captured the Magnetophone plant. Some 3,300 Magnetophones were sold between about 1936 and 1945.402 Table 5.2: Magnetophone and Tape Production, 1939-1944 Year Tape, km Magnetophones, units 1939/40 1940/41 1941/42 1942/43 1943/44 9,350 6,340 21,200 52,000 86,000 379 302 870 844 937403 282 The FIAT Program and Technology Transfer A postwar foreign intelligence service known as the Field Intelligence Agency, Technical, would prove to be the vehicle for the Magnetophone's transfer to the United States. FIAT began as part of a wartime collaboration between British and American intelligence agencies, aimed at discovering German technical secrets. As the war in Europe drew close to its end, these agencies defined their mission in terms of discovering knowledge that would be used the shorten the war against Japan. The Combined Chiefs of Staff reorganized these special agencies in August, 1944 under a new governing body called the Combined Intelligence Objective Sub-Committee [CIOS], and attached technical intelligence teams called T-Forces to various Army groups. CIOS was comprised of representatives from both the military and civilian industry, and its membership expanded dramatically by early 1945, as the group began to compile lists of "targets" in Germany where important technical information was thought to be. As investigators, drawn from industry and from the military, poured into Germany, CIOS began to respond to pressure to investigate a wider range of targets including those with significant scientific or technical, but not necessarily military value.404 Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, quite bluntly called for the exploitation of "German technical information of an industrial nature."405 Whether such technical information constituted a legitimate spoil of war or whether it would undermine Germany's eventual economic recovery soon became an important political issue, reflecting the larger schism between those who wanted to reduce Germany to 283 an economic backwater versus those who saw value in Germany as a strong aily.406 Thus began a program that continued into the postwar period and involved laboratories, corporations, and military establishments across the face of western Germany. The Russians, for their part, began disassembling factories for shipment east and transporting scores of German scientists and engineers. The Americans were hardly less blatant, interrogating hundreds of people, seizing boxcar loads full of documents, shipping machines and equipment to Washington, and offering some Germans jobs on defense projects in America. The most famous part of this program is of course "Project Paperclip," in which scientists and engineers involved in aerospace and nuclear technology were brought to America to work for the government and key defense contractors. As part of Paperclip for example, Werner Von Braun, a former SS officer and manager of a factory in which slave labor had apparently been used, became the hero of the American space program. Tom Bower, an historian who has documented the less-successful British exploitation effort, forthrightly called this The Paperclip Conspiracy. While it is true that the extent of the program is not well-known, there is little evidence to support a conspiracy among the various Allied government agencies to cover up these activities. They were poorly coordinated and they put the allies in competition with each other for the best experts, but the agencies involved openly acceded the exploitative nature of their activities. The late John Gimbel, who made a career of studying issues related to postwar Germany, examined the technical intelligence program in a 1990 book called Science. Technology, and Reparations. Besides his admirable 284 untangling of the complexities of several agencies with elaborate administrative histories, Gimbel argued that the Allies, the French and Americans in particular, reaped a huge "intellectual reparations" from these programs. Gimbel, however, could not prove the economic value of these reparations, but suggested that German knowledge had an immense potential value to American companies. Mark Clark, an historian who has studied the history of magnetic recording, contested Gimbel's assumptions, calling the technical intelligence gained after World War II "worthless plunder." The real economic value of the program will probably never be known. Significantly, much of the value to American firms must have been in the form of human capital, but much of this went to defense contractors who for security reasons must remain secretive about their activities. Gimbel on the other hand has examined the civilian segment of the program. In 1945, as technical investigators began exploring non-military technologies, CIOS adapted its strategy to allow the transfer of German knowledge and, to a lesser extent, personnel to American companies. President Harry Truman in June 1945 authorized the declassification of much of the documentation captured by the Americans thus far and its distribution to the public via the Department of Commerce. Two agencies, the Office of Technical Services in Washington (a part of the Commerce Department) and the Field Intelligence Agency, Technical in Germany took control of all operations related to the gathering of civilian industrial intelligence.407 FIAT investigators combed the country in search of German firms to exploit, often in direct competition with comparable units deployed by the Russians, French and English. All four allies began making offers to German 285 technical men and their families if they would leave Germany, although in the case of FIAT, few of these men ever actually left. Polls of American companies and returning technical investigators identified over 100 Germans who seemed valuable. However, FIAT records indicate that perhaps two dozen of these actually went to work for U.S. firms. Part of the reason was a partial shutdown of FIAT that took place in the late summer of 1947. By this time, political forces in Washington had led to a reversal of earlier attitudes toward German industry. Between 1945 and late 1946, restrictions on the emigration of Germans had made it necessary for American firms to demonstrate that requested personnel were necessary in the interests of "national security," or were somehow in the "national interest." This made it much more difficult for non-military firms to get the desired Germans. Finally, in 1947 FIAT was ordered to stop its investigative activities. The Commerce Department acted as a broker between German in technical fields who wished to emigrate and interested American firms into the 1950s, but on a much more limited basis. On the other hand, FIAT'S publication activities were much more extensive. The Commerce Department's Publications Board, for example, put the entire wartime accessions of the German patent office on microfilm, and made a huge mass of captured technical documents available for public perusal.408 The Commerce Department took a very active role in the distribution of this material, rather than simply making it available. A 1947 mass mailing to industrial research laboratories and universities typified the agency's promotional campaign, advertising their 5,000 reels of microfilm as "the most 286 important detailed data upon German technology that has been obtained" [emphasis in original].409 The heads of FIAT investigations were obligated, as part of their duties, to produce a summary report of their findings, which the Department of Commerce published as a series of several hundred publications. Indeed, the publication of the current Government Printing Office serial Catalog of Scientific and Technical Reports began in the late 1940s in response to the appearance of FIAT final reports.410 The fact that John Gimbel uses the case study of magnetic recording technology in his study of postwar technical exploitation is revealing for at least two reasons. Magnetic recording was comparable to a more famous German technology, the V2 rocket, in several ways: America had rockets, but nothing comparable to the German technology, which was already in production and being widely used. The Magnetophone was a tangible, functional technological "end product" very unlike the many chemical formulae or production techniques which were the focus of much of the FIAT program. Finally, the German Magnetophone and its tape were directly copied by a group of American companies which made no bones about where or how they had acquired them. In other ways, Gimbel's case study of magnetic recording is probably not as representative as he would hope: it seems likely that a thorough examination of the program would reveal few direct transfers in civilian technologies. The Germans' synthetic gasoline technology, for example, remains dormant although it has been momentarily considered during fuel crises. The Volkswagen, called a "first class car and a novel piece of engineering," spurred no direct imitator in the United States, unless one is to consider the Chevrolet 287 Corvair of almost 15 years later411. Given the overall failure of attempts to transfer German scientists to civilian industry, the lack of evidence suggesting a wholesale Germanization of American chemical, metalworking, and electronics industries, why then study the FIAT program at all?412 In the history of magnetic recording, at least, the transfer of German technology was not only important but absolutely crucial to the development of the American branch of the industry. Both FIAT and its British intelligence counterpart known as British Intelligence Objective Subcommittee investigated German magnetic recording in 1945. At first, examples of the equipment (sometimes destroyed), especially the model HTS, began turning up in the liberated radio stations of France. By the Spring of 1945, the Allies had advanced into the westernmost parts of German, and had occupied the tiny state of Luxembourg, where one of the most powerful transmitters in Europe was located. As FIAT investigations expanded, the source of German Magnetophone technology was soon located and targeted for exploitation.413 I. G. Farben's tape-making plants were located at the AGFA facility in Wolfen and in the heavily damaged B.A.S.F. plant at Ludwigshafen. The Ludwigshafen plant was huge, extending over three miles along the banks of the Rhine and producing a range of over 2,000 products including sulfuric acid, dyestuffs, synthetic rubber and oil, plastics, and fertilizers; 40,000 people were employed there at its height. The American Air Force made the Ludwigshafen plant a target of special interest early in the war and conducted extensive intelligence operations in and around the area to the end of the war, culminating in a 1945 study of the bombing damage. Later, a great many FIAT investigations took place in the complex, resulting in a large number of Final 288 Reports. From the perspective of most of the early reports on Ludwigshafen, the small tape-making operation was apparently too insignificant to warrant even a mention, and most histories of I.G. Farben understandably ignore the production of this relatively marginal product.414 For certain FIAT investigators, however, tape making at Ludwigshafen was intensely interesting. One of those people was Richard Howland Ranger (1889-1962) of the United States Army Signal Corps. Ranger was the son of an Episcopal Priest from Indianapolis, Indiana. It was from his father that he inherited an interest in music, and young Richard became something of an accomplished pianist and organist. He left the midwest to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a degree in Electrical Engineering and marrying Laura Lewis. Ranger then apparently moved to Boston where he owned a print shop for a time and studied music at the New England Conservatory. He joined the army in 1917, serving in Europe as part of the Signal Corps. He returned to take a job with the research branch of the Radio Corporation of America, where he worked for a time with the famous radio engineer Ernst Alexanderson. While at RCA, Ranger gained attention by developing a successful radio facsimile system, which was dramatically demonstrated with transatlantic and transpacific transmissions in 1923.415 Ranger stayed with RCA for the entire decade of the 1920s before leaving to found his own firm. His idea was explore the possibilities of combining his interests in music and engineering by creating electronic musical instruments. He wanted to "make music out of electrical howls, radio squeals, and hums, unfolding. . . 'new horizons of power and beauty.'"416 While crude electronic instruments like the Theramin had existed for some time, no true all- 289 electronic keyboard instrument had yet been marketed; devices such as the Hammond organ used electromechanical, electrostatic, or other non-electronic tone generators. Although he had patented an electronic organ in 1931, he attracted more attention the next year when designed an electronic "chime" for the National Broadcasting Company which was used to ring out the NBC trademark notes "G-E-C" (thought to be inspired by General Electric Company's part ownership of NBC).417 By the early 1930s, Ranger had developed several different versions of the "Rangertone," an all-electronic circuit coupled to a standard organ keyboard and intended to replace all or part of a church-type organ, yet the only known sale of a Rangertone was as part of a pipe organ installation in 1931. This type of Rangertone replaced the costly 32 foot stop with an electronic circuit and a large loudspeaker. The Rangertone organs assembled in Ranger's Newark, New Jersey plant sat on the warehouse floor until perhaps the 1940s before eventually being scrapped. Rangertone in 1936 moved into the field of disk recording, as Ranger set up a small research laboratory in his factory. The next year, he published articles relating to an improved transcription recording system. Interestingly, Ranger demonstrated a machine for coating thin layers of acetate onto aluminum disks, a common manufacturing technique for transcription disks but one that presaged his later experiments in coating magnetic tape. As late as 1941, Ranger advertised his Rangertone Company as a manufacturer of chime recordings 418 Ranger returned to military service in World War II, acting first as the head of the Army Air Corps Radio and Radar Test Laboratories in Orlando, Florida, and then at the Army-Navy Electronics Standards Agency from 1943 to early 290 1944. In mid-1944, Ranger joined technical intelligence missions in England, France, and Germany, acting as the principal investigator of a number of technologies including electronic components, television, and the AEG Magnetophone.419 The tape-making facility at Ludwigshafen was destroyed in July 1943, after which tape was made only at the AGFA plant in Wolfen.420 The Ludwigshafen plant continued to supply the plastic base material and the oxide but the actual coating, drying, and slitting was being undertaken by AGFA.421 It was here that Ranger met John Herbert Orr, a silver-tongued radio technician from Alabama who had found himself in charge of supervising the re- establishment of tape production.422 The occupation government desired to put German radio back on air as quickly as possible, and needed recording tape to do so. Ranger and Orr became fast friends and spoke at length about manufacturing tape recorders in the United States. Orr had a less distinguished personal history than Ranger. Born in 1911 in rural Alabama, Orr attended nearby Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) but did not complete his first semester. A failed business and a couple of jobs later, Orr took a civilian position with the Office of War Information, working on transmitter installations in North Africa. He was then transferred to the OWI's London headquarters where he worked until joining a technical intelligence group working on Magnetophone tape in 1945.423 By December 1945, Orr had put a small tape manufacturing operation into running order in a converted garage in the village of Wald Michelbach in the U.S. zone, and was turning out 3,000 reels per month of type LG tape.424 But an auto accident sent Orr to the hospital for several months, after which he was released and sent back home. 291 There were a number of other investigators who gained an intimate knowledge of German Magnetophone technology while participating in FIAT technical intelligence missions or in postwar radio broadcasting work. These included one Jack Mullin, an electrical engineer whose introduction to the Magnetophone inspired a career in the magnetic recording field after he returned to the United States. Others, like inventor Clarence W. Hansell of RCA (a company which later entered the tape recording field), became briefly involved in the investigations but went on to other interests almost immediately. The postwar transfer of Magnetophone technology to the United States is inherently complex and intrinsically interesting, and it directly addresses the question of whether the FIAT investigations were economically rewarding to American companies. 425 At the end of the war, as FIAT investigators began examining the Magnetophone, they noted the extent to which it had been employed in European radio. They discovered the wide range of models available, and there was considerable confusion about which models were which and to what ends they had been employed. The Department of Commerce eventually reprinted the relatively large number of reports originally published by British and American intelligence groups, most notably Ranger's FIAT Final Report 923. which by the 1950s was remembered in the industry as the "genesis of the gamma-ferrous oxide method (the industry standard oxide formulation) in the United States."426 To most investigators, the only Magnetophone that mattered was the K7, the high quality audio recorder which had not been put into regular production. Between late 1945 and 1947, even as press reports began to announce the 292 availability of German technical secrets, and as public opinion against the importation of German scientists began to stifle the FIAT program, most technical investigators were finishing up their duties in Europe and making plans to return home. Jack Mullin, Richard Ranger, John Herbert Orr and others packed up as many Magnetophones, samples of tape, and intermediate chemicals as they could and returned to make their fortunes in the magnetic recording business.427 The Transfer of Technology When some future historian attempts to asses the full scope and economic importance of the postwar transfer of German technology, undoubtedly the central problems will be in tracing the movement of ideas, but also in differentiating between American ideas and German ones. The case of Brush Development Company is instructive. At Brush, a German immigrant helped the company develop a German-style tape in the late 1930s, although the base materials, oxide, and binders were quite different. Chapter 6 also suggests that institutions such as the Armour Research Foundation were experimenting with tape technology very much like the Germans' around 1945. Even though the timing seems highly coincidental, determining whether this was the result of technology transfer or not is simply not possible given the existing historical evidence. The evaluations of FIAT's success written by John Gimbel, Tom Bower and others reinforce the impression that, in many cases, especially in the important field of chemicals, German technologies were not radically different than American counterparts. The sample of German reports collected for this study concentrated on production technologies rather than 293 end-uses, suggesting that investigators were looking for better ways to make existing products. Looking at the titles of these reports, one can see that only a limited number of distinctly German, non-military technologies were thoroughly investigated. The full significance of German Magnetophone technology for the American tape recording industry is probably not to be discovered simply by looking for direct copying of the Magnetophone by American companies, though such copying took place. Given the existence of wire and tape recording technologies developed independently by AT&T, Brush Development, and Armour Research among others, there is probably no way to single out clear-cut industry-wide German influences. On the other hand, the transfer of the Magnetophone to America was clearly important, perhaps decisively so, when viewed in the light of the postwar revolutions in broadcasting, commercial sound recording, and motion pictures. Postwar America: Transitions in Radio. Motion Pictures, and Television During the latter part of 1945 and 1946, network radio experienced a precipitous drop in revenue as advertisers one by one cut back on advertising expenditures. According to one historian, the cutbacks were enough to affect the amount and quality of network programming available to local stations. When television networks went on the air in the later 1940s, NBC, CBS, and the new network the American Broadcasting Company [ABC], which had split off from NBC in 1943, cut radio programming to a minimum, concentrating their resources on the new medium. Local radio faced a crisis; what to put on the air? Through the early 1960s, even though radio station ownership remained a 294 profitable enterprise, station owners nonetheless looked for cost-cutting measures. Automation was an important topic in the trade journals, as were new programming technologies like tape recording. Even by about 1950, tape had transformed radio programming.428 Other changes in the structure of broadcasting bode well for the new technology. Inventor Edwin Armstrong had tried his best in the 1930s to promote Frequency Modulation [FM] as an alternative to standard Amplitude Modulation [AM] broadcasting. There was even a small FM network operating in the Northeast from the late 1930s on. It would be inaccurate to say that FM boomed in the postwar years. In fact, FM remained a secondary service, concentrated in large cities until the late 1960s and often duplicating the programs of sister AM stations in the same cities. Still, FM and magnetic recording became tightly coupled in the 1940s, the latter providing FM stations with a high quality alternative to transcription recordings. Further, the FCC in 1955 permitted FM stations to begin transmitting "supplemental" programs on their unused side bands-- the same side bands that would later be utilized to transmit two channels at once for stereo. Normal receivers could not pick up these supplemental transmissions, which were often used for distributing background music services. Thus tape recorders found an additional role in FM stations, supplying programming for Muzak.429 The use of tape recorders completely altered the making of phonograph records. Like radio, the phonograph industry was undergoing changes after World War II, but instead of slipping into decline, the phonograph industry was just beginning a period of lasting growth. Here tape recorders altered the meaning of the studio recording session, creating a situation where 295 performances no longer had to be perfect and where groups of performers did not even have to be in the same room at the same time to create a record. Finally, the motion picture industry substituted magnetic recording for earlier optical methods by the mid-1950s. This industry took a series of hard knocks with the debut of television, the suburbanization of audiences, and the disintegration of the prewar industry structure. Again, magnetic recording appealed to producers apparently for economic reasons, though its effects were much more subtle. Even in 1945, the electrical engineering trade journals were buzzing with news of the captured Magnetophone.430 Within just a few months, American companies would begin to emulate the German technology. The companies pioneering in this industry were in no way prepared for the sudden embracing of tape recording technology, though they were certainly happy for it. Instead, these companies were in some ways less idealistic than their predecessors of the 1920s and 1930s. They pointed meekly to the successful European example to demonstrate how tape recording could become a useful part of radio broadcasting. Companies entered the tape recording field in a number of different ways. When Richard Ranger returned from Europe, he immediately set about copying the Magnetophone he had brought back with him. During the war, Rangertone had survived only by assembling radar sub-assemblies on a subcontract basis. The company emerged in 1946 with a full machine shop and skilled workers but no product. Rangertone's employees set to work reverse engineering the recorder and by 1947, the small shop was producing a tape recorder called, not surprisingly, the Rangertone. Further, using Ranger's 296 knowledge of copies of Commerce Department reports, the company designed a machine for coating tape. One thing Ranger could not bring with him from Europe was Germans. Of the several American companies that expressed an interest in hiring German experts with experience in magnetic recording, only two were successful, according to Department of Commerce records. Rangertone formally requested Dr. Carl Bosch of Heidelburg for at least a year, laying out generous terms of employment. Bosch however, was refused on the grounds that he was currently needed by both the Army and Navy departments. This was the case for several companies requesting scientists, including Stancil Hoffman. While General Electric and another firm, Indiana Steel Products, got their German engineers, it did not result in their domination of the tape recording market. Instead, these firms lagged while companies like Rangertone leapt ahead.431 The design of American tape recording equipment went on without much direct German help. The prototype Rangertone recorder nonetheless borrowed heavily from the Magnetophone in its general design, although it reflected some of Ranger's whims. The crucial components like the recording and replaying heads were virtually identical to the German machines, while the transport (or mechanical portion of the recorder) mimicked the Magnetophone's design. Like the Magnetophone, the Rangertone used an expensive but simple three-motor transport instead of using a single motor to drive a series of belts and pulleys. Both the supply and take-up spindles had a dedicated motor, while the third motor was used to pull the tape past the heads. Just as in the Magnetophone, the supply reel was on the left, and the tape speed was 30 inches per second; quite close to the German speed of 77 centimeters per second. Two models 297 were initially available, the R4C floor model at $3,000 and the 1R4 table model at $2,850 432 When the recorder was nearly ready, Ranger wrote to the Department of Commerce to describe the successful transfer of German technology. On the basis of the technical information available from your good office," he wrote, "we have re-established Rangertone in the old factory, working exclusively on items garnered from Germany. It is our feeling that in doing this we are making the best possible use of German techniques in making them available for this country. We have also made it a point to allow others interested in this work to see what we are doing in interpreting the German ideas. Already, others working in magnetic recording have submitted tapes, for example, to us for test and comparison with the German. This includes the Brush Development Company in Cleveland, the Indiana Steel Products Company, and the Dupont Company. We also expect new tapes today for testing from Audio Devices.433 Rangertone's tape was slightly over 7 millimeters (1/4 of an inch wide), similar to the German 6.5 millimeter tape and used essentially the same oxides, binders, and tape base. After a short time, however, Ranger sold his tape coating apparatus to his friend John H. Orr in Alabama. Orr used this equipment as the basis of Orradio Industries, but it was only in 1949-50 that he was ready to market his "Irish" brand tape.434 Orr's business expanded quickly, allowing him to upgrade his production facilities several times in the next five years. He switched from coating tape on kraft paper, which was all he could afford in 1949, to the German-style acetate, and when he had used up the supplies he brought from Ludwigshafen, he purchased quantities of magnetic oxide from sources in Germany. Later, Orr responded to inquiries from the Pennsylvania chemical company C. K. Williams, which had by then begun supplying several tape manufacturers with an improved oxide. This business of oxides was less important to Orr, who had little knowledge of chemistry, than to 298 competitors like Armour Research, which had a patent on an identical oxide to that being sold by C. K. Williams. Only in the late 1950s would the issues related to the choice of iron oxide come to the fore.435 Meanwhile several other companies entered the field. In the tape field, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing [3M] company became the industry leader almost overnight. 3M had extensive knowledge of coated plastics from its adhesive tape line, and adapted this technology for coating tape. 3M entered the field first, coating tapes for both Armour Research and Brush Development before the end of the war. But what began as an experiment quickly became a new department within the company.436 By contrast, the Audio Devices Company of New York apparently relied heavily on Commerce Department publications to enter the tape business. Audio Devices was a major manufacturer of transcription disks, and so had an interest in new sound recording media. The company set up its first research laboratory in the early 1940s and hired recording engineers and chemists to work on the problems of recording disks. This same staff used German documents and FIAT reports to formulate an audio tape during 1947 and 1948. By the spring of the following year, the firm announced its new product, which had the trademark Audiotape to complement the existing line of Audiodisks (the term audio tape has since become generic). William C. Speed, the president of the company, wrote several times to the Commerce Department, praising the agency for its accurate information and claiming that FIAT publications were wholly responsible for the company's ability to begin tape production in 1948.-437 299 The most famous of the new tape recorder companies was the Ampex Corporation of California. Ampex began as a manufacturer of small motors for the military, and went looking for new product lines after the war. Ampex president Alexander Poniatoff became interested in the sound equipment and hired Harold Lindsay, an audio engineer. Lindsay convinced Poniatoff to produce a tape recorder after a 1946 demonstration of the Magnetophone given by former Signal Corps engineer Jack Mullin before the Institute of Radio Engineers.438 Ampex had some technical assistance from Mullin, but the company also became a licensee of the Armour Research Foundation, thereby quickly gaining access to Armour's similar magnetic tape and wire recording technologies. Further, Ampex relied heavily on Department of Commerce reports on the Magnetophone for design ideas 439 Ampex in late 1948 began to produce its Model 200 recorder. This machine was clearly more influenced by the Magnetophone than the Armour tape recorder or other American precursors, adopting the expensive, heavy duty mechanical construction of the former along with its tape speeds, its head specifications, and other details.440 Tape recorder manufacturers were almost surprised at the broadcast industry's reception of the new machines. Suddenly, all the rules of network radio were changing in a way that encouraged the innovative use of recording technologies. In 1945 and 1946, portable wire recorders began to be widely used in radio news programs. Radio news had undergone a significant expansion during the war, and wire recorders had already been extensively adopted for news collecting in Europe. The trade journals began to report the regular broadcasting of programs from wire.441 300 Brush Development Company in 1946 began offering its "Soundmirror" tape recorder, a device developed independently but with knowledge of the Magnetophone. It was crude compared to the German machines, employing a paper tape, an amplifier which was designed to cut off frequencies above 7000- 8000 hertz, and an oxide unsuited for high frequency recording. Even though the Soundmirror cost several hundred dollars, it was aimed at the home market. Ironically, it was the engineers at radio stations who began buying them. Unfortunately, users complained that the Soundmirror could not be operated for more than a few hours before overheating, that its sound quality was not very good, and that it gave constant mechanical troubles. Still, many stations began using them for on-the-spot recording at a cost much lower than the previous transcription technology. In part, this was because a skilled operator was not needed to make a good recording, and because the inexpensive medium could be easily cut and spliced to suit on-air requirements.442 However, it was the networks and not only the local stations who proved to be the most important early customers. Anti-recording restrictions began to break down after 1945, as networks began to admit that transcription recording technology had "progressed" to the point of acceptability. The famous entertainer Bing Crosby in 1946 became the unlikely hero of the battle to put recorded programs onto the networks.443 Crosby was a superstar by the end of the war, and had more say in the presentation of his performances than many lesser performers. After the war he announced that he was tired of the stresses of a live performance schedule that put him in NBC's New York studios several times a week for his Kraft Music Hall Show. He left NBC in 1944 to join ABC two years later partly because ABC 301 promised to let him record his shows three or four at a time for later broadcast, freeing him to travel and play golf or, as some quipped, to drink himself into a stupor. For ABC, a new network struggling to survive alongside much larger competitors, allowing artists to record emerged as a corporate strategy to attract stars.444 Crosby's interest in new recording technologies was thus directly tied to his career interests. When he heard a demonstration of the Magnetophone by Jack Mullin, he employed him to record his shows and, hopefully copy the machine so as to become independent of the two Magnetophones Mullin had in his possession. ABC soon became more interested in Mullin's tape recorder and used the opportunity to reduce costs on other live shows by using tape recording equipment purchased from Ampex-- a crucial early contract that helped establish the company more firmly 445 ABC previously had aired shows live at different times for distribution to different time zones. By 1946 the network recorded the east coast shows and distributed them later via disk and, by 1948, tape.446 By 1947, CBS and Mutual had begun to follow suit.447 News departments at this time were also beginning to use magnetic recording heavily. While a few stations had used wire recorders during the war, after the war the networks began employing wire or tape recorders for spot news. In 1946 for example, CBS recorded the national political conventions on a Brush Model BK-401 tape recorder and aired an edited version later. There were also shows built around the portability of tape and wire recorders. ABC for example in 1947 began airing a show called "Candid Microphone," in which a concealed microphone captured people 302 unaware. The show innovated the use of "blooping" out foul language, although sometimes the offensive words were simply cut out of the tape. 448 Crosby and ABC's use of tape equipment helped to break down the anti- recording sentiments of the radio networks, and suddenly tape recorders were de rigueur in radio nationally. Locally, radio stations began using tape recorders for day-to-day programming in a way that was not much different than the ways they had used transcriptions. Many stations bought Ampex recorders for studio use, often supplemented by much less expensive portable recorders made by Magnecord, a company founded by several former Armour Research employees.449 An example that might be typical was that of Atlanta, Georgia, a medium-size radio market with a high power regional station (WSB) and several lower power local stations. WSB supplemented the transcription recorders in its studios and sound trucks with Ampex equipment in 1949, while an important competitor WGST bought a Rangertone in 1948, almost as soon as it was available.450 By 1951, the larger companies that had traditionally dominated the radio equipment markets, as well as established manufacturers of transcription recorders were beginning to take magnetic recording seriously. RCA had in 1948-1949 offered a portable wire recorder for radio use, but sold very few. The company then introduced its first tape recorders, the RT-3A and RT-11A in late 1950 and was delivering units in 1951. Presto, a manufacturer of transcription recorders, introduced a similar recorder at about the same time, as did Fairchild, an instrument manufacturer.451 303 Motion Picture Production By 1950, writes historian William Lafferty, "magnetic recording had almost totally supplanted optical recording" in the motion picture industry.452 How had this technology so quickly upset the relatively stable optical technology, sponsored by giant firms like RCA and AT&T? The motion picture industry experienced its best year ever just after the war in 1946. However, that same year the British government threatened to crush about a third of Hollywood's total revenues through extremely high taxes on foreign films. The studios embarked on a cost-cutting program, making films shorter to save on materials costs, diversifying stock holdings, and placing greater emphasis on the management of film production.453 A number of articles appeared in the trade and motion picture engineering press suggesting the possible use of wire or tape recording for movies, and a few such films were made. A survey of studios in 1946 revealed that any magnetic recording system for production work would have to equal optical recording in sound quality, be easily editable, and be adapted well to existing studio techniques. Certain prominent Hollywood engineers, such as Loren Ryder of Paramount, had become familiar with German magnetic recording equipment during the war, or had witnessed demonstrations of the captured Magnetophones.454 By reviewing the state of the art and outlining supposed needs, these engineers through the publications of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers sharply defined the design of magnetic sound equipment that they wanted. By 1947, that equipment began to appear. In 1946, Marvin Camras of the Armour Research Foundation presented to the SMPE convention in 304 HOLLYWOOD HIS PROPOSED 35 MILLIMETER SOUND MOVIE EQUIPMENT UTILIZING A MAGNETIC STRIPE AT THE EDGE OF THE FILM 455 OTHER PROPOSALS INCLUDED USING A 35 MILLIMETER MAGNETIC TAPE EQUIPPED WITH SPROCKET HOLES FOR EASY SYNCHRONIZATION TO MOTION PICTURE EQUIPMENT, OR USING STANDARD QUARTER-INCH TAPE SYNCHRONIZED TO THE FILM ELECTRONICALLY. IRONICALLY, IT WAS NOT THE MAJOR COMPANIES IN THE FIELD, RCA AND AT&T, WHO WERE FIRST TO OFFER MAGNETIC SOUND EQUIPMENT OR DOMINATE THE MARKET. RATHER, SEVERAL UPSTARTS INTRODUCED RECORDERS AFTER 1948 THAT FOR A TIME DOMINATED THE MARKET. ONE OF THESE WAS RANGERTONE, WHICH IN 1948 INTRODUCED A QUARTER-INCH TAPE RECORDER SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR MOVIE WORK. RCA AND WESTERN ELECTRIC QUICKLY ENTERED THE FIELD, OFFERING CONVERSION KITS FOR THEIR EXISTING SOUND FILM RECORDERS WHILE THEY PONDERED THE DILEMMA OF WHETHER OR NOT WHOLEHEARTEDLY TO SUPPORT THE NEW MEDIUM.456 PERHAPS THE BEST SURVEY OF HOLLYWOOD'S CONVERSION TO MAGNETIC FILM IS WILLIAM LAFFERTY'S 1981 DISSERTATION, WHICH ILLUSTRATES THE COMPLEX NATURE OF THIS SHIFT. ALL OF THE MAJOR STUDIOS SPECIALIZING IN FEATURE FILMS CONVERTED SOME OF THEIR SOUND RECORDING OPERATIONS TO SPROCKETED MAGNETIC OR OTHER MAGNETIC RECORDING BY ABOUT 1950. BUT THESE MACHINES WERE USED MAINLY AS A COST- CUTTING MEASURES FOR ORIGINAL, ON-THE-SET RECORDING. LATER THESE RECORDINGS MIGHT BE TRANSFERRED TO OPTICAL FILM FOR EDITING PURPOSES. BUT THE MAJOR STUDIOS WERE ONLY PART OF THE STORY. THE INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL USES OF MOTION PICTURES WERE EXPANDING RAPIDLY AFTER THE WAR, ESPECIALLY ON 16 MILLIMETER FILM, AND SOME COMPANIES BEGAN TO SPECIALIZE IN MAGNETIC RECORDING EQUIPMENT FOR THESE USES. 16 MILLIMETER HAD SEEN MORE LIMITED USE BEFORE THE WAR, BUT THE 305 vast majority of military training films and army-produced newsreels had been produced in this format, stimulating the sales of suitable equipment. After the war this type of film was widely used in television, an industry which required the transfer of images to film but which was seeking alternatives to the high cost of 35 millimeter stock. TV production companies (or sometimes divisions of the motion picture studios) sprang up in New York and Hollywood, using the technologies of 16 millimeter film and magnetic sound recording. Here economizing on production costs was especially emphasized, so instead of using optical sound recorders, firms adopted the Rangertone type of synchronized tape recorder. Rangertone's machine used standard, quarter- inch recording tape, which was cheaper than optical film and eight or ten times less expensive than the 35 millimeter sprocketed magnetic tape used by the major studios. Rangertone won a technical "Oscar" in 1956 for the development of these devices, and even as early as 1955 or so had virtually ceased selling standard audio recorders.457 The motion picture industry in its broader sense, encompassing television and industrial film making, supported the entry of several other important firms into the field. Perhaps the most important of these was Reeves Soundcraft of New York. This began as a sound recording studio in the 1930s, founded by a Georgia Tech graduate named Hazard Reeves. By the 1940s, Reeves owned several different firms, including a publishing house, a hardware company and an electrical transformer manufacturer, and had purchased the Waring Blendor company to manufacture the appliance first promoted by swing band leader Fred Waring. Reeves was an acquaintance of William C. Speed of Audio Devices, and the two may have worked together to establish tape 306 manufacturing. Reeves generated some early converts to magnetic sound tracks by demonstrating a sprocketed tape system to film producers using his New York sound studio. Ever the innovator, Reeves in the 1950s tried to market Cinemascope, a system similar to today's "IMAX" technology, involving a very wide screen and a multi-track soundtrack based on magnetic film. Reeves also became a major producer of audio recording tape, operating a large manufacturing plant in Danbury, Connecticut.458 Several other recorder manufacturers developed products specifically suited to the motion picture industry. Stancil-Hoffman for example, had its roots in a West Coast engineering consulting firm that apparently served the Hollywood market in the 1940s. After World War II the company became a licensee of the Armour Research Foundation and introduced a line of magnetic recording equipment for motion pictures.459 By the middle 1950s, then, magnetic recording had thoroughly permeated the making of motion pictures. The central irony in this story is the fact that most Hollywood films, even today, are released to theaters with optical soundtracks. In hopes of countering the decline in movie going in the 1950s, Hollywood production companies began to experiment with new theater projection and sound technologies, hoping to glamorize their products. Several wide screen, three-dimensional or otherwise novel systems were tried, including several with stereophonic or multi-track sound. By this time, however, the landmark Paramount anti-trust case had resulted in the vertical disintegration of the largest movie companies, and most theaters were now independent. Faced with declining revenues, theater owners were reluctant to purchase new equipment of any kind, including equipment to convert their 307 optical soundtrack readers to magnetic types. This was the fate of Cinerama, Todd-AO, Sensurround, 3-D, Smell-o-Rama, and a number of other variations that are familiar only to film historians. In this time of decline, the new technology seemed to promise little to beleaguered exhibitors.460 Conclusions World War II was a turning point in the history of magnetic recording in a number of different ways. During the period from 1942 to 1946, the Federal government began to be a major user of audio and motion picture equipment, using it in new ways. The use of wire recorders for news gathering was only the most obvious way that government actions affected the history of magnetic recording. In broadcasting, the massive Armed Forces Radio Network dramatically demonstrated how effective recorded radio programming could be. Recorded programming would get a boost in the post-war years as the fledgling ABC network- a network mandated by a federal antitrust ruling- struggled to attract stars by adopting the strategy of letting artists record their shows. Less immediately obvious than this was the way military training films boosted 16 millimeter film utilization, setting the stage for postwar uses like television production, which also became linked to magnetic recording. But the other side of this story relates to the government's program of technology transfer. Historians still debate the overall value of the FIAT investigations. Magnetic recording may be just the tip of an iceberg, so to speak, or it may be all there is to the iceberg itself, but the fact remains that by making AEG's Magnetophone available for American exploitation, the government initiated a revolution in the magnetic recording here. Firms 308 combined the German technology more or less with that of Armour Research Foundations wire recorders, Brush Development Company's tape recorders, or simply adapted the German technology unassisted. The resulting tape recorders found rapid acceptance in the very industries which had ignored or even resisted new forms of recording for decades; the phonograph, broadcasting, and motion picture fields. In each industry, the tape recorder found a place in a business structure that had radically changed since the 1930s. The phonograph field was expanding generally and, after 1949, adopting a new "high fidelity image" which encouraged the modification of recording techniques. The shakeups of the broadcasting and motion picture industries were very different but had the same effect: firms in those industries were looking for ways to cut production costs. Radio was stung twice in the 1940s, once at the end of the war when advertisers cut back their accounts and again when television was introduced. The motion picture industry in 1948 had to face antitrust litigation, competition from television, and steadily decreasing revenues. In both cases, magnetic recording seemed like a way to reduce costs and even increase quality. If this section has not fully examined the implications for the transfer of German technology on the use of wire recorders, it is because that issue will be explored in the next chapter. There are important distinctions to be made between the so-called professional uses of sound recording and the consumer uses, just as there were distinctions in motion picture production between the producers and the "consumers" in the form of theater owners. The use of magnetic recording devices by consumers of the usual sort, individuals, and often individuals who do their recording in the home, is a separate story. 309 ENDNOTES 323vyhich is not to imply that news was not a popular format. Susan Smulyan's recent monograph on radio demonstrates how important news was, for example, to rural listeners. Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). 324There were some significant improvements made in sound recording for newsreels, using portable optical sound recorders. 325s ee for example "Buck Rogers Platters Due Back in April," Variety 17 January 1940, 26. 326Richard Osgood, "The Birth of the Lone Ranger," Horizon 24 (March 1981): 52-55; Reginald M. Jones, Jr., The Mystery of the Masked Man's Music (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1987): 8-9. 327AI Graham, "Jingle- or Jangle," New York Times 29 October 1944, 26-27, 44. 328|bid., 27. 329"Plugs Limited," Business Week 25 September 1943, 99-100; "P.S.," Business Week 8 April 1944, 88; "Spots on the Way Out," Business Week 2 December 1944, 81-82. ^"August Giebelhaus, personal communication to the author, 20 February 1995, Atlanta, Georgia. 331 Mib Ryan, History in Sound: A Descriptive Listing of the KIRO-CBS Collection of Broadcasts of the World War II Years and After in the Phonoarchive of the University of Washington (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963), vii-xiv; "New Light Shed on the Use of Recordings-Mid May Plans of Broadcasters," New York Times 16 May 1937,12; The range of disk recording equipment available from American manufacturers began to increase in the late 1930s also. Oliver Read, "Portable Semi-Pro Recorder," Radio News 26 (November 1941): 10-11. 332Interestingly, the big networks in the 1930s and 1940s also hedged their bets by entering the transcription business, although the material on the records was usually music and sound effects libraries rather than feature programs. "Bill Schudt Guiding Columbia's Invasion of Transcription Biz," Variety 24 January 1940, 26; By 1938, about a third of all the transcriptions for sale which were manufactured in the U.S. were made by RCA. "Notes: Radio," Air Law Review 1941, 202. 333"A Brief Historical Note on the Mechanical Reproduction Announcement Requirement," Journal of Broadcasting 4 (1959-1960): 119-122. 334"Electrical Transcriptions are Being Used by Many Radio Stations," Electronics 3 (November 1930): 365; "Recorders." Electronics 7 (May 1934): 164; George H. Miller, "Improving the Broadcast of Recorded Programs," Electronics 7 (June 1934): 178; "Transmission by Tape: NY Station Uses Innovation for First Time in America," Newsweek 12 (September 26,1938): 27; "Commercial Recordings Enjoy Boom," Life 16 (17 March 1941): 78-80; "Forms Spot Network," Business Week 24 September 1938.18; "Notes: Radio." Air Law Review 12 (1941): 202; "ICRE Transcribed Program Heard Over 164 Stations," Audio Record 2 (November 1946): 2, 4. 335 A detailed description of one post war recorder, the Meissner 4DR, was included as part of an introduction to recording technology in Oliver Read, Recording and Reproduction of Sound (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams and Co., Inc., 1952): 56-88. 336Roger Manvell, Films and the Second World War (New York: Dell Publishing, Inc., 1974), 116. ^Manvell. Films and the Second World War. 171-172, 182-183. 310 338Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel. 1911-1967 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 212. ^Qlbid., 270; Manvell notes that some of this footage was shot by British and French agencies in Films and the Second World War. 158,182. S^Erik Barnouw The Golden Web: James Wood, History of International Broadcasting (London: Peter Peregrinus Ltd., 1992), 73-74; 341 Ibid., 75-77; Howard A. Chinn, "Audio and Measuring Facilities for the CBS International Broadcast Stations," Electrical Communication 21 (1943 #3): 178-179 [174-179] "^Theodore Stuart DeLay, Jr., "An Historical Study of the Armed Forces Network to 1946," (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1951), 40. S^The government conducted other recording-related activities which acted as important markets for phonograph equipment manufacturers and record companies. Mobile recording units travelled around overseas bases to collect from servicemen "voice mail" messages on phonodisk for shipment to relatives in America. Another project related to morale building assembled "buddy kits" comprised of a portable phonograph and a selection of popular records for shipment overseas. DeLay, "AFRS," 77-80, 91-92. 344lbid., 226. 345lbid., 223-225; The process of denaturing involved using two identical sets of master recordings and mixing them down to one denatured recording. In this process, one of the master recordings would serve as the input until the moment before a commercial began. The recording engineer would have "cued up" the second recording to being playing at the point when the commercial was over. At just the right moment, the output from the first master recording would be switched off and the second master would be started. The denatured recording would have thus have smooth-sounding transitions between program segments. Engineers who worked on this project developed a strong sense of pride and craftsmanship, believing that they had perfected the difficult art of editing transcription disks. The advent of the tape recorder in the postwar years had the effect of replacing such skills. 346lbid., 262; Mayfield S. Bray and Leslie C. Waffen, Sound Recordings in the Audio-Visual Archives Division of the National Archives (Washington. D.C: GPO, 1972); "Recordings Evaluated," Service Bulletin of the Federal Radio Education Committee 2 (June 1940): 1; Cambell Lateral, "Naval Research Lab," Communications (September 1946): 347Brush (Cleveland, Ohio: Brush Development Company, n.d.), in Accession 84401317, folder "Irish Sound Recording Tape," John Herbert Orr Collection, Auburn University Archives, Auburn Alabama [hereafter "Orr Collection"]. 348"Lecture Notes: 'Introduction to Piezoelectricity,' (Course given at the Brush Development Company, in conjunction with Case School of Applied Science, fall term 1940-1941," manuscript located at Vanderbilt University Library, Nashville, Tennessee. S^M.D. Fagen, ed., A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in War and Peace (1915-1975) (N.p.: Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., 1978), 182; "Hushatone," Electronics (January 1938): 71. SSOS. J. Begun, "An Experimental Telegraphone," Mechanics and Handicraft 13 (July 1936): 90- 93,104; S. J. Begun, "Making A Telegraphone, Part II," Mechanics and Handicraft 13 (November 1936): 102-103; United States, Dept. of Commerce, Report PB6235 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, n.d.), a reprint edition of Max H. Dunlevy and Daniel E. Robb, Examination and Test of Preliminary Model of Recorder An/ANQ-1 (XA5) and Recorder- Reproducer AN/GNQ-1 (XA-5) (N.P.: Army Air Force Airborne Radio Laboratory, 1944) [hereafter these reports will be identified in the notes by their Publications Board, or "PB" titles without additional publication information; all were published as above]. 351 Report PB 24883. a reprint of OSRD Report 1946. "Report on the Magnetic Disc Plating Derived Under Contract No. OEMsr-254," by the Brush Development Company (Washington, 31 1 D.C: Office of Scientific Research and Development, National Defense Research Committee, Division 17, Section 17.1, Instruments, 1 December 1943); Report 24884. a reprint of QSBD Report 1615. "Fourth Report on the Development of a High Frequency Strain Analyzer, Contract OEM sr254," by the Brush Development Company, (N.p.: n.p., 1 June 1943). 352Report PB 98854. a reprint of Franklin Institute, Bartol Research Foundation, "Some Theoretical Consideration concerning Magnetic Sound Recording," (Port Washington: Office of Naval Research, Special Devices Center, October 1946); Report PB 13887. a reprint of Airborne Instruments Laboratory, OSRD, "Report 1305-9: Handbook of Instructions, Magnetic Tape Recorder Serial 1, 2, and 3," (National Defense Research Committee, Division of Radio Coordination, March 1946); Semi J. Begun, "Early History of Magnetic Recording," unpublished manuscript, n.d. [1988] a photocopy of which is in the possession of the author; Telephone interview with Bohdan Kostyshyn by David Morton, September 1993; Gerard M. Foley, "Research on Non-Metallic Magnetic Recording Media During 1943-45," unpublished ms., January 1982. Collections, IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Brush had a line of test equipment, including oscillographs, galvanometers, etc., into which the transient analyzer fit. Catalog sheets, n.d., Trade Literature Collection, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C, alphabetical file; Report PB 99892. a reprint of Engineering Research Associates, Inc., "Preparation and Characteristics of Magnetic Recording Surfaces," by Edward Korhone, et al. (St. Paul, Minnesota: Bureau of Ships, United States Navy Department, 1949); Herman Goldstine, The History of the Computer from Pascal to Von Neuman (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972), 314. 353The Armour wire recorders were not the only new portable sound technology to be extensively utilized during the war. A phonograph recorder called the Recordograph was purchased in large quantities by the Signal Corps, the OWI, and other agencies for similar purposes. However, it is a technology that did not survive long after the end of the war. The Hart Recordograph, with a military designation, is described in detail in U.S., War Dept., Technical Manual TM 11-2522. "Sound Recording Sets AN/UNQ-1 and AN/UNQ-1 A," (Washington, D.C: GPO, August 1946); That GE should have been a licensee Armour Research in order to make wire recorders is ironic, given that the company apparently had patent exchange agreements with AEG through 1941 and presumably could have utilized their tape recording technology. Jonas, R., Davies, L. B., and Batty, W. E. BIOS Final Report 538. "Report on German Patent Records," by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (London: HMSO, March 1946); J. Allen Brown, "Transcribed for Broadcasting," Audio Record 2 (November 1946): 1 -3. 354"Engineering Features of Recording Equipment," Electronic Industries 5 (March 1946): 70- 71; "Sound on Paper," Scientific American (April 1946): 156-7; Clark E. Jackson, "Magnetic Tape Systems." Radio News 39 (February 1948): 46,140 ^^William Charles Lafferty, "The Early Development of Magnetic Sound Recording in Broadcasting and Motion Pictures, 1928-1950," (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1918), 69. S^These included O'Neill, a French system patented by Rene Nublat that recorded the soundtrack phonographically on the film, then filled the groove with magnetized iron and played back magnetically. More numerous were systems which simply recorded sound as a groove down the length of the film. Problems with celluloid as a recording medium and with the vibration of the projectors made this technique problematic, and competition from optical systems marginalized this technology, just as it did many others. Lafferty, "History," 75. 357H. Bishop, "Electro-Magnetic Sound Recording Machines," Electrical Review 97 (10 July 1925): 45-47; Dailygraph/Echophone promotional literature with prices, [1935], Filecase 33251- A, Bell Telephone Laboratories American Telephone and Telegraph Archives, Warren, New Jersey; Bishop, "Electro-Magnetic," 47, Lafferty, "History," 70-71. 358Lafferty, "History," 28. 359,bid 360lbid., 30. 312 361 Ibid, 37. ^Ibid., 28-41. 363lbid., 40-42 364lbid., 43. 3e5lbid., 59; William C. Lafferty, "The Blattnerphone: An Early Attempt to Introduce Magnetic Recording into the Film Industry," Cinema Journal 22 (Summer 1983): 18-37. 366G. A. Briggs, Audio Biographies (Idle, England: Wharfedale Wireless Works, Ltd., 1961), 29. 367"The Talking Wire'" in The Kinematograph Year Book 1929 (London: Kinematograph Publications, 1929), 240; Lafferty, "History," 61. 368lbid., 82, 85. 369lbid., 87-88. 370lbid., 87 371 Ibid., 95 372Technically, Blattnerphones after 1929 were sold through a subsidiary, Stille Inventions, Limited rather than through Blattner1 s movie production firm. 373Lafferty, "History," 98. 374lbid., 100. 375lbid., 101. 376 "Sound Recording: The Blattner System of Electro-Magnetic Recording and Reproduction," Electrician 103 (18 October 1929): 472.; Lafferty, "History," 101. 377"BBC Recording Service," Electrician 122 (March 1935): 303-304; A. E. Barrett and C. J. F. Tweed, "Some Aspects of Magnetic Recording and its Application to Broadcasting," I EE Journal 82 (1938): 265-288. "Sound Recording," 386; "Sound Recording," Hutchinson's Technical and Scientific Encyclopedia (New York: MacMillan and Company, 1936), vol. 4, 2195-2196. 378The B. B. C. Year Book 1932 (London: BBC, 1932), 101, 367-368, 371. 379"BBC Recording Service," 305; "Sound Recording: Impressions of B.B.C. Methods and Practice," The Electrical Review 124 (17 March 1939): 385-386. 380"Recording on Steel Tape," Wireless World 44 (29 June 1939): 611-612. 381 Lafferty, "History," 111-112. 382Lafferty, "History," 113; R. L. Bell, J. E. Collyer, F. Limb, and R. Taylor, BIOS Final Report 695. "The Design and Operation of German Telephone Exchange Equipment," by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee. (London: HMSO, n.d. [1945]). 383The BBC, C. Lorenz and Marconi-Stille machines used a three millimeter steel tape running at 1.5 meters per second. The Dailygraph, a wire recorder, ran at five feet per second. G. W. O. Howe, "The Magnetic Recording of Sound," The Wireless Engineer 13 (April 1936): 175-178; "Magnetic Recording and Reproducing: The Marconi-Still Apparatus Described," Wireless World 34 (5 January 1934): 8-10; "New Equipment and Appliances," The Electrician 121 (30 December 1938): 795; Barrett and Tweed, "Some Aspects," 269; "Recording on Steel Tape," 612. 384Lafferty, "History," 114. 385lbid., 123. 386U.S., Dept. of Commerce. FIAT Final Report 1101. "German Methods for the Manufacture of Iron Powder Cores," by H. L. Krebs (Washington, D.C: GPO, 29 April 1947); Umpleby, K.F., Overbury, F. G., and Polgreen, G. R. BIOS Final Report 1203. "Iron cored D. F. Loops and Manufacture of Iron Dust." by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (London: HMSO, 1947); Paul A. Zimmerman Magnetbander. Magnet Putver. Elektroden (Ludwigshafen, Germany: BASF, 1969), 7, 14, 26, 64. 313 387Report PB 1312. a reprint of "FIAT Final Report 335: Report on Interviews with Technical Personnel from the AGFA Plant at Wolfen," by C. E. Rose, Dr. D. R. White (N.p.: FIAT, 11 October 1945). SS^Zimmerman, Magnet bander. 9-10. 389lbid., 11. 390lbid., 12. 391 British Patent 466,023, "Improvements in the Manufacture and Production of Sound Record Carriers." George W. Johnson/I.G. Farben. 18 May 1937 (filed 18 November 1935); FIAT Final Report 46. "Calendaring Machine for Luvitherm Film," by J. G. Quig (Washington, D.C: GPO,17 September [illegible, 1945?]; PB 40283 (Washington. D.C: G.P.O. n.d.). A reprint of FIAT Final Report 754 . "Vibrating Ball Mill for Pulverizing Fine Materials," by Paul M. Tyler.; H. C. Raine, BIOS Final Report 756. "Polymeric Processes at I.G. Ludwigshafen," by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee. (London: HMSO, n.d. [1945]) 392Heinz Lubeck, "Magnetische Schallaufzeichnung mit Filmen und Ringkopgen," ["Magnetic Recording with Tape and Ring Heads"] Akustische Zeitscrrrft 2 (Nov *37): 273-295. 393Zimmerman, Magnetbander. 13-15. 394Lafferty, "History," 336. 395Jbid., 137; PB 85359 entire: PB 1027: ??3586, "Intelligence Report SRM-1: Magnetic Sound Recorders 'Magnetophon' and Tonschreiber'," Technical Liaison Division, Headquarters, Theater Service Forces, European Theater, Office of Theater Chief Signal Officer, 25 November 1945; PB 853598. n.d., a reprint of AEG, Magnetophone Twin Equipment k4-Special (Berlin: AEG, 1944); PB 23646. n.d., a reprint of Bios Final Report 207. "The Magnetophon of A.E.G.," by Dr. G. JU. Theissen (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, n.d.); W. H. Hansen, "Das Magnetophon," Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift 35 (7 November 1935): 1232. 396BlOS 951. 397PB 3586. 398PB 12S59- 399PB 3586. 3; PB 12659. 19; BIOS 951. appendix 4, p. 2. 400 (bios951,app.4, p3) 401 Bios 951. p 2; Ernst Kris and Hans Speier, German Radio Propaganda (London: Oxford, 1944), 54-56. 402Office of Military Government for Germany (U.S.). FIAT. Fiat Final Report 705. "High Frequency Magnetophon Magnetic Sound Recorders," by James Z. Menard (January 1946). 403Bios 951. xix. 404John Gimbel, Science. Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 4-5. 405Gimbel, Science. 5. 406vvorfgang Schlauch, "American Policy Towards Germany," Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 4(1970): 113-128. 407Gimbel, Science. 29. 4u8A precedent for this seizure was the seizure and sale of German patents after World War I. See Stanley Coben, A Mitchell Palmer: Politician (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 138-139, 147-149; R. Jonas, L. B. Davies, and W. E. Batty, BIOS Final Report 538. "Report on German Patent Records," by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (London: HMSO, March 1946). This report summarizes interviews with key officials at about 12 major corporations, trying to get some idea of how much patent activity took place during the war. It also outlines the status of the German patent office and the damage it suffered during the war. Investigators tried 314 to pry out of their interview subject estimates on the number of "secret" patents destroyed by the Germans. Companies include I.G. Farben, Hochst, AEG Berlin (during the war, their patents department was transferred to Hainichau in Saxony in August 1943 to a place that was now in the Russian zone). Patent exchange agreements existed with GEC and copies of specifications were sent to GEC through end of 1941.); FIAT Technical Bulletin Volume T-50 (Bad Homburg, Germany: FIAT, 29 May 1947), located in Rutgers University Department of Government Documents, New Brunswick, New Jersey. 409John C. Green to "Industrial Research Laboratories and Universities," 4 August 1947. Hansell Coll., SUNY Stonybrook, Box 6 file 3. 410Reports about the Magnetophon began to appear in the trade press almost immediately. See for example, "German Tape Recording Equipment," Electronic Engineering (February 1946): 54; Earlier BIOS, CIOS, and FIAT reports, drawn up as early as 1945, began to be declassified for public release in 1946. Rg 40, General records of the Department of Commerce, [hereafter "RG 40] Records of the Office of Technical Services, Records Accumulated by the Office of Publications Board, 1943-1949, Box 11, NC3 40-82-7,file "BIOS"; Ibid., box 6, file "OTS 1-50" includes untitled press release, 5 December 1945, indicating that a list of the first FIAT reports for public release was attached. 411 Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Battle for the Spoils and Secrets of Nazi Germany (London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1988), 221; An earlier source, still useful is Clarence G. Lasby's Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War (New York: Atheneum, 1971). 412Great Britain, British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee. Bios Final Report 998 (London: BIOS, 1945), The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Ltd., "Investigation into the Design and Performance of the Volkswagen or German People's Car." 413EEIS, Team 11, U.S. Army Report on the Magnetophone Field Model. TIIC Report C-59A, December 1945. Hansell Collection, Box 5 File 7; "Radio Luxembourg Via Tape," Tape Recording 6 (May 1959): 17-19; BIOS produced a report on the Magnetophone in early 1946, which summarized the technical features of the various recorder models and tapes and presented a list of relevant patents, parts lists and special appendices for the model K7, and a report written by AEG research Hans Joachim Von Braunmuhl. Report 60899 or Pulling, M. J. L. BIOS Final Report 951. "The Magnetophon Sound Recording and Reproducing System," by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee. (London: HMSO, 1945); Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, Psychological Warfare Division, The Psychological Warfare Division. Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force; An Account pf its Operations in the Western European Campaign, 1944-1945 (Bad Homburg, Germany: SHAEF, 1945), 39 414Thomas Parke Hughes, "Technological Momentum in History: Hydrogentation in Germany 1898-1933," Past and Present 44 (August 1969): 109; U.S., Strategic Bombing Survey, Oil Division. Ludwigshafen-Oppau Works of I. G. Farbenindustrie A G. Ludwigshafen. Germany (Washington, D.C: GPO, 4 August 1945), second edition, January 1947, 3-5, located in the Department of Government Documents, Rutgers University Library, New Brunswick, New Jersey; also see Viteles, Morris S. and Anderson, L. Dewey. FIAT Final Report 930. "Training and Selection of Supervisory Personnel in the I.G. Farbenwerke, Ludwigshafen," by Technical Industrial Intelligence Division, U.S. Department of Commerce. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1947); H.J. Lanning, BIOS Final Report 663. "Manufacture of Synthetic Resins," by British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee. (London: HMSO, n.d. [1945]). Also issued as FIAT Final Report 97252: G. B. Carpenter, FIAT Final Report 935. "The Production of Higher Vinyl Esters at Ludwigshafen," by Technical Industrial intelligence Division (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1946), 15; A few reports mentioned tape production briefly, such as PB 385 (n.d.), a reprint of CIOS, "I. G. Farbenindustrie A. G. Ludwigshafen and Oppau au Rhein, Wehrmacht Items," by J. G. Kern et al., 19-30 June 1945, 44. 415"Richard Ranger," Who's Who in Engineering. 1937 edition (Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1937), 1120; Ranger during the 1920s also undertook to write a popular treatise on 315 radio intended for hobbyists called The Radio Pathfinder (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Company 1922), 1-7; Richard H. Ranger, "Trans-Oceanic Photo-Radio," Electronics 1 (August 1930): 224; "Richard H. Ranger," in Who's Who in Music. 1941 edition (Chicago: Lee Stein Press, 1941), 189; Ernst Alexanderson to Ranger, 3 October 1925. Alexanderson Collection, Union College, Schenectady New York [hereafter Alexanderson Coll.] MSS A379, binder 97; Ranger to Alexanderson 16 December 1920, ibid; Radio Pioneers 1945: Commemorating the Radio Pioneer Dinner. Hotel Commodore. New York. November 8.1945 (New York: New York Section, IRE, 1945), 9; "Richard H. Ranger, Dead at 72," New York Times 12 January 1962, 23; Albert Abramson, The History of Television. 1880-1941 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishing, 1987), 72. 416Ranger, quoted in Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., Radio's 100 Men of Science: Biographical Narratives of Pathfinders in Electronics and Television (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1944), 239-240. 417Bill Harris, "A History of the NBC Chimes," online document, 29 March 1995; "NBC's Chimeless Chimes," Electronics 5 (October 1932): 321; British Patent 370,475. 418William Harrison Barnes, The Contemporary American Organ (New York: J. Fischer and Brothers, 1930), third edition, 1937, 356; Ibid, fourth edition, 1948, 338; Reginald Whitworth, The Electric Organ (London: Musical Opinion, Ltd., 1948), 204; "The Music of the Electron," Electronics 3 (September 1930): 270; "Amplifiers Replace Organ Pipes." Electronics 3 (July 1931): 30; "Some Recent Electronic Musical Instruments," Electronics 4 (March 1932): 87; Donald M. Pearson, personal correspondence, 18 August 1992; Telephone interview with George Zazali by the author, 1990; Ranger, Richard H. "Electric Music as New Supplement to Tone of Organ Pipes," The Diapason 23 (November 1932): 25-6; Orpha Ochse, The History of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1975), 370; Major R. H. Ranger, "Instantaneous Recording Needles," Communications 17 (December 1937): 16- 17; "Low Noise Recording." Electronics 9 (April 1936): 28; Who's Who in Music, ibid: Rangertone index entry in Radio's Master Encyclopedia (New York: Catalog Publishers, Inc., 1938), n.p. 419"Richard Ranger," in Who's Who In Engineering. 1948 edition. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1948), 1608; Office of Military Government of Germany (US), Fiat Final Report 865 (N.p.: FIAT, 1946), "Six Papers on Television by Prof. Dr. Fritz Schroeder at the Request of Lt. Col. R. H. Ranger, Signal Corps," 19 August 1946; Office of Military Government of Germany (US), Fiat Final Report 895. "Progress in Time and Radio Frequency Measurements at the P.T.R. Heidelberg by Lt. Col. R. H. Ranger, Technical Industrial Intelligence Division, U.S. Department of Commerce," 10 September 1946; Office of Military Government of Germany (US), Fiat Final Report 892. "Ceramic Dielectrics for Condensers" by Richard H. Ranger, 23 May 1947; Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub- Committee, G-2 Division, "Report on The Carl Bosch Laboratory of Berlin," by R. H. Ranger and B. R. Gelbaum, 10 July 1945. Transcription, 21 April 1947 in Hansell Coll., Box 6, folder 1. 420Bios Final Report 951. p viii. 421 Ibid., xii. 422John H. Orr to Dr. F. Krones, 11 July 1956. Accession 84103 box 9, file "Dr. F. Krones, AGFA," Orr Collection. 423John H. Orr, "Orradio Irish Tape Story," tape recording, n.d. [c. 1955], Orr Collection. 424Bios Final Report 951,3. 425Clarence J. West and Callie Hull, compilers, "Industrial Research Laboratories of the United States, fifth edition." Bulletin of the National Research Council #91 (August 1933): 153; Bob Swathmore, "The Day Tape Was Born," Electronics Illustrated 9 (July 1966): 49-52,113; Another example was Don V. R. Drenner, and engineer with Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary 316 Forces in Europe who wrote articles for the trade press about the Magnetophone after World War II but apparently returned home to work at a radio station. Don V. R. Drenner, "The Magnetophon." Audio Engineering 31 (October 1947): 7-11,35 426C. P. Fagan, "The Manufacture of Magnetic Tapes," Plastics September 1953): 323-324. 427"German Magnetic tape Machine Brought to U.S.," Science News Letter 48 (22 Dec 1945): 399; "German Magnetic-Tape Recorder," Electronics 18 (November 1945): 402, 406; Power, R. A. "The German Magnetophone," Wireless World 52 (June 1946): 195-198. 428Alan Havig, "Frederic Wakeman's The Hucksters and the Postwar Debate Over Commercial Radio," Journal of Broadcasting 28 (September 1984): 187-199; "Is Network Radio Dead?," Newsweek 20 August 1956, 61. 429Walton N. Hershfield, "FM 'Musicating'-A New Industry." Radio and TV News 57 (June 1957): 128-129; Federal Communications Commission. Annual Report (Washington. D.C: G.P.O., 1938), 66. ^"R. A. Power, "The German Magnetophon," Wireless World (June 1946): 195-198; "Magnetophon Recorders," Ibid., (April 1947): 128; "Engineering Features of Recording Equipment," Electronic Industries (March 1946): 70-71; "German Magnetic-Tape Recorder," Electronics (November 1945): 402, 406; "German Magnetic Tape Machine Brought to U.S.," Science Newsletter (22 December 1945): 399; "OTS Making Available to American Industry Many Wartime Secrets," Audio Record 2 (December 1946): 2. 431RG 40, Accession nc3-40-83-3, Records of the Office of Technical Services, "Records relating to the german scientists program, 1946-1953," box 10 file "miscellaneous requests" C R. WeKe, Hallock B. Hoffman, 20 January 1950; Ibid., box 3, file "Rangertone, Inc.," Robert Frye to Richard Ranger 4 March 1947; Ranger to Frye 6 March 1947; Ibid, box 4, file "JIOA+exploitation," Robert Frye to JIOA, 13 February 1947, mentions a Dr. Hans Schmidt of Bad Homburg, who went to work for GE in field of magnetic recording devices, at a salary of $5000; Brush Development Company also hired a German scientist to work in electronics and acoustics, but it is not clear whether this man worked in the magnetic recording section. A. J. W. Novak to Hicks, 25 August 1948, requesting an electronics/acoustics specialist Dr. Oskar E. Mattiat; Hicks to Herve J. L'Heureaux [sic] 17 September 1948; C R. Werte to Hicks, 19 January 1950, all in RG 40, OTS records, Accession nc3-40-83-3, Box 8, file "Brush Development Co,"; Armour Research Foundation hired a number of German scientists, although none apparently contributed to the magnetic recording project. Ibid., box 12, file "Illinois Institute of Technology, indicates that in 1950 Armour hired a Max Hansen, metallurgist formerly with I.G. Farben. Max Hansen to Hicks, 22 June 1950; Whitfield Pressingger to Robert Frye, 4 Feb 1947; contract (carbon, unsigned) by Indiana Steel Company for German national Max Baerman, 1 January 1948, to employ him for magnetic tape research; Thomas Ford to Robert Frye, 19 February 1947; A. D. Plamondon, Jr. to Frye, 1 July 1947; Hicks to Plamondon, 7 August 1947; Plamondon to Hicks 14 August 1947; Bosquet N. Wev, Hicks 4 feb. 1948, all from ibid., box 12, file "Indiana Steel Products Co." ^^elephone interview with George Zazali by the author, February 13,1989; Richard H. Ranger, "Design of Magnetic Tape Recorders," Tele-Tech (August 1947): 56-57, 99-100; Richard Ranger to Harris Brown, 21 August 1948, Accession 84103, box 9, file "1948 Correspondence," Orr Collection. 433Ranger to E. Y. Webb, jr., chief of electronics and communications unit, OTS, 26 February 1947. Ibid. 434"Tape From Opelika," Time 26 August 1957, 74-75 435-phe oxide issue is interesting historiographically, because the interested parties have since the 1950s vociferously argued whether or not the "true" inventor of the "modern" form of magnetic recording was Marvin Camras of Armour Research, who obtained a patent (later invalidated) for the supposedly crucial element: a form of gamma-ferrous oxide with an elongated particle shape. Most later historians have picked up on this argument and reported it at face value, 317 while in the engineering community there has always been a recognition that other oxides can be made to work quite well for sound recording. It is the combination of oxide formulation, tape construction, head design, and electronic capability which determines the ultimate quality of the recording, not just the oxide. The fact that all manufacturers adopted the "Camras" oxide probably reflects the fact that it worked well within the context of commercially available heads and recorders, rather than its inherent perfection as a recording medium. Even some recorders of the late 1940s like the Rangertone, designed for the slightly different German tapes, gave better performance with the Camras oxide, which seemed to validate the notion that it was superior. However, few companies attempted to modify their recorders to suit other experimental oxides until the 1960s, when cassette recorder manufacturers introduced their "chromium dioxide" tapes. J. Gittleman, "Magnetic Properties of Recording Tape Pigments," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 3 (October 1955): 186-190; "U.S. Court Invalidates a Patent Pertaining to a Magnetic Tape," New York Times 4 March 1959. 436Virginia Huck, The Brand of the Tartan. 144, 138 ,250. 437"Audk>'s Research Department Vital to Company's Success," Audio Record 4 (March 1948): 1, 4; The first Audio devices tapes were available in high coercive force and lower coercive force versions, as well as in paper-based form. "Audiotape Now Available!," Ibid, 5 (May 1949): 1; Audio Devices was eventually purchased by Capitol Records and served as the manufacturer for Capitol's releases on 8-track, reel to reel, and cassette. "Audio Devices Changes Name," ITA News Digest 3 (July-August 1974): 5; A third firm, Technical Tape Corporation of New York, was also an early entrant, but little information is available about this company. ^Mark H. Clark, "The Magnetic Recording Industry, 1878-1960: An International Study in Business and Technological History," (Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1992), 304 439lbid., 314-315 440Morgan, Jane. Electronics in the West: the First Fifty Years (Palo Alto, Calif.: National Press Books, 1967), 158-174; Harold W. Lindsay, "Precision Magnetic Tape Recorder for High-Fidelity Professional Use," Electrical Manufacturing (October 1950): 135-139; Myron J. Stolaroff, "Low Cost Precision Magnetic Recorder for Professional Use," Audio Engineering (August 1949): 17- 18; Lindsay and Stolaroff, "Magnetic Tape Recorder of Broadcast Quality," Audio Engineering (October 1948): 13-16. 441 "First Full-Time Spot News Wire-Recorded Program Aired in Chi," Variety 10 April 1946, 34. 442"Radio Commercials Benefit from New Recording Methods," Ampex Playback 2 (January 1956): 2. NBS Collection, Archives, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C; "Sound Inscribed on Paper Tape," Business Week. 26 January 1946, 50; "Sound on Paper," Scientific American (April 1946): 156-157; Clark E. Jackson, "Magnetic Tape Systems," Radio News 39 (February 1948): 46,140; Richard S. O'Brien, "Adopting Paper Tape Recorders for Broadcasting," Audio Engineering 31 (May 1947): 10-14, 48; Gordon Sherman, "Who Said a Recording Engineer's Life is Dull?," Audio Record 3 (October 1947): 1, 3. 443Another tradition breaking recording was a 1946 series called One World Fight narrated by journalist Norman Corwin and consisting of interviews originally recorded on wire. Laurence Bergreen, Look Now. Pay Later (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1980), p 150. 444"Tom Harmon Spurns Live Offers for Recorded Show," Audio Record 2 (November 1946): 2, 4. ^^The venture between Mullin and Crosby was called Bing Crosby enterprises. Although the firm apparently did not produce tape recorders, it remained in business until 1962, when it was acquired by 3M and became the Minicom division, producing precision instrumentation recorders. "News of the Industry," Tape Recording 9 (March 1962): 15. 446,1ABC's $300,000 Blueprint to Keep Day and Night Shows on Same Time Schedule via Recorded Broadcasts," Variety 27 March 1946, 39; "ABC Sees Daylight on 300G Solution," Ibid., 10 April 1946, p 33; "ABC Adopts Daylight Time Disk Plan," Broadcasting (1 April 1946): 93; R. 318 F. Bigwood, "Applications of Magnetic Recording in Network Broadcasting," Audio Engineering 32 (July 1948): 31-33, 38, 40; Howard A. Chinn, "Magnetic Tape Recorders in Broadcasting," Audio Engineering 31 (May 1947): 7-10; "ABC's Daylight Saving Time Plant to Start on April 25," Audio Record 4 (April 1948): 1,2; Byron H. Speirs, "ABC uses Magnetic Tape for Delayed Broadcasts," Radio and Television News. April 1950, p 41,134. ^"Daylight Saving Snafu Rears Head Again to Set Network Noggins Dizzy; CBS to Copy ABC, MBS Delayed Shows," Variety. 19 April 1947, 25. ^^'"Candid Microphone' ABC's New Tape Recorded Show Radio's Most Novel and Amusing Program," Audio Record 3 (November 1947): 1 -2. ^QMagnecord. Inc. (Chicago: Magnecord, n.d.), in Accession 84401417, no file name, Orr Collection; Magnecord was purchased by Midwestern Instruments of Tulsa, moved into background music systems, and later dropped out of the audio tape recorder business. "Noted With Interest," High Fidelity 7 (December 1957): 21 ^"Rangertone recorders were tested in 1947 at stations WASH, Washington D.C. and KSBR, San Bruno, California. "New Tape Techniques," FM and Television 27 (Ag '48): 40-41. 451W. E. Stewart, "New Professional Tape Recorder," Audio Engineering 35 (April 1951): 21- 23; Stewart, "New Portable Tape Recorder Performs With Studio Quality," Tele-Tech (April 1949): 40; S. W. Johnson, "Factors Affecting Spurious Printing in Magnetic Tapes," Journal of the SMPE 52 (June 1949): 619-62; Alex Javitz, Magnetic Recording Systems in Product Design," Electrical Manufacturing (February 1950): 74-81; Alfred Jorysz, "Portable Tape Units," FM and Television (November 1949): 24, 30; Walter W. Pauly, "Studio Tape Recorder," FM-TV [sic] (February 1950): 25-26; Fairchild recorders were purchased by CBS radio in 1948. "A New Professional Tape Recorder," Tele-Tech March 1948): 34-35; Rek-O-Kut, another significant manufacturer of transcription recording equipment, entered the tape recorder market by the 1960s. "News of the Industry." Tape Recording 9 (July 1962): 11. 452Lafferty, "History," 170 453lbid., 174-175. 454lbid., 181. 455Marvin Camras Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 1947 456Lafferty, "History," 187. 4^7The company survives today, although it has dropped its line of quarter inch tape recorders and sells 35 millimeter sprocketed film machines; Richard Shale, compiler, Academy Awards: An Unqar Reference Index (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1978), 280; New Transducers, Amplifiers, and Test Equipment," Tele-Tech. October 1949, 44; "News Pictures," FM and Television 9 (October 1949): 17; "Ingenious Drive Mechanism," Product Engineering 19 (August 1948): 125-126; "Performance Features, New Magnetic Tape Recorder," Tele-Tech (Oct '48): 40-41; "Magnetic Tape Recorder for Movies and Radio," Electronics 20 (Oct '47): 99- 103; Rangertone later offered a conversion kit to electronically synchronize existing recorders to film. Advertisement, Rangertone Inc., n.d. [c. 1952]. Trade catalog collections, archives, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C, alphabetical files. 458Reeves Soundcraft, Inc., Twentieth Anniversary Party Invitation, in "Reeves Soundcraft" file, Box 109, Earl Sponable Collection, Columbia University Archives, New York; James A Mahon to S. Skouras, 25 May 1954, in "Ampex" file, Box 86, ibid; Earl Sponable to H. E. Bragg, 16 February 1955, ibid; The Radio Engineer's Digest (New York: Reeves-Ely Laboratories, Inc., 1944), inset; "News of the Industry." Tape Recording 7 (October 1960): 20; Curt Wohleber, "The Bandleader's Blender," Invention and Technology 5 (Fall 1989): 64. 459Stancil Hoffman recorders were also used by ABC by 1950. Speirs, "ABC" ibid; "Korea is Publicizing a New Interview Tool," Sales Management (1 October 1950): 84-85. 319 ^^Lafferty, "History," 239; Equipment manufacturer Herbert Griffin of the International Projector Corporation alluded to the resistance of theater owners to change in 1942, saying that "improvements and advances are introduced every year, but usually in the form of accessories which can be added to the equipment without any change in fundamental design. But from time to time, we have brought out new projectors and these have been universally recognized as definite advances that represent accumulated ideas developed over a long period. Again however, we are compelled to manufacture only what the theater owners, we may say, the progressive theater owners, WANT and ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR." Griffin in James R. Cameron, Motion Picture Projection and Sound Pictures, eighth edition, (Woodmont, Connecticut: Cameron Publishing Company, 1942), n.p. 320 CHAPTER SIX MAKING ARMOUR: A STUDY IN INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER AT ARMOUR RESEARCH FOUNDATION, 1939-1965 Introduction Social Scientist Steven Shapin has shown how science laboratories produce science and how scientific knowledge is socially constructed there. The aim of this chapter is similar but less ambitious. It uses a single case study based on the history of the Armour Research Foundation of Chicago, a non profit industrial research laboratory, nominally affiliated with the Illinois Institute of Technology, but engaged mainly in research contracted and paid for by a multitude of industrial clients. Armour after 1940 also conducted a limited amount of unfunded research in magnetic sound recording, the tangible results of which it patented and licensed between about 1942 and 1965. This study does not explore every aspect of the social construction of technology at Armour, but only that related to the sound recorder project. Nonetheless, the results of this study have something to contribute to the broader historical issue of technological innovation, the process of research and development, and the role of patent management in the history of technology. The work of Armour's engineers was profoundly influenced by a wide range of factors, including pressures from patent lawyers, corporate sponsors, and Foundation administrators. This chapter also explores the significance of tensions between Armour's commitment to "service to industry" and the reality of its dealings with 321 individual clients, who were themselves sometimes competitors. Finally, this essay will argue that Armour was not only a laboratory but a place of business, a fact that in some ways lays bare the nexus between scientific research and the corporation. The Institutional Setting of Industrial Research in America Any attempt to describe what an institution like Armour "does" (or "did") must begin by establishing its institutional context. As it turns out, Armour as a research organization fits into a category which historians have frequently overlooked when surveying the topography of institutional research in the United States. The historiography of organized research usually categorizes institutions based on the perceived nature of the research, (as in science or engineering); institutional affiliation (government, industry, philanthropic); or sources of funding (public or private, civilian or military). Institutional sponsorship of "scientific" as opposed to "engineering" research has in a sense always been with us in the United States. Almost from the inception of the union the federal government sponsored geological and waterway surveys under the rubric of science, although these studies were often clearly oriented toward exploitation rather than just knowledge of the environment and thus might more accurately be related to engineering.461 While the federal government in the early 19th century had mixed feelings about funding science, nonetheless, federally-sponsored science was always undertaken on some scale, particularly after the founding of the Coast and Geologic Surveys and the Smithsonian Institution. Widespread industry sponsorship of research is a somewhat more recent phenomenon. Early 322 industrial laboratories (few of which are documented) were of course oriented toward solving particular problems of production or product design. With few exceptions, the willingness of firms to fund what is today called "basic" research-that is, preliminary exploration of ideas that may or may not result in an improved process or a marketable product- is a post-World War II phenomenon, but is also part and parcel of a belief in the concept of applied science that extends back into history. Nineteenth century businessmen were receptive to the idea that the dazzling accomplishments of science could lead directly to new technologies. The question remained how to effect the process that translated theory into technology. Increasingly American corporations brought existing scientific disciplines into the corporate fold by hiring scientists and paying them to solve corporate problems. As Daniel J Kevles argues in his book The Physicists, the influence and wealth of corporate enterprise, or in economic terminology "market forces," impelled American physics (and perhaps other branches of science) inexorably toward a more "practical" applied science that perhaps should be called scientific engineering. At the same time, engineering was becoming more scientific in its approach to research, and by the 20th century leading engineering colleges were teaching students the findings and methods of the scientific endeavor.462 By the turn of the 20th century, and especially after World War I, large industrial firms in a few fields like metals, chemicals, and electrical manufacturing were on the way to establishing permanent research facilities. Leonard Reich argues that in addition to solving existing problems of production and quality control, the early industrial research laboratories at AT&T and General Electric were part of a competitive business strategy. Faced with new 323 anti-trust laws that restricted traditional ways of fending off competitors, and sensing that the purchase of patents or inventions from outsiders was not a reliable technique, companies sought to gain greater control over technology through research. Thus in the minds of some business leaders, continuous research was necessary to remain competitive. By 1930 or so, smaller firms were increasingly relying on research and development laboratories, but as the case of Armour Research Foundation makes clear, this research was often farmed out to others. These others included a growing number of nominally unaffiliated laboratories. Such independent research organizations have been in existence since the 19th century. These organizations, such as the Franklin Institute and the Battelle Memorial Foundation, often originally funded by endowments, have more recently become sites of government and industry sponsored research in scientific as well as engineering fields. The Armour Research Foundation of Chicago, the organization which will be the focus of this chapter, was a similar institution but was institutionally linked to an engineering college. For that reason, the most appropriate institutional contexts in which to discuss Armour are those of "industrial research" in the modern sense, i.e. that performed internally by for-profit corporations and that of university research (e.g. engineering and agricultural experiment stations, department-based, externally funded university research, and university research institutes). The latter category is much more difficult to discuss historiographically. University experiment stations came into being following the passage of the Morrill act of 1862, which established agricultural and mechanical schools in each state. It was only in the period during and after World War I that university research 324 began to be funded as a matter of course by the federal government. The establishment during World War II of the Office of Scientific Research and Development cemented institutional links between the federal government and universities which, on the whole, remain in place today. Universities since World War II have been the sites of much research that is difficult to classify unambiguously as either "science" or "engineering," but it seems clear, for example, that much of the research currently funded by the National Science Foundation is related to biomedical technology, and most of the research funded by the Department of Defense is aimed toward improving military technology. Thus university research is, arguably, often technological in nature.463 Projects funded directly by industry constitute a related but more particular aspect of research at American universities. During the first decades of the 20th century, industrial research in universities became much more prominent and, in some, cases, institutionalized. Following World War I, several of the most important American universities rapidly expanded their research endeavors by strengthening their ties to the military and private industry. Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, in the 1920s devised their Technology Plan, which was intended to establish stronger industry-university ties. Within a year of the plan's formulation, MIT's Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research began its institutional life in the service of industry by taking on research projects for a fee. Measured by the yardstick of economic self-sufficiency the DICR, which crossed the break-even point in 1936, was a success. MIT's president Karl Compton, hired to revitalize the flagging engineering school in 1930, a few years later took an entirely new 325 tack by advocating entrepreneurial ventures that would apply the findings of the school's independently-funded engineering research. Ties to industry did not meet with wholesale approval from researchers, who expected and hoped that academic research would be kept out of reach from the immediate demands of capitalism. Nonetheless, university administrators appreciated the institutional growth which well-funded projects could induce. The Technology Plan, the DICR, and Compton's entrepreneurial ventures would eventually provide a model for other institutions, including the Armour Research Foundation.464 Another model was Stanford University in California which, like MIT, cultivated strong ties with industry. Researchers in Stanford's physics department initiated research in the 1920s and 1930s in the field of particle physics that was funded by the Sperry Gyroscope Company. After 1941, "the Stanford physicists changed the location and style of their work as required by the war,"4652 establishing links to the military which remain in place today466. Colleges like MIT and Stanford assumed their current roles as research behemoths during World War II, not so much through service to industry as to the military. Often, however, the style and nature of the research itself was similar to privately-funded industrial research. An executive order in June, 1941-- six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor- established the Office of Scientific Research and Development, headed by that pre-eminent promoter of externally-funded university research, Vannevar Bush. The OSRD was to fund over $550 million worth of research during the few short years before its dissolution in 1946. Wartime research had a far-reaching effect on university research, bringing "about a number of significant changes in government- academic science relationships, many of which have persisted as policies and 326 practices of the several Federal agencies which currently support scientific activities."467 Through the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, the Atomic Energy Commission (1946), the Office of Naval Research (1946), the expanded activities of the National Institutes of Health (originally formed in 1930) the government funded research that increased from $120 million in 1945 to $280 million in 1952, about half of which went to academic institutions.468 A "top heavy" pattern of funding distribution emerged after World War I. Grants and contracts from government and philanthropic sources was highly concentrated in a small number of universities, and "outsiders" had trouble drawing resources away. The enormous need for research brought on by World War II carried with it opportunities for institutions like Armour, but the postwar period did not see major changes in the list of the most heavily-funded universities. Table 6.1: Universities With Highest Levels of Federal Funding, in Descending Order, 1963 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Columbia MIT University of Michigan Harvard Berkeley Stanford University of Illinois University of Minnesota Johns Hopkins469 327 While the particulars of university-based research are diverse and mostly unstudied, industrial research is at least easier to frame conceptually. As evidence of the belief gaining prominence by the early 20th century in the importance of continuous innovation, consider that by the 1920s the federal government began to cite industrial research as a matter central to national security and economic prosperity. A National Research Council [NRC] funded by the federal government began collecting statistical information on industrial research during World War I and carried on after the war with an eye toward economic growth and military preparedness. NRC data represents the first glimpse for the historian of the national, privately-financed research scene. Unfortunately the quality of the data is disappointing. Too many laboratories are left out, and it seems clear that the figures for dollar volume of research are flawed by incomplete data, varying accounting practices among survey respondents, and an unwillingness among respondents to reveal information.470 Nonetheless, a few words about the information gathered by the NRC will help to put the Armour Research Foundation into a broader historical context. From the NRC data, it is clear that many companies opened research departments in the 1920s and early 1930s. There were over 1,000 industrial laboratories counted in 1927 and over 1,600 in 1931. With the Depression, however, many companies closed their research departments, particularly in the case of smaller firms. Only by 1938 had employment figures for researchers risen to levels above that of 1931. While the early histories of research facilities at DuPont, AT&T, General Electric, and certain other firms are very well documented, the story of industrial research after the 1920s even in these firms is largely incomplete. The oft-cited 328 NRC statistics indicate that the number of industrial research laboratories increased to about 1,600 by 1927, dropped off considerably during the Depression, but rebounded by 1938. These same figures indicate that the largest laboratories grew larger during these years, and that smaller firms dropped out of the research business. Unfortunately these statistics do not even outline the increasingly complex research picture. Anecdotal evidence, or a quick look at the list of American patentees during these years, suggests that there was much more industrial research being undertaken than the NRC documents report. Its figures are based on surveys, and a sizable percentage of those survey forms were not returned. The original survey list was compiled in part by "knowledgeable individuals," a fact that betrays the lack of any accurate way to identify research laboratories. Further, small, temporary research activities must certainly have been consistently overlooked, as were individual inventors. Thus, during the 1930s and certainly after 1940, industrial research thrived both in corporate and university laboratories, sponsored internally or, perhaps more importantly in the case of colleges, by private firms and (later) the federal government. Still, this historiographical overview of institutional research has not necessarily accurately described the history of the many small- and medium size laboratories, particularly university research institute laboratories, which currently undertake in aggregate a considerable portion of total research. The Armour Foundation, which was created in the 1930s and which has experienced much growth, by the 1980s was still ranked barely in the top 25 per cent in terms of research expenditures. While this organization (currently called the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute) is hardly 329 the smallest, it is dwarfed by its counterparts at the top ten universities, the difference in size much greater than the rank order would suggest. Armour is one of dozens of middle sized university research institutes, but its middling role is apparent in quite another way. In the largest laboratories, in both academic and industrial settings, researchers with scientific training historically have had to be coaxed into "forsaking" their scientific detachment to conduct research in the interest of industry. Some were given considerable freedom to develop their own research agenda, as if their work was like "pure science" unfettered by crass commercial interests. Armour's history in this respect is quite different. Never have Amour's leaders used the mantle of science to cover ties to industry, in contrast to organizations like MIT's laboratories. Instead of fretting over the effects of industry demands on the pursuit of higher knowledge, Armour publicly displayed and even advertised its relationship with industry. Unlike some university-based laboratories and all industrial laboratories, Armour also remained organizationally independent of both commercial interests and the neighboring Illinois Tech campus. The middle ground between industry and academia, between the university and the private laboratory was Armour's chosen territory. One must necessarily understand this complex institutional context to see how Armour's entrepreneurial sound recording program came about. Because Armour's magnetic recording project, begun in 1939, became the Foundation's biggest success, it is important to trace its development in detail. Though we shall see how this project was not altogether typical of Armour's research, its history nonetheless reveals why this Chicago-based laboratory is a significant case study. As an independent institution primarily in 330 the service of industry rather than the government or philanthropy, Armour's researchers were compelled to transfer the findings of their research to certain commercial interests. At the same time, in order to make Armour's patented technology a "cash cow" for both Armour and its parent, I IT, the Foundation's leaders sought ways to make that transfer profitable above and beyond the fees charged for research. All the while, Amour used the magnetic recording project as a publicity tool with the aim of pulling the college up by its bootstraps and competing with much larger organizations for lucrative and prestigious government research contracts. Thus this study of the magnetic recording research at Armour will be the backbone of a larger story; one that adds something to the history of American industrial research while explaining the production of technology of this significant and unusual, but middle-sized research organization. The Formation of the Armour Research Foundation Armour was perhaps the first non-endowed, non-profit, research institution nominally independent of academia, industry and the government. All those qualifiers aside, its mission was not so different than that of MIT's DICR or the similarly non-profit Battelle Foundation. Its parent was the Armour Institute of Technology (later called the Illinois Institute of Technology), formed in 1892 in the south side of Chicago. For about the first forty years, The Armour Institute functioned as a sort of trade school, teaching young men to become expert technicians and mechanics. Lee de Forest, then a brand new, Yale- educated Ph.D. of the class of 1899, came to work for a few years at Armour and the nearby Lewis Institute in 1900. The school prospered until the early 1930s, 331 when the Great Depression resulted in dropping enrollment and left with school with an inadequate income.471 As a private institution, Armour depended primarily on revenues from tuition to cover expenses. The Institute faced bankruptcy and was kept in operation only through the temporary support of several wealthy alumni. The college's leaders began to study ways to generate more income, including ways to garner more students. A Development Committee created in 1931 recommended adding "cultural" subjects to the curriculum, shifting emphasis from shop courses to scientific courses, establishing a school of science, a graduate program, an off-campus program, and an expanded night school, opening a job placement office, and establishing an industrial research arm. By 1936, all these recommendations were implemented, and the research organization was dubbed the Armour Research Foundation after the school's founder and namesake, Philip D. Armour. Thomas C. Poulter, an Armour professor, temporarily became the infant research institute's director.472 After a few months, the Foundation elected a permanent leader, a dynamic research named Harold Vagtborg, who was responsible for an entrepreneurial spirit that characterized Armour's formative early years. In many ways the architect of Armour's future, Vagtborg originally came as the institute's "plumber." Trained in sanitary and municipal engineering, he quit his engineering job to take a professorship in that field at I IT in 1935. Less than a year after the formation of the Research Foundation, Vagtborg was named its director and Poulter moved to a research position. Under his leadership, from 1937 to 1947, Armour's growth progressed not in small increments but in giant steps. 332 Starting at a salary of $6,000 per year, Vagtborg immediately assumed a wide range of responsibilities both at Armour and I IT. Not only was he director of the Research Foundation, he was executive secretary of the board of trustees of IIT, executive assistant to its president, a regular professor, the chief of IIT's maintenance department, and Armour's public relations officer.473 The Foundation began with only a few researchers (who were also executives) and a rented apartment-turned-laboratory. The first year's revenues totaled, depending on whose accounting is used, $20,000 to $40,000.474 A hint of Vagtborg's skills in public relations is revealed in the record of the Foundation's very rapid accumulation of new clients in an era characterized by moderation in corporate spending. Recruiting personnel was easy, since IIT placed almost no restrictions on the "consulting" activities of faculty members, or the use of university property for outside contracts. While other schools worried about the conflicts of interest generated by academic alliances to industry,475 Armour cut off any chance of criticism from IIT interests by strengthening its organizational autonomy as the Foundation grew in the 1930s. Even at the start, the Foundation had "its own charter, board of trustees, and in the early years, its own officers to conduct all business transactions, the director being the chief executive officer." Concerns over conflicts of interest or scientific independence were not a part of IIT culture, so Vagtborg was free to sell Armour's services openly. Finally, after 1936 all responsibility for research and testing projects was henceforth Armour's rather than that of IIT departments.476 Vagtborg wrote in 1976 that 333 in my capacity as executive director of the research foundation, I quickly learned that, although many of the industries of Chicago did physical testing and chemical analysis as product control measures, there was hardly anything in the way of applied research underway in these organizations. A revelation, an education for these firms regarding the invaluable contribution of applied research was necessary. I determined that the best procedure would be to have a face-to-face discussion with the chief executive officer of each corporation that I contacted.477 He proceeded to make an alphabetized list of Chicago's "100 leading companies," but, he said, "I never got beyond the letter 'L' because by that time, the A, B, and C, corporations were coming in with modest research programs."478 Although by 1941 or 1942 military projects accounted for a sizable proportion of total revenues, it was industry-sponsored projects which sustained Armour throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and into the 1950s. Personnel grew from a few individuals in 1936 to about 350 in 1940, with a corresponding research volume of $1.7 million that year479 The approach to research at Armour was one of departmental inter dependence and at least a degree of democracy. At regular staff meetings, project leaders discussed all current projects, outlined problems and suggested solutions with careful attention to multi-disciplinary research designs. "Each project," a 1941 article proclaimed, is the responsibility of the foundation itself, under the guidance of one of the four section chairmen who assigns to it one or more properly qualified research men... Whenever a study takes a turn into another scientific field, a staff specialist in that field is called upon to assist... Inasmuch as projects of conflicting interest are not undertaken, a free interchange of ideas and collaboration within the foundation are encouraged. Each project is guided by an advisor committee which includes sponsor representation, and the field of investigation is reserved exclusively for the benefit of the sponsor for the duration of the project. 480 At the same time, specialization was a deliberate strategy at Armour. As early as 1938, the laboratory had divided its resources into two broad 334 categories of expertise. The first reflected the kinds of bread-and-butter research contracts that the laboratories could expect to attract from local businesses. Permanent laboratories devoted to chemical engineering, metallurgy, and mineralogy became important almost immediately. But Vagtborg recognized that the chemical and metal industries were statistically the most likely to have in-house research facilities, and so hiring decisions began to focus on other fields, like physics and mechanical engineering.481 Table 6.2: Fields of Specialization at Armour Research Foundation "Physics" Optics Radio Electricity x-ray sound vibration electronics photography electron diffraction atomic structure spectroscopy "Engineering" hydraulics mechanics insulation heat transfer stress analysis automotive engineering combustion aerodynamics Unfortunately, it is not possible based on existing records to correlate many of the projects reported in the annual reports with individual firms. If that 335 could be accomplished, it might be possible to make some enlightening conclusion about things like the average size of the firms sponsoring the research. From the few names mentioned, it seems clear that firms in a range of sizes sponsored research. In 1938-9, among approximately 30 industrial sponsors were large firms like Stewart-Warner Corporation, Sears-Roebuck, Felt and Tarrant, and Allis Chalmers, along with a larger number of medium- size firms.482 Smaller projects were funded in the areas of abrasion resisting alloys, air compressors, beater design [for paper-making], building vibration, coal dustiness, coal pulverization, coal treatment, colloidal fuel, crane girder design, crane motors, drum closures, an electric organ, erasers, fountain pens, a golf ball testing machine, linoleum, meat processing, pecan shelling, peat burners, refuse treatment, rotogravure, a solenoid braking mechanism, spotlight design, tire fabrication, tire molds, valves, water treatment devices, zein, antifreeze, a study of cavitation erosion, clay pipe joints, improving mechanical computing machines, concrete slabs, grain storage, heating equipment, manganese, mechanical brakes, monomolecular films, zinc electroplating, and the processing of hemp. Certain other types of research were in some ways distinct from the mainly mechanical and chemical investigations taking place elsewhere. The Foundation laboratories by 1938 began to specialize in ceramics research, at first in refractories but later branching out into other areas. This reflected an association with the existing ceramics laboratories at the Lewis Institute, which in 1940 merged with IIT 483 Publicity turned out to be Harold Vagtborg's strong suit, and his knack for it helped Armour establish regional recognition. Beginning in 1939 and 336 continuing through 1944, the widely distributed journal Chemical and Engineering News484 began carrying, at Vagtborg's request, lengthy annual reports of research progress at Armour. The Foundation's news releases increased during the 1940s and were published by a range of engineering journals and newspapers, including the New York Times. Armour published its own journal from 1938, The Frontier, which carried articles, written by representatives of outside companies, about successful research and development projects. It served as an advertising medium and a stimulus to Armour's vision of "industrial science."485 No discussion of Armour, its publicity activities, or Harold Vagtborg's leadership is complete without mentioning the "Snow Cruiser." Thomas Poulter, who was the former senior scientist on Richard E. Byrd's famous Antarctic expeditions in 1936 and 1938, retained an interest in polar exploration while in the employ of Armour. Vagtborg recalled that "from his previous experience, Tom had felt that one of the most important developments that was needed for exploration in the [Antarctic] area was a vehicle that could cross crevasses, carry an airplane on its back to make surveys of the entire continent, and provide such facilities that would enable the scientific staff to move about rather readily in warm quarters."488 As a result the Snow Cruiser, a giant self-propelled laboratory, was constructed in 1941 using donated parts and expertise from 117 companies, including Beechcraft and Goodyear. While not funded by the Federal government, the Cruiser had monolithic proportions more appropriate to Depression Era public works projects. It was the Grand Coulee dam of automobiles. Fifty-five feet long, twelve feet high and twenty feet wide, the Snow 337 Cruiser sported ten foot diameter tires, dual 150-horsepower diesel engines generating electricity for 75 horsepower electric motors at each wheel, a stately thirty mile-per-hour top speed, and a rather hefty curb weight of 75,000 pounds. Traffic jams created by sightseers accompanied the slow "cruise" by road to Boston harbor, which the Snow Cruiser accomplished under its own power with only one minor wreck; its hydraulic steering gear failed in Ohio and the vehicle veered into a deep ravine. Arriving in Antarctica, and away from the cameras of newspaper reporters, the crew found to its dismay that the vehicle was virtually undrivable in the snow. It traveled only seven total miles under its own power, serving instead as a stationary laboratory before being unceremoniously abandoned on the ice where, presumably, it sits buried today.487 A fifty year retrospective written by IIT staff claims that "the expedition was abandoned in January [1942], just as the base camp was established, due to the outbreak of World War II in Europe." [sic]488 If the Snow Cruiser was a "triumph for the foundation," as Vagtborg claimed, it was a triumph of public relations, because for a brief time the Armour Research Foundation was on the minds of technology-minded Americans across the country. Although Vagtborg left in 1944 to become the founding director of the Midwest Research Institute, a very similar organization located in Kansas City, many of his policies remained in place through the next several decades. Vagtborg was replaced temporarily by Jesse Hobson, who in turn was succeeded by Haldon Leedy. Hobson, incidentally, went on to become the executive director of the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, California.489 The hoopla surrounding the Snow Cruiser faded quickly from the newspapers in the face of the sensational and tragic bombing of Pearl Harbor 338 and Franklin Roosevelt's declaration of war on Germany and Japan. Armour, like many research and development laboratories, soon found itself inundated with war-related research projects. The Foundation, however, was not able to duplicate, even on a small scale, anything like MIT's spectacularly successful Radiation Laboratory, where electronics research blossomed, but continued to receive contracts for projects in its mainly "low technology" areas of expertise.490 Wire Recording Research at Armour Ironically it was not an industry-sponsored project but rather an internally-funded one that proved to be the Foundation's greatest source of pride. This project involved the magnetic recording of sound on steel wire and was centered around one Marvin Camras, a young Armour employee. Marvin Camras, the son of a bookbinder, was born in Chicago in 1916 and took an interest in technology early in life. He attended a technical high school on the west side of town, and then enrolled at IIT in 1936 as an electrical engineering student. Camras in interviews recalled that his cousin, who wanted to become an opera singer, inspired his initial interest in sound recording. "He listened to opera singers on the radio and he would sing in his bathroom while taking a bath. He thought he sounded every bit as good as the opera singers.. . So this [recorder] was a tool for helping him listen to his sounds."491 While still an undergraduate, Camras read the available literature on magnetic recording and constructed an experimental device with an electronic amplifier that could record on steel wire. When he showed it to his professors, they "were even more enthusiastic than I was. They said they had never heard 339 anything that had this quality." Of his recorder one professor "said that 'this is worth further development.'"492 When he graduated in 1939, Camras took a position as research assistant at Armour. From the beginning, he was allowed to work on wire recording under the special class of foundation-funded research that Armour undertook on a very limited basis.493 Originally part of an "electricity and sound" division led by D. E. Richardson, Camras' work in recording was not fully disclosed in the Foundation's frequent press releases until the first batch of patents was granted. However, at least some members of the Armour and I IT community were made aware of Camras' work at the 1940 Armour open house, which featured his wire recorder amongst a group of other gadgets ranging from a Tesla coil and a facsimile machine to an electronic musical instrument and a color organ.494 A steadily increasing volume of funded projects at Armour was the norm after 1939, particularly for projects funded by the government either directly or indirectly through firms holding military purchase orders or research contracts. The Foundation nonetheless did not garner the contracts that would have allowed it to move into areas like radar, advanced radio communications, computers, or atomic weapons. In fact, virtually the only high technology project was magnetic recording, which remained internally funded in its initial phase. While government support continued to grow, by 1947 it still amounted to only 16.6% of the total income from sponsored research. Nonetheless the government was the single largest sponsor, and of the other 83.4% that came from non-government sources, Armour's own share was 12.8%.495 Purely speculative rather than industry-driven, magnetic recording development in its first year was dominated by the improvement of existing 340 designs (like the Poulsen Telegraphone) and the construction of a working model. Camras' early work focused on the most troublesome and poorly understood features of magnetic recording; the recording/reproducing electromagnets or "heads," and the recording medium itself. Camras stuck with his initial decision to develop a wire rather than a tape recorder, and experimented with a number of types of steel wire and head designs. He also re-discovered the principle of AC biasing, a method of reducing background noise that was developed independently as early as 1927 by other researchers.496 Between 1942 and 1943 Armour was able to attract the interest of the U.S. Department of the Navy, inducing them to purchase copies of Camras' rugged, portable wire sound recorder. (Figures 6.1,6.2 and 6.3) The machine did not represent much of a gain in sound quality as compared to existing transcription disk recorders; however, it could make on-the-spot recordings under adverse conditions like heat and vibration. It was portable, energy- efficient (thus requiring only small batteries), and its recording wire could be re used any number of times. These advantages made it attractive to the military initially for specialized testing purposes where disk recorders were too troublesome and difficult to use. Soon the General Electric Company agreed to build the recorder under license from Armour, and Camras was placed at the head of a new research group "to develop educational and industrial uses of wire sound recording." The Foundation, touting the post-war uses of the recorder in home, office, and school, began demonstrating the military recorder and other designs to manufacturers and offering them licenses and patent protection.497 341 Figure 6.1. Armour Military Wire Recorder The Armour Research Foundation tried to promote its military wire recorder as an office dictation machine after 1945, though apparently none of the licensees chose to manufacture this design. From a photograph in file 864, Camras Collection. 342 April 8, 1S47. M. CAMRAS 2,418,541 nEVEnSISU: DRIVE FOR A MAGNETIC RECORDING KEDIUM Filed >lov. 22, 1343 5 Sheets-Sheet 1 Figure 6.2: Armour Military Wire Recorder, Front View The ARF military wire recorder was compact, self-contained (expect for the power supply) and reliable. Armour and its principle licensee General Electric made perhaps a thousand such machines. From United States Patent 2,418,541 343 April 8, 1947. M. CAMRAS 2,418,541 REVERSIBLE DRIVE FCR K MAGNETIC RECORDING MEDIUM Filed Nov. 22, 1943 5 Sheet&rSheet 2 Figure 6.3: Armour Military Wire Recorder, Side View This illustration shows some of the key features of the ARF military wire recorder, including the placement of the motor (31) and amplifier (69), the use of an inexpensive belt drive system (22), and the relative dimensions of the reels (20). From United States Patent 2,418,541. 344 In May of 1944, Armour created a separate corporation with offices in Chicago for the purpose of conducting promotional activities and licensing operations. This organization, the Wire Recorder Development Corporation [WDRC], was headed by one Lucius Crowell. Armour set up its own production facilities to fill orders from the military, but also tried to educate potential institutional customers about the existence of wire recording. A number of loaner machines were provided to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. During its relief activities on the Balkan peninsula, a wire recorder was used to "disseminate mass instructions with respect to health and hygiene in camps sheltering more than 35,000.. . refugees." The Wire Recorder Development Corporation sent the Library of Congress a wire recorder, where it became the basis of a program to transcribe a large collection of "folklore" recordings from an obsolete format, the phonograph cylinder, to a soon-to-be obsolete format (although Armour of course did not anticipate this obsolescence). Finally, the Foundation for the Blind became the recipient of a recorder and promises of a coordinated self study program on wire.498 The military applications of Armour wire recorders included a limited amount of use as test instruments (e.g. use by the Navy to record underwater sounds), training tools, and news gathering devices. The first Navy purchase orders brought with them the benefit of a priority rating necessary to purchase critical materials. Before the first batch of machines could be delivered, however, 345 ... other agencies came to Armour with higher priority ratings and snatched away the machines that we had manufactured for the Navy. We bought more parts, doubled and redoubled production. Priority ratings escalated from A to A1A to AAA. One day, Dr. Allison of the University of Chicago came with a priority that outranked the highest generals and personally carried away the recorder. We wondered how he did it. Years later we learned that he headed a group that developed the Atomic bomb. 499 Whereas in the first two instances, testing and training, magnetic recording replaced an earlier technology or substituted for an existing one, in the last instance, news gathering, magnetic recording represented the beginning of an important and far reaching technological shift.500 Through the end of World War II, almost without exception, American radio broadcasts were carried live. When the war in Europe began, American radio networks were encouraged to set up remote pick up sites to make live reports from areas near the battlefront. In the early stages of the war, that meant broadcasting live from rooftops in London. After D-Day, technicians frequently found it necessary to string telephone lines to the pickup point out in rural battle areas, an arduous and dangerous task. Nonetheless, the networks by and large stuck with live broadcasts, and it is this journalism that has been most celebrated in the memoirs of the Cronkites and Murrows. The Army Signal Corps, on the other hand, embraced all kinds of sound recording early on. Signal Corps engineers set up military news and entertainment networks, working alongside but independent of the commercial networks. War news, both battlefront reports and standard press releases, were handled by Army and Navy public relationships, then later by a new organization called the Office of War Information [OWI]. The Army Hour, an entertainment show first broadcast during the North African campaign, included 346 news reports originating from a wire recorder, then transferred to transcription disk for broadcast [see chapter five, below]. Despite these changes in the way radio was done, most publicity surrounding wire recording concerned the recorders, rather than the recordings. Armour's publicity machine attracted a remarkable amount of attention to the use of a wire recorder during the battles of Bougainville and Saipan in the South Pacific theater. The many printed accounts of the episode put little emphasis on what was said during the recordings, which consisted of interviews of soldiers who participated. Instead, the event was recorded in photographs and descriptions of the machine.501 Military sales of wire recorders proved to be a turning point in the history of magnetic recording, which since the turn of the century had been an utter disappointment to its corporate sponsors. Accounting for at least $672,000 in equipment purchases from Armour, the military was a real breakthrough in the marketing of magnetic recorders. Never before had such a large market for magnetic recording devices existed in the United States. The military also demonstrated how recording could be used in broadcasting without losing technical quality or a sense of immediacy. Wire recording, along with motion picture newsreels were central to the creation of a new kind of news reporting, one that brought almost daily exposure to war events. In many ways, the recording of news by magnetic recorder and camera supplanted the live but stationary remote pickup. Now local sounds (and with portable motion picture cameras, sights) became a commonplace in news rather than an exception. 347 Post-War Commercialization Efforts World War It's end did not signal the end of the military's use of magnetic recording. On the contrary, magnetic recording became more important in the late 1940s and 1950s as sound recorders improved and as data recording on magnetic tape developed. However, by 1944 Armour's attention shifted to a civilian market. Expanding upon its small base of military licensees, including General Electric, but now also other companies such as Utah Radio and the Webster Products Company,502 Armour representatives sought to sign up civilian licensees to make consumer wire recorders. WRDC planners maintained no illusions about Armour's patent situation. They were fully aware of previous work in the field dating back to the 1890s, and of the similarities between Armour machines and other patented recorders. They nonetheless saw their patent position as one of strength, not because Armour held any basic patents but because of "the fact that it will be difficult for non-licensees to compete commercially without coming within the scope of Armour's patents," and because "Armour's developments enable the manufacture of a unit in a size and at a price which will render it readily acceptable to the trade."503 Patents were a component of the Armour licensee program, but not the program's only selling point. Licensees were attracted also to Armour's promises to assist in technology transfer and to continue to provide research services. Privately, WRDC strategists were well aware that some licensees who did "not attach too much validity to the Foundation patents and the rights granted thereunder, signed the [licensing] agreement in order to avail themselves of the Foundation's research and developments."504 Thus 348 licensees held the expectation that important but informal or unpatentable knowledge would be transferred along with designs for patented inventions. With the patent situation seemingly in hand, a mountain of favorable publicity arising from wartime contracts, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, Armour and the Wire Recorder Development Company sought new licensees. A policy for licensing magnetic recording technology evolved that was at first only a slight variation of that adopted during the war years for General Electric. In order to "arouse sufficient interest in reliable manufacturers to induce them to carry forward research work," Armour at first sought to limit the number of licensees to seven, though the number was increased to 13 within a few months. A 5% royalty plus a $1.00 charge per unit was to be charged against the manufacturers' sales of complete wire recorders. Finally, there was a distinction between manufacturers of "home radio" and "office equipment" recorders that was made in a further effort to control the market. Licensees were granted one or the other type of license, and could only with difficulty change their status. In limiting "suppliers," Armour planned for a small number of recorder manufacturers to make the component parts, sub-assemblies, or semi-complete recorders that would be assembled by other manufacturers and sold under a range of different brand names, following the practice in the radio industry.505 Almost immediately, the WDRC deemed this policy inadequate. In the first instance, in 1944 only three manufacturers took up licenses; General Electric took a civilian "home radio" license in addition to its existing military license,506 and the C. G. Conn and WiRecorder Corporations took "office equipment" licenses. The WRDC changed its policy some time in 1944 in a way 349 that self-consciously emulated the radio licensee policies of the Radio Corporation of America and the Hazeltine Corporation but avoided what were seen as the mistakes committed by the likes of the American inventor Edwin H. Armstrong. RCA and Hazeltine in the 1940s licensed the manufacturer of certain circuits, particularly the superheterodyne circuit and the automatic volume control circuit,507 used by every manufacturer of broadcast receivers. The company charged a small royalty on the net selling price of the entire radio, rather than charging a royalty on just the patented circuits. The policy also took into account Edwin Armstrong's attempt in the 1930s to license his Frequency Modulation patents, which the WRDC felt had failed because the royalty was too high. Armour thus dropped its royalty to about 2.5% and removed the $1.00 per unit fee. The hope was that a mass market for home recorders would emerge, making the much smaller royalty amount to an even larger net income 508 With the end of the war in sight in early 1945, the Wire Recorder Development Corporation found it easy to attract licensees, especially among those electronics companies which had expanded rapidly to fill military contracts and were now looking for new product lines. By August of that year, in addition to the "military" licenses granted to General Electric and its subcontractor, Pierce Wire Recorder Corporation, Armour had signed up 18 additional "civilian" licensees. The Foundation also began to pick and choose among applicants for licenses. In the dictating machine field, the WRDC refused to grant licenses to some applicants, arguing that existing licensees should be somewhat protected from competition. A little later, that policy was extended to the "home radio" [i.e. home wire recorder] manufacturers, the largest of whom were to be granted licenses at the expense of smaller 350 manufacturers until wire recording became popularized. The argument was that free competition would result in uneven product quality, whereas the large manufacturers could give assurances of quality. Larger companies also had the capability to distribute and advertise nationally, putting them in the best position to establish a mass market. As it turned out, licensees like General Electric and RCA never put much effort into commercializing wire recorders, but rather it was the more numerous medium-sized electronics firms which took the lead.509 Shortly after the WRDC set up offices in downtown Chicago, Armour decided to move all licensee operations off campus. Requests for demonstrations of recorders and visits to Armour's laboratory facilities became so frequent that the normal work of the foundation became difficult. The WRDC in addition to effecting the transfer of technology to licensees, began implementing plans to ensure the long term success of the new technology. In particular this consisted of establishing a wire recording standards committee within the Radio Manufacturers Association [RMA], and promoting the idea of recorded musical programs to the manufacturers of phonograph records. Back in the laboratory, Camras worked to develop a "master" recorder and duplicating machines, all geared toward the eventual production of commercial wire recordings.510 Technology Transfer and the Shift to Tape Because Marvin Camras kept excellent records, the collection of his papers that is now available at NT's Galvin Library provides a fairly detailed description of the technology transfer process between Armour and licensees. 351 That process almost always commenced with an inquiry by a potential licensee. Before late 1944, Camras, Vagtborg and others frequently traveled to the home offices of candidate licensees to demonstrate a wire recorder to executives and engineers. When the volume of inquiries became too great, such demonstrations were handled by the Wire Recorder Development Corporation at a specially-constructed studio in downtown Chicago. If the candidate agreed to Armour's terms, he signed a contract committing his corporation to an up-front fee (as much as $20,000 in 1943 and 1944 but later falling to only $10,000) and the royalty on sales. While the cash payment gave Armour an immediate source of income, the royalties on the licensee's initial sales of wire recorders were charged against it, so that regular payments would not be forthcoming for some time after production began. While this was not a source of concern in the mid-1940s, just a few years later it became a serious problem.511 Licensees received extensive engineering drawings and manufacturing recommendations for a number of recorder designs, plus theoretical treatises on aspects of the magnetic recording process. Manufacturers who chose to make complete recorders also received circuit diagrams, but several made significant cost-cutting changes to Armour's electrical designs. Other manufacturers purchased the mechanical portions of the recorders from another licensee, assembled the electronic portion themselves, and installed both into a cabinet. Still others made only a part of the assembly, such as the recording head. (See Appendix I) Quarterly licensee meetings began in late 1944, when about 20 Armour and industry representatives met in Detroit or later Chicago. A surviving agenda from the October meeting indicates that the meeting covered only 352 general sorts of information. Marvin Camras, Lucius A. Crowell, D. J. Simpson, Jay Sterling Kemp, and George E. Ziegler of the WRDC and Armour each made presentations, outlining the state of wire recorder commercialization. An interesting aspect of the meeting was the interest Armour showed in the opinions of its licensees regarding certain technical issues. Chief among their concerns were standards; licensees wanted to introduce Armour-style machines immediately, but wanted to establish standards for other types of machines later. All agreed that the future for wire recording was as competitor to the phonograph, and that a magazine- or cartridge-loading player would have to be developed along with standards for recorded programs.512 At the time of the first licensee meeting, there were only six licensees, four of which had been in production making military wire recorders for some time: General Electric, Utah Radio Products, Webster-Chicago, and Radiotechnic Laboratories (a.k.a. Pierce Wire Recorder Corp.). Stromberg- Carlson, a new licensee, was by late 1944 still developing production plans, but conducting research on improved wire. C. G. Conn (formed from two earlier firms, Conn Instruments and Federal Radio) was tooling up and expected to have a prototype ready by 1945. J. P. Seeburg, an important jukebox manufacturer, had produced prototypes and planned to become an o.e.m. supplier of wire recorder mechanisms to other firms. WiRecorder of Chicago was nearly in production and had demonstrated a prototype at the July, 1944 licensee meeting. Finally, licensees including Aireon Scott and the Hammond Organ company had apparently not yet begun work on wire recording or had not accomplished much.513 353 By early 1946, when 19 licensees sent representatives to the quarterly meeting, it was evident that technical problems and the difficulties of standards setting remained unsolved. Licensees could not agree on standards for recording wire and for the spools to hold it due to concerns over cost and reliability, or quality in the case of the wire. On the other hand, Armour had responded quickly to questions about specific design and production problems. As the year wore on, Camras and other engineers had to spend more and more time visiting the factories of the licensees trying to solve production problems.514 In response to some of these recurring problems, Armour engineer Russell J. Tinkham announced a series of nine new licensee bulletins. The titles of these bulletins, listed below, reflect the concern over design for production and quality control testing: Table 6.3: Samples of ARF Licensee Bulletin Titles Preferred Methods of Coupling of Amplifier and Oscillator to the Recording Head Effects of Wire Tension and Pulley Diameter on a Magnetic Record Effects of Heat and Cold Working on Magnetic Characteristics. Optimum Pressure Angles for Intermediate Friction Drive Rollers Cathode-ray Indicating Hysteresis Loop Tracer High Power Bias Frequency Oscillator "Wow- Meter Wire Test Equipment at Armour Research Foundation Methods of Adjusting Proper Bias Voltages515 354 All nine titles indicate the way Armour addressed production problems while avoiding less immediately valuable theoretical work. Two titles dealt with the design of the wire transport mechanism in terms of the actual designs of licensee prototypes; two titles dealt with assembly techniques, and so on. These titles reflect the active role that licensees played in the technology transfer process, how they kept in close touch with Armour engineers and made them aware of the most pressing technical problems and research needs. The pressures that licensees could place on Armour were felt particularly in the sudden abandonment of wire as a recording medium that occurred between late 1946 and 1949. In mid-1946, when most licensees were only just beginning to manufacture consumer wire recorders, engineer Lynn Holmes of the Stromberg Carlson company's research department wrote to Carl Titus, head of the WRDC. Holmes reminded Titus of ongoing problems with "noisy" wire. But additionally, Holmes stated in no uncertain terms that "studies in connection with magnetic recording on coated paper tape should proceed as rapidly as possible. .. Many of the licensees believe that this type of medium will be the only one to receive widespread acceptance by the trade."516 Holmes, as it turned out, would be correct. One of the most confused episodes in the history of magnetic recording technology involves the American contributions to the development and diffusion of coated recording media. Although Camras threw in his lot with solid metal media early in the research process, other firms in the United States and Europe developed media using magnetic powders and non-magnetic carriers. It was Oberlin Smith, the American mechanical engineer who proposed magnetic 355 recording in the 1880s, who may have also been the first to suggest this kind of heterogeneous recording medium. His 1888 article in the technical journal Electrical World described a string impregnated with magnetizable particles which, Smith thought, could be used in place of a solid wire. Between the turn of the century and the 1940s, dozens of experimenters tried coating magnetic particles onto paper or plastic films, mainly in order to create a magnetic soundtrack for motion pictures. These systems, none of which were commercially successful, either synchronized a tape player to a motion picture projector or placed the soundtrack directly on the film as in an optical soundtrack. The German company AEG developed a successful line of tape recorders for broadcast purposes, using a succession of paper- and plastic-based media, including one "homogenous" type with the magnetic particles mixed into the plastic before it was cast into film. Semi J. Begun, who designed several important steel-tape magnetic recorders in Germany before coming to the U.S., developed a paper-based, iron oxide coated tape for the Brush Development Company that was marketed as early as 1939 or 1940. How then did it come to pass that Marvin Camras was elected to the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 1984 on the basis of his invention of the modern form of tape recording? The invention of the coated plastic tape for which Marvin Camras has repeatedly been given credit was clearly not one person's or even one firm's invention. It was the culmination of years of research in magnetics and chemical and mechanical engineering in a range of firms. Thus instead of trying to establish priority of invention, it would be more useful to show how and why Armour and its licensees made the transfer from 356 wire to tape in the late 1940s, and what effects this shift had on the licensee program. An apt if flippant metaphor for Armour's wire recorder licensee program in the rapidly changing post-1949 period is taken from the television shows of the day. One of the stock variety show acts on television used to be a performer who single-handedly kept a large number of china dinner plates spinning atop wooden sticks, running from each to each to keep them all spinning at the same time, for if any plate slowed down it would fall and spoil the act. In some ways, the management of Armour's licensee program in the era of tape looked like a man frantically trying to keep his plates turning: at once entertaining, comic, and pathetic. Armour nonetheless pulled off this act surprisingly well, at least for a time. In 1947 and 1948, as the first American tape recorders using German designs were being snapped up by radio broadcasters, Marvin Camras was in his third year of experimentation with coated-media technology. Beginning in 1945, although the episode is poorly documented, Camras apparently made or ordered the making of a series of iron oxide powders with various magnetic properties.517 By about early 1946 he had settled on a particular oxide and constructed a tape recorder and a device to coat oxide on standard 16- and 8- millimeter motion picture films. Eight millimeter film was commonly used by amateurs, and the home-movie business was experiencing a boom even in 1945 that would last for at least a decade: here was another example of Camras' interest in making magnetic recording a consumer product. Nonetheless 8mm sound was not an instant hit. Eastman Kodak, which discussed with Armour intentions to introduce a home movie camera with 357 sound-striped film, failed to commercialize the idea for twenty five years. While amateur movie equipment had never been widely adapted to sound, in part because of the additional cost, 16-mm sound equipment with optical soundtracks were available. 16-mm film, however, was most commonly used in production and for distribution prints of industrial, educational, and institutional films, and here Armour faced a more difficult selling job.518 Camras also worked on a sound-only coated tape project that resulted in a prototype recorder. This recorder, whether developed as an afterthought or as a successor to his existing wire recorders, became perhaps the most important of all. (Figure 6.4) The coating of the tape proved to be difficult to do, and Camras sent samples of his oxide to the DuPont Corporation and the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation for analysis. Both companies were experiences in the field of coated films: DuPont was a leader in the plastics production and 3M manufactured a successful line of masking and adhesive tapes under the brand "Scotch tape." DuPont replied that its acetate film might be used for a coated tape, but that it did not have the facilities to make it. 3M, which had unbeknownst to Camras previously supplied coated paper tapes to Brush Development Company on an experimental basis, agreed to coat cellophane tapes using Camras' oxide in 1946.519 Camras nonetheless complained about a lack of "cooperation obtained from firms which were equipped or had offered to prepare sample tapes for him, and felt that we probably could prepare our own test samples of coated tape from now on."520 While the WRDC immediately sought licensees for magnetic sound-on-film, Carl Titus held the reins back on sound tape, saying that "we should not be over-enthusiastic in 358 Figure 6.4: Armour Research Foundation Experimental Tape Recorder, Circa 1945-46 Marvin Camras experimented with tape recorders as early as 1945, although he promoted the technology mainly in terms of its applicability to motion picture sound recording. From a photograph in file 864, Camras Collection. 359 announcing our results on tape so that mental hazards [sic] will not deter the development of production wire machines. Despite Titus' reluctance, pressure from licensees and competition from unaffiliated companies soon made the commercialization of the tape recorder project imperative.521 The prospect of an industry-wide switch to coated tape posed sticky problems for the managers of the Armour licensee program. Like Camras' wire recorders, coated tape was not only lacking in basic patentability, as of 1948 it faced competition from other companies which had, somehow, discovered how to make something very much like Camras* tape. But despite the knowledge that Armour's leaders had of numerous German and American patents on coated recording tapes, Camras was encouraged to plow ahead with this research. Perhaps Armour's leaders believed, as in the case of wire recorders, that some combination of a large number of patents (although not necessarily basic patents), technical expertise, and proven tape and tape recorder designs could be gathered together to make Armour tape recorders desirable to licensees.522 An early ally in the commercialization of tape was the Indiana Steel Company of Valparaiso, Indiana. A manufacture of powdered magnetic materials (among other things), Indiana Steel engineers independently developed a workable tape recorder some time in the early 1940s and began offering it for sale around 1945. The key component of the recorder was its oxide-coated, paper-based recording tape called Hyflux, which utilized Indiana Steel's proprietary high coercive force magnetic oxide (yielding a tape with a coercive force [HC] of 350 and remanence [Br] of 450). While Indiana's publicity staff was quite successful in attracting attention to the recorder in the 360 engineering press, the recorder itself apparently had troublesome technical faults. Armour representatives in 1946 found Indiana Steel willing to become a licensee, and the Armour engineering staff worked to resolve problems with tape heads, the tape itself, and the mechanical components of the recorder. The Hyflux recorder was never a commercial success, although it influenced several other Armour licensees in their later efforts to design tape recorders.523 Other new sites of magnetic recording research and development deeply concerned Armour's leadership, as when Jesse E. Hobson noted in 1946 that although the structure of the licensee program was in place, it was time to reevaluate Armour's patent position. "We are rapidly heading," he wrote, "into a competitive situation where it is all-important that we have strong patents with good coverage of all ideas."524 The prescience of Hobson's comment was demonstrated the next year, when Armour found itself in conflict with the Brush Development Company and particularly its magnetic recording expert, Semi Joseph Begun. Brush, like Armour, had hired a talented engineer with an interest in magnetic recording during World War II to produce specialized recording devices for the military. Although the two organizations seem to have been aware of each others' work, neither paid too much attention until after 1945. As Armour tried to position itself as the national source of all magnetic recording technology, the evidence of Brush's wartime work began sprouting up like weeds in Armour's carefully-tended garden. Brush's wartime contracts had been significantly more valuable than Armour's, and the Cleveland firm's work in electroplated magnetic recording media had found its way, via the federal government's liberal wartime cross- 361 licensing policy, into many important centers of research. Interestingly, in several places Brush's techniques were taken up not for use in sound recording, but in digital or analog data storage: that is, Brush's technology was taken up at the new, well-funded computing laboratories. Here was an application of magnetic recording that Armour had apparently never before considered. Brush's technology, which involved plating a metallic, magnetic coating onto a non-magnetic substrate, created an extremely smooth and extraordinarily durable medium well-suited to the recording of digital data pulses. Although still in its nascent stages in the late 1940s, Brush-inspired technology would for a brief time come into favor as the primary memory in some early computers, and later as the archival storage medium in virtually every computer from the late 1950s to the present day. Brush also had developed a plated recording wire, which in retrospect was secondary in importance to its plated disk and drum technology but which at the time gave Camras some cause for concern. It was only belatedly, in late 1946, that the members of the Armour's wire recorder steering committee resolved to pursue research in plated media and only then after Camras insisted on it. Finally, knowledge of Brush's coated-paper tape was also widely distributed during the 1940s, and along with German technology influenced numerous researchers after World War II.525 Thus because of the war and government-mandated sharing of information, Brush's proprietary magnetic recording technology had passed into the hands of other military contractors, and after the war, these companies continued to develop similar technologies. Some undoubtedly adopted the technique without much knowledge of Brush's work, or also knew of Armour's 362 wartime work. Nevertheless, when Carl Titus was contacted by an unfamiliar firm, the Barber-Colman Company, he was astonished to learn that they had in their laboratories a magnetic tape recorder for computer data and wanted Armour to suggest a source for tapes. The device used a sprocketed tape similar in its appearance to motion picture film, and the company asked the Foundation for a sample of 16 mm "striped" film for testing. Titus reported to Marvin Camras that the company was now "aware that they must be an Armour licensee if such an instrument is manufactured and sold." Barber-Coleman, however, did not respond.526 Brush and others using Begun's technology simply refused to become licensees. Brush had its own set of patents to back up its refusal, and most computer researchers stood under the umbrella of protection offered by the government to military contractors.527 Brush in 1939 had also quietly and unsuccessfully introduced a home-type tape recorder using a rather crude paper-based coated tape. When the war ended, the company again began producing these recorders for the home and broadcast market. But the Brush tape recorder was the least of Armour's worries, for the Brush recording tape was being manufactured by another non-licensee, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. 3M by 1947 was also supplying a small but growing market for tapes for the German Magnetophone recorder, which was just beginning to be used by various radio broadcasters. 3M officials at first did not seem impressed by Camras pending application for a patent on coated recording tape, but nonetheless took a license in 1947.526 From Armour's standpoint, worse still was the fact that 1947 and 1948 saw the introduction or announcement of the first commercial copies of the pre- 363 war German Magnetophone by American companies like Rangertone Corporation of New Jersey. While it was not clear at the time how important the tape recorder market would become, Armour's leaders were not pleased by the appearance of these newcomers. Without hegemony, Armour worried that its licensee program might seem less viable to manufacturers. The first public test of the structural soundness of the licensee program began on November 6, 1947, when Armour's law firm in Chicago filed suit against Brush for infringement on several patents, including Camras' AC bias noise reduction invention. Brush replied with a counter-suit, claiming that Armour's wire recorders infringed upon S. J. Begun's patents. Mid-1948 saw the collection of pre-trial depositions and a series of legal maneuvering by each side in an effort to secure the best position. Meanwhile, at the December 1948 licensee meeting in Chicago, Armour's counsel could respond to the growing uneasiness of the licensees only by presenting a terse summary of the Brush litigation to date. "You may or may not know," admonished attorney D. J. Simpson, "that courts are very strict about what kind of comments are made to the public at large concerning matters of litigation." His prepared statement on the Brush suit did not reveal whether Armour was in a position of strength or weakness, or whether he thought Brush had a chance.529 Settled out of court, this episode's results seemed to favor Amour, at least in terms of quelling the uncertainties of the licensees. In exchange for a free license, Brush was brought into the fold in late 1949, and agreed to make its patented technology available to Armour. While licensees seemed reassured by the agreement, it did not seem to have much of an effect on the 364 growing number of other manufacturers who were entering the magnetic recording industry without Armour licenses.530 While Brush technology represented a serious threat to confidence in Armour's licensee program, the transfer of German technology to the U.S. after 1945 came to represent a much larger problem. This transfer, discussed in detail in the next chapter, allowed several corporations to enter the magnetic tape recording industry without direct support from Armour.531 The German machine utilized a high-quality recorder mechanism and a coated plastic tape similar to the ones developed by Brush and Armour. The mechanical designs of the machines were quite distinct from anything available in the U.S., and were suited for heavy-duty production work in radio stations and phonograph recording studios, as opposed to Camras' cheap consumer designs. German tape technology also neatly complemented the emerging technology of high fidelity. It came at a time when record companies were considering low noise, long playing records for consumer use, when high fidelity frequency modulation [FM] broadcasts went on air in metropolitan areas, and when sales of consumer "hi-fi" gear began to boom. But as Marvin Camras recalled in a long letter to Harold Vagtborg in 1974, "the earliest Armour wire recorders were designed to be low cost home recorders. We visualized that they would appeal to the same people who used movie cameras, etc. Business and education would be served by slight modifications of the basic design.532 It is not surprising, then, that Armour's licensees began to be dissatisfied with Camras' cheap dictating machines and began to agitate for high fidelity consumer tape recorder designs, almost as soon as the first professional tape machines became available in the U.S. But to Armour, the shift to tape started a 365 scramble to amass patents and thwart alleged infringers. Carl Titus pointed out what must have been obvious to others at Armour in 1948 when he said that "with competition becoming greater in all fields of magnetic recording, it is believed that we should file as many [patent] applications as possible, covering those items on which mass production is almost a certainty."533 Camras was well positioned to make the shift, having amassed several years of experience primarily as a result of his work in motion picture sound-on-film, a technology closely related to coated tape. Unfortunately, although licensees responded favorably to demonstrations of a sound-only tape recorder in 1946 and 1947, the patent situation would prove to be difficult. The most obvious variations on the tape recorder theme (though by no means the easiest to realize) were already part of the prior art. Carl Titus for example informed Camras in early 1948 that his two track tape recorder (i.e. a recorder with a two-in-one recording head to allow two parallel sound tracks on a single tape) was not sufficiently novel to make a patent application worthwhile.534 As a booming market for tape recorders emerged in the 1950s, such evaluations of Camras' work would become more common.535 Diversification of the magnetic recording industry in the 1950s was rapid and complex. In addition to the professional and home sound recorders of the immediate postwar period, American and foreign firms brought to the market a remarkably wide variety of recorders intended to exploit new applications. The simple "monophonic" tape format in was by far the most prominent, although by 1950 simultaneous multiple recording tracks were becoming the norm. In the field of computing, multitrack data tape became the storage medium of choice, and although Armour introduced such devices the appearance of many different 366 kinds of special-purpose multitrack heads quickly outstripped the Foundation's technology. The field of data recording also included analog recording, sometimes by frequency modulation, and almost always on multitrack tape. These recorders were widely used to record simultaneously the output of a multitude of instruments, electromagnetic transducers or other signal sources. The use of instruments for detecting oil deposits, for example, was revolutionized in the 1950s by the storage and manipulation of data recorded on magnetic tape. Another application of data recording was in telemetry. Missiles, rockets, and satellites from the 1950s on used miniaturized, shock and heat resistant recorders (often with metal tapes or even wires) in these applications. The motion picture industry adopted a variety of new magnetic recording devices beginning in the 1950s, as often as not developed internally or purchased from firms not directly associated with Armour. Finally, even Armour's stronghold in the consumer sound recorder market was subjected to new competition from foreign firms. Most of the domestic licensees for sound recorders ceased to manufacturer consumer electronics by 1960, as production moved to Japan. While the diversification of the magnetic recording industry in the 1950s and 1960s is itself worthy of scrutiny, let us first follow the progress of the Armour licensing program to its termination. The Decline of the Licensee Program In many ways, Marvin Camras' magnetic recording laboratory seemed barely able to keep up with outside developments in the field of audio tape. By the late summer of 1947, engineers at the Stromberg Carlson corporation had adapted their wire recording technology to use tape, and had developed a new 367 erase head that would work with the problematic, high coercive force tape offered by Indiana Steel Products.538 The record/replay heads are one of the two crucial technologies involved in magnetic recording other than the medium, and by 1945 two Armour licensees, the St. George and Utah Radio corporations, were emerging as OEM manufacturers of wire recorder heads for the industry.537 But then the Shure Brothers Corporation, a maker of microphones and phonograph cartridges which became an Armour licensee, entered the wire recorder head market in late 1946 or early 1947. Shure was quick to switch to tape recording heads, and along with two other companies, Nortronics and Michigan Magnetic Corporation, would supply heads to all the upstart tape recorder manufacturers in the 1950s. These companies quickly developed their own ideas about how to make tape heads, and grew increasingly independent of Armour's technical knowledge as the expanding market funded more in-house research.538 Meanwhile, the Wire Recorder Development Corporation was on the brink of collapse after its initial round of licensing. When military contracts terminated in 1945, a severe cash flow crisis prompted the temporary scaling back of Camras' research and the drastic scaling back of the WRDC.539 Consumer wire recorders never sold more than a few tens of thousands of units annually and Armour's low royalty fee resulted in a disappointing income. The 2.5% royalty applied to an average-priced recorder like the Webster-Chicago units brought in $1.50, based on a $60 wholesale price ($149 retail) 540 Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward had by 1946 contracted with OEM manufacturers for radio-phonograph-wire recorders to be sold under "house- brand names (such as Sears' Silvertone brand), but sales never took off.541 368 The situation looked so dire that in 1948 Armour apparently considered assigning Camras' patent rights to another institution, the Institute for Inventive Research [IIR] in Kansas City. Harold Vagtborg, having left Armour to become president of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and consultant to IIR, was looking for ways to get the nascent Kansas City organization off to a productive start. Vagtborg held confidential discussions with his successor at Armour, Jesse Hobson, and the two decided that Armour might sell Camras' patent rights for a minimum of one million dollars. Despite the fact that both Hobson and Vagtborg believed in the money-making potential of the patents, "Illinois Institute of Technology [was] extremely hard pressed for immediate capital for its building program, and since it [was] not set up to handle licensing of patents, its administration feels quite concerned about doing the right kind of job in this connection and might like to be relieved of the responsibility." However, Armour later raised the figure to $5 million, which seemed prohibitive.542 By 1949-1950, as tape recorder sales became more important, royalty income was again swelling. Armour's research in the area of tape recording was expanded, Armour engineers tried to keep ahead of their licensees by exploring new applications of magnetic recording. The slack period caused by the cutbacks may have been crucial, for it was only after late September 1949 that Camras was allowed to resume work on a home tape recorder project. By 1949, many licensees already had their own designs in the works, and Armour's prototype was not a widely copied design in the way the earlier wire recorder designs had been.543 369 Armour's contribution to the emerging magnetic tape recording industry was valuable, but Armour expertise was no longer at the cutting edge. Typical was Armour's effort to smooth out production problems at the Revere Camera Corporation's factory. Revere had become a licensee primarily to get access to Camras' 8mm sound-on-film technology, but found little demand for such products and later entered the consumer sound recorder market. In July of 1949 Revere demonstrated its prototype tape recorder, developed independently, to Camras and fellow researcher Raymond Zenner, and the two offered to take it back to the laboratory to try to work out its technical deficiencies. While Armour engineers were providing much the same service as before, now they were doing it with someone else's technology.544 Armour tried to bolster its position as industry leader by placing its representatives in standards-setting organizations, and this effort proved somewhat helpful in maintaining a grip on the increasingly slippery and complex tape recording industry. As one standards committee chairman pointed out, standards work in the magnetic recording field increasingly required engineers with "above average knowledge,... the ability to get things done," and most of all, "a tranquil disposition."545 By about 1947, Foundation representatives were confronted by many new and radically diverse ideas about what standards to set. After quickly expanding earlier wire recording standards committees to include all forms of tape recording, Camras and other Armour employees tried to establish standards for tape speeds, tape widths, tape materials, recording track placement and other things that suited Armour's version of tape technology. They were opposed on some issues by Semi J. Begun of Brush, who by 1948 had become an outspoken member and gadfly of 370 the standards setting committees. "Dr. Begun," one exasperated Armour engineer wrote to a colleague, "has maneuvered himself to be chairman of still another committee on magnetic recording."546 Begun and other Brush representatives continued to be a formidable presence on these standards committees into the middle 1950s.547 A critical early issue that was resolved in Armour's favor was that of tape speeds. Brush and certain other firms, such as Rangertone Incorporated of Newark, New Jersey favored tape speeds much higher than those proposed by Armour. These firms favored German-style tape with a slightly lower coercivity which, some said, sounded better. These tapes required a speed of at least 15 inches per second [ips] for minimal sound quality and worked best at speeds of no less than 30 ips (the German broadcasting standard). Armour, using Camras' patented medium coercivity oxide, fought for lower tape speeds, no higher than 15 ips and preferably 7 1/2 ips. The matter was settled by allowing makers of "professional" products to use 30 or 15 ips, while setting the consumer standard at 7 1/2. The interests of those desiring to make high coercivity tapes were mostly ignored. On the matter of speeds, Armour's position was a compromise between Marvin Camras' designs and those adapted from captured German tape recorders. Camras' tape recorders operated at 8 ips, although they also worked well at twice that speed. The German-style recorders, originally designed for 30 ips operation, could easily be modified to operate at half their speed, or 15 ips. Later developments allowed progressively slower tape speeds, which were always derived from the original German standard of 30 ips: 15 ips at first, then 7.5, then 3.75, and finally 1.875 (the speed at which current cassette tapes run) Some other early standards, such as tape width and reel sizes, were also adapted from existing 371 German tape recorder or 8mm motion picture standards, and were not contested.548 Armour participated in every major standards committee, including the sound recording section of the American Standards Association Meeting,549 the magnetic recording section of the Radio Manufacturers Association (later the Electronics Industry Association), and the Magnetic Recording Industry Association, which was formed in 1953 and later also absorbed into the Electronics Industry Association.550 For a while continuing to focus on consumer products, Armour tried to enhance the appeal of the audio tape recorder. While the Foundation could do no more than implore record companies to release recordings on tape (which the record companies were quite reluctant to do until the 1960s), Camras and others tried to make the tape recorder more convenient by simplifying the threading process. Camras and many Armour licensees believed that threading wire or tape in a recorder was too difficult, and that by enclosing the medium inside an easy-loading cartridge the machines would be more "user friendly." Because Camras wanted to avoid making older models obsolete, he sought a cartridge design that would be compatible with standard open-reel machines. By 1958 this had been realized, although apparently no manufacturer adopted the design. Only slightly more successful was an enclosed cartridge design devised by Armour and produced by 3M. The new cartridge, which required a special player, got only fleeting support in the late 1950s and early 1960s from record companies and ultimately failed 551 But Armour in this period struck out in new directions, none of which resulted in a technology with as visible an impact as the first sound recorders. 372 In the middle and late 1950s, for example, several manufacturers were rushing to put a video recorder on the market. Several Armour video recorder projects involved magnetic tape, but the Foundation also undertook some novel research in electrostatic video recording. While Armour contributed to ongoing video tape research at licensee organizations like RCA, 3M, and Ampex, the Foundation was never the leader. Nonetheless, video recorder projects were funded until the early 1960s.552 The middle 1950s also saw some work in digital recording, and interesting but undocumented studies with titles like "Curie-Point Recorder," and "Magnetic Ditto Reproduction." Still, only $31,000 was appropriated for magnetic recording projects in 1954, and while this was no pittance, it was also not a very substantial budget.553 While royalties on sound recorders were still coming in, the patent situation was weakening. A 1955 committee spent a month reviewing Armour's patents "to determine a logical program which, in the end, will improve our patent status," apparently without much effect.554 Perhaps the most damaging blow to the licensee program was a failed effort to force magnetic tape manufacturers to become Armour licensees. The importance of creating a viable patent base to cover coated recording media must have been obvious to Camras and others from the moment of the brilliant postwar debut of the German Magnetophone, brought to the U.S. as war booty. Camras' lightning-fast transition to research in tape and tape recording was accompanied by a scramble to file patent applications and a clampdown on information about Armour's experimental iron oxides for recording purposes. "Upon instructions from Mr. Donald Simpson," Armour's attorney, "we must under no circumstances sell any of the Camras Magnetic Powder without the 373 prior approval of Mr. Simpson," a 1947 memo confided. "It is essential that there be no exceptions to this rule and that it be strictly adhered to until further notice."555 Armour's leaders including L. O. Paul believed that the stakes involved were very high indeed, particularly if magnetic tape became the primary medium upon which popular music would be sold. Paul estimated that the American public in 1950 bought the equivalent of 30 billion feet of tape in the form of popular phonograph records. At current prices, that would have translated, according to Paul, in a royalty of $2,500,000. While recognizing that this figure was probably quite a bit higher than any that the Foundation would actually realize, Paul nonetheless felt that "these rather academic figures do give some indication of the tremendous potential involved," and added that "of course, no revenue has been included for any royalties on the sale of magnetic reproducers." He concluded that "this is certainly big business, and it is worth taking a few gambles." 556 In July of 1947, Armour's attorneys filed a patent on behalf of Marvin Camras entitled "Magnetic Impulse Record Member, Magnetic Material, and Method of Making Magnetic Material." Broad in its claims and thick with legalistic obfuscations, the patent apparently covered the use of a form of acicular (or "stick shaped") ferrous oxide for recording tape in addition to the method of making the oxide. Although the patent examiner rejected several of Camras' claims as being anticipated by a similar British patent, Camras reworded the patent and it was granted in 1954. Armour and Minnesota Mining, Armour's sole tape-manufacturing licensee, initiated litigation in 1954 (which did not go to trial until 1958) against 374 C.K. Williams and Company, a Pennsylvania-based supplier of oxides to the industry, as well as Technical Tape Corporation, Orradio Industries, and Audio Devices in 1956. The trial revealed that many of Camras claims were anticipated by other patents. John Herbert Orr, founder of Orradio Industries of Alabama and former technical investigator for the United States Army, demonstrated to the court that samples of tape oxides that he said he had collected in Germany from manufacturer I. G. Farben in 1945 which matched Camras' oxide. More interesting from an historical standpoint was what the evidence presented at the trial reveals about technology transfer within the highly secretive recording tape manufacturing industry. Unlike the tape recorder industry under Armour's tutelage, tape manufacturers shared little information. None of the companies involved except an oxide manufacturer, C. K. Williams Corporation, held significant numbers of patents, nor had any published articles in engineering journals about the making of tape. All this was a reflection of two important aspects of the American tape industry as it developed between 1947 and 1960. The American tape industry of the 1950s was manufacturing a product that was substantially the same as that manufactured by I.G. Farben in 1945, "liberated" at the end of World War II and stripped of its patent protection. The 1958 trial revealed that no one really knew (or would tell) how Camras and all the manufacturers came to settle on a single oxide during the short period between 1945 and about 1948. Thus the second intriguing aspect of the industry, as the testimony presented at the trial made glaringly obvious, was its devotion to trade secrets and other unpatented information. 375 When C. K. Williams Corporation purchased a paint pigment manufacturer, George Mephum Corporation in 1948, it acquired Mephum's proprietary processes for making an acicular gamma ferrous oxide, the same as the one covered in the Camras patent. Mephum, through a series of events which could not be exactly chronicled, had developed its oxide in the early 1940s and began selling it to magnetic tape manufacturers some time between 1946 and 1948. The oxide had therefore been commercially available for some time, although it was not marketed for recording purposes. The origin of this oxide was a product completely unrelated to magnetic recording, a fact Armour's lawyers used to try to bolster the novelty of Camras* invention. Mephum promoted it briefly during World War II to the Magnaflux Corporation for possible use in their line of crack-detecting chemicals. But C. K. Williams sent samples of the same oxide (obtained from Mephum) to the Brush Development Company in 1947, after Brush requested oxides suitable for magnetic recording. Brush rejected the Mephum oxide and subsequently chose an oxide with a cubical particle structure and a lower overall coercivity (following the German practice). Almost at the same time, Marvin Camras had shown engineers at the National-Standard Company,557 a Michigan firm and Armour licensee which manufactured recording wire, the acicular gamma ferrous oxide. National Standard subsequently passed the information on to C. K. Williams, where it was tested and microscopically examined, but only after Williams had sold an identical oxide to Brush. Simultaneously 3M entered the picture, as they sent Camras samples of a tape they had coated using yet another commercially- available oxide with a relatively low coercivity (like the Brush oxide), and offered 376 to begin manufacturing the tape for Armour. Camras informed them that Armour was in the midst of its own tape development project and that the Foundation would not be interested in 3M's offer. Camras nevertheless sent 3M a small sample of his medium coercivity acicular oxide and asked them to coat a tape with it, allowing 3M a look at Armour's secret formulation. He also later sent his oxide to DuPont Corporation in June 1946. Lawyers for the defense argued that all this exchanging of information and oxides constituted a public disclosure which made Camras' patent unenforceable. But below the complex legal maneuvering of the two sides lies a subtext of technology transfer between a group of firms interested in magnetic recording tape but unsure of which of the myriad forms of iron oxide might make the best or most commercially viable tape. Whether by design or accident, Camras' recording/replay heads for tape and the tape itself were roughly compatible with the emerging designs of licensees like Shure,558 so that although the companies that would become the leading tape head manufacturers were becoming more independent of Armour the direction of their research was not so different. It also so happened that Camras' tape/head specifications were roughly compatible with German and Brush technology, if not something of a slight improvement. Thus when 3M, the first American maker of tape for the then-tiny Magnetophone tape market introduced its Armour-inspired product in 1947 and discovered that the market was rapidly expanding, C. K. Williams was poised to offer competitors an iron oxide that they could use to emulate the 3M product. Meanwhile, no one (except 3M) could have known that Armour was trying to patent the relevant oxide, which appeared to be in the public domain. Non-licensed tape 377 companies did not seem especially concerned about the patent situation. To them, the assumption was that 3M style tape was unpatentable, and perhaps the lack of basic patents in the industry discouraged the pursuit of new patents for the hard-won production improvements that these companies made. 3M made no direct statements that its technology was "patent pending," although it did try unsuccessfully to sub-license other tape makers. C. K. Williams could legitimately claim that the oxide it sold was not based on Armour patents. Further, the chief executives of the defendants in the case, Technical Tape, Audio Devices, and Orradio Industries, had all personally participated in the transfer of German tape technology to the U.S. They believed in their hearts that tape was a spoil of war, subject to exploitation unfettered by patent protection. All that said, because the defendant corporations remained so secretive about the materials and processes used in making tape, it is impossible to sort out just who started using what and when. What is clear is that any transfer of technology between Armour and the defendant companies happened in a way that was, to say the least, quite distinct from the transfer of technology between Armour and its licensees. 559 The stakes in the trial were indeed high, as Armour disclosed when it announced that aggregate royalty payments from 3M were approaching one million dollars by 1959. In the end, however, a combination of prior art and Camras' innocent public disclosures of his oxide made the patents invalid in the eyes of the court. Although the Foundation's lawyers attempted to appeal the decision, the supreme court would not hear the case, nor would the lower court accept charges of monopolistic practices leveled against 3M and Armour by the defendants. None of the other tape manufacturers ever became licensees.560 378 The licensee program's changes in tack were swift and only partly successful. Wire recorder sales in particular never fulfilled expectations. The public seemed to prefer tape recorders, and the fact that recorded music was never offered on wire compounded the problem. Nonetheless, with income from tape recording, and a influx of new licensees anxious to begin manufacture of tape recorders with a minimal investment in research, royalty income remained significant through the early 1960s. Altogether, Armour's magnetic recording royalties made substantial contributions to the Foundation's total resources. They did not, however, bring enough money to finance much expansion of research. The Foundation did not garner sizable or consistent research contracts in magnetic recording, and thus had to continue to finance video and data recording projects internally (that is to say, from royalty or other income) in the 1950s. By the 1960s, the program had fizzled.561 Haldon A. Leedy, an acoustical physicist who had been one of Armour's earliest hires, took the position of Director soon after Jesse Hobson's brief tenure ended. Under Leedy, Armour expanded its facilities for research in mechanical engineering, medicine, chemistry, and electrical engineering. Though research volume continued to expand, and the Foundation moved into entirely new areas of engineering and science, Armour innovations continued to be incremental advances in existing technologies rather than complex new systems. During the 1960s, research turned increasingly toward space, medical, and military technologies, following a national trend in university research. By the late 1970s, however, research had only expanded to $30 million, up from 23.5 million in 1963.562 379 Conclusions The most important accomplishments of Armour's licensee program were related to wire recording; with the advent of tape Armour's role became less evident. But Marvin Camras and the licensee program remained valuable public relations tools for Armour, as evidenced by the persistent references in the IIT and Armour annual reports, in-house histories, and independently published references. Camras in the 1960s and 1970s maintained a relatively prominent public presence, and the popular press still cites him as one of the "great inventors" of the late 20th century.563 But Camras' accomplishments evidently were not enough to catapult Armour into the ranks of the top ten American research institutes in the 1950s, and by the 1960s the importance of magnetic recording to Armour was clearly fading. By the 1970s, when Armour took the wordy and somewhat redundant-sounding name Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute, magnetic recording was completely overshadowed by space and medical research. Currently IITRI is one among dozens of similar institutions, many of which sprang up much more recently, located at virtually every major university. Armour's institutional history makes it different from the kinds of research labs that historians most frequently examine. It demonstrates how the process of independent industrial research is both engineering and business. The magnetic recording technology that emerged from Armour was the result not only of Marvin Camras' quest for narrow technical goals, but also the numerous and contradictory pressures of administrators and clients. The history of the licensee program is also historically valuable because it shows how technologies can be transferred from a single source to a large group of 380 recipients, and how the different motivations of these various players work themselves out in that transfer process. Armour's role in the building of the American magnetic recording industry, a role which historians and engineers continue to debate, is at best ambiguous and at worst unknowable. There was enough knowledge transferred from Germany after World War II for some firms to begin manufacturing tape recorders entirely without Armour's help, as chapter five of this dissertation will demonstrate. Other tape recorder manufacturers, such as Webster-Chicago other licensees, obviously owed a considerable debt to Armour. However, they took their own initiative in the 1950s, producing their incremental developments quite independently. But, as the legal controversy over magnetic recording tape illustrates, sometimes what appeared to be technology transfer from Armour could have been independent invention or transfer from another source like the German firms I.G. Farben and AEG. As a source of personal and professional satisfaction for Camras, magnetic recording and the licensee program had its ups and downs. In the early 1960s, when Camras took pause to reflect upon the development of the industry, his words struck a cynical note. "Many valuable inventions gather dust for years until somebody with foresight puts them on the market and encourages their use. Such pioneering usually turns out to be disheartening, because as soon [as] the worth of an idea becomes apparent the established companies take over and supply the market."564 But by the 1980s, when Camras was nationally recognized as the "inventor of modern magnetic recording," his attitude was not nearly so gloomy. 381 ENDNOTES 461See for example Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modem America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), especially chapter IV; A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1957), reprint edition, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1964. ^^Kevles, The Physicists, passim. See for example 100-101/. 463William V. Consolazio, The Dynamics of Academic Science (Washington, D.C: National Science Foundation, 1967), 17-22. 464S. S. Scweber, "Big Science in Context: Cornell and MIT," in Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly. eds.. Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 150-151; Karl L. Wildes and Nilo A. Lindren, A Century of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. 1882-1982 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 238. 465Peter Galison, Bruce Hevly, and Rebecca Lowen, "Controlling the Monster: Stanford and the Growth of Physics Research, 1935-1962," in Galison and Hevly, Big Science. 46-47. An isolated but significant example of the ties between university research and industry is that of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which was a "paper" organization devoted to commercializing the inventions of University of Wisconsin researchers. After 1924, the Foundation attempted to protect the patent rights granted to professor Harry Steenbock for a process for making vitamin D. See David Blumenthal, Sherrie Epstein, and James Maxwell, "Commercializing University Research." New England Journal of Medicine 314 (19 June 1986): 1621-1626. ^Consolazio, Dynamics of Academic Science, 18. 468lbid., 19. 469lbid., 158. 470See David C. Mowery's critique of the NRC in "Industrial Research and Firm Size, Survival, and Growth in American Manufacturing, 1921-1946: An Assessment," The Journal of Economic History 43 (December 1983): 953-980. 471 Irene MacCauley, The Heritage of the Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago: Illinois Institute of Technology, 1978), 26-27. 472lbid., 43; James Clinton Peebles, "A History of Armour Institute of Technology," (Chicago, 1948), ms in the collection of Paul Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois [hereafter cited as IIT], 119-122. 473HarokJ Vagtborg, Research and American Industrial Development: A Bicentennial Look at the Contributions of Applied R&D (New York: Pergamon Press, 1976), 153. 474"History of ARF/IITRI," ARF Financial Reports folder, IIT, 2. 475Such concerns still plague industrial and scientific research, especially in university settings. See for example, Eliot Marshall, "When Commerce and Academe Collide," Science 248 (13 April 1990): 152-156. 476Vagtborg, Research. 154-155. 477lbid., 155. 382 478lbid. 479"History of ARF/IITRI," 2. 480" Industrial Research Progress at Armour Research Foundation, 1940-41Chemical and Engineering News 19 (25 December 1941): 1465; The large number of internal memoranda available in the Camras collection is testament to the openness of the organization. Few of these memoranda are addressed primarily to Camras, who was never part of Armour administration. It appears that key researchers, even those who like Camras were below the rank of research director received copies of most internal correspondence. 481 Vagtborg, Research. 156; Peebles, "History," 124-126. 482"Research Foundation, Armour Institute of Technology, Balance Sheet, 31 March 1939," IIT. 483"Industrial Research Progress at Armour Research Foundation, 1939-40" Chemical and Engineering News. News Edition, 18 (10 January 1940): 933; While this essay uses the term IIT to distinguish the research foundation from the engineering college, the merger with the Lewis Institute in 1940 marked the actual name change from Armour Institute of Technology to Illinois Institute of Technology. 484"Chemical and Engineering News" was the title the journal settled upon by the 1940s after considerable experimentation. 485\/agtborg, Research. 172; The Frontier was published quarterly from September 1938 through January 1970. 486Vagtborg, Research 172. 487Peebles, "History," 131-132; Vagtborg, Research. 172-177; Debra K. Fassnacht, IITRI: A Fifty Year Portrait (Chicago: Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute, n.d. [1986]), 18-19. 488Vagtborg, Research. 172-177; Debra K. Fassnacht, IITRI: A Fifty Year Portrait (Chicago: Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute, n.d. [1986]), 18-19; The Foundation wrote off a $14,000 loss in fiscal year 1942 to cover the loss of the Snow Cruiser. Price, Waterhouse and Co., "Armour Research Foundation: Report and Financial Statements, August 31,1942," IIT Records, no box number 489Vagtborg, Research. 178; Peebles writes that "the real work for which the expedition was sent out had barely begun when orders were issued for [the researchers] to return... the expedition having been withdrawn because of the uncertainties and dangers incident to the war." "History," 134; "History of IITRI," 3; Fassnacht, Fifty Year Portrait. 33. 490yvj|des and Lindren, Electrical Engineering at MIT, especially chapter 13, "The Radiation Laboratory"; This is not to say that military sponsorship of high technology research was completely absent, but most military projects did not involve particle physics, electronics, or other of the generally accepted high technologies. 491 Marvin Camras, interview by Mark Clark, 4 March 1991, IIT. 492|bid. 498Unfunded research in 1939 included magnetic recording, extremely high pressures, high speed photography, x-rays, and the Snow Cruiser project (which evidently must have been at least partially funded from outside sources). "Research Progress at Research Foundation of Armour Institute of Technology 1938-39" Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 17 (1939): 625; "Research Progress 1939-40," 938. 494"Exhibits in Electrical Engineering: Armour Institute of Technology Open House, 7-8 May 1940," file 5, Marvin Camras Collection, Paul Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois [hereafter cited as MC] 495Partners In Research: Annual Report 1947 (Chicago: Armour Research Foundation, 1947), 9; Government-sponsored research accounted for 55% of the total for 1963. "History of ARF/IITRI," 5. 383 496Camras justified his decision to use wire rather than tape in a paper, "A New Type of Magnet for Recording on Steel Wire," [1940] in file 5, MC. After discussing the "advantages of tape," he explained that his new recording head "negates the advantages."; "Biasing" is a term taken from vacuum tube and electromagnetic relay practice. In those contexts it refers to the addition of a precisely controlled auxiliary voltage to change the operating characteristics of the relay or vacuum tube slightly, in order to improve performance. Valdemar Poulsen invented a direct current biasing technique for the Telegraphone which superimposed a small dc current to the voice signal being recorded. Although the effect was not explainable using turn of the century electromagnetic theory, it resulted in a discernibry tower level of signal distortion. Camras and others discovered that a high frequency signal, preferably one higher than the highest audible frequency, added to the recorded signal also reduced distortion and lowered the already-slight background hiss. Although AC bias was patented in 1927 in the U.S. and later by A.E.G. in Europe, Camras also received basic patent on this technique in 1940. 497"lndustrial Research Progress at the Armour Research Foundation, 1943-44," Chemical and Engineering News 22 (10 December 1944): 2091; Marvin Camras, "A New Magnetic Wire Recorder," Radio News 30 (November 1943), Radionics Department, 3-5, 38; Ray Blain, "Sound Recording." part six. Telephony 126 (10 June 1944): 20-21; "New Products: Magnetic Wire Sound Recorder and Reproducer," Electronics 18 (June 1945): 360, 364; "Voice Recorded on Hair-Like Wire," General Electric Review 46 (December 1943): 694. 498?pesearcn progress, 1943-44," 2092; Several years later, the Foundation gave President Harry Truman a Model 50 dictation machine, which he returned in 1946 "in poor condition." W. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 25 June 1946, file 100, MC. 499Camras to Harold Vagtborg, 10 November 1974 [copy]. Camras Coll., file 693. SOOQther military uses of the recorders included using them in airplanes to allow crews to dictate flight logs. Robert M. Yoder, "Young Man With a Wire," The Rotarian 64 (February 1944): 14,16. 501 John Anderson Miller, Men and Volts at War; The Story of General Electric in World War II (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, Inc., 1947): 162-163; "Magnetic Wire Recorder," Life. 15 (1942):49-50; D. W. Pugsley, "Engineering Details of Magnetic Wire Recorder," Electronic Industries 3 (January 1944): 116-118, 206, 210, 212; "Invasion Recorder," General Electric Review 47 (July 1944): 44-45; Arthur Grahme, "Recording the Saipan Fight on Wire," Popular Science 145 (December 1944): 201; "Wire Recorders for Army," Electronics 16 (October 1943): 234-235. 5?2As late as 1945, Armour's war licensees were accepting military (mostly Naval Department) orders for wire recorders. 1945 Navy contracts included Webster Products Company's contract to make the Model 20n recorder, Utah Radio's order for 300 Model 50's, Radiotechnic Laboratories' order for 300 Model 55's and an unknown number of model 22's, and Webster Chicago's order 1500 model 22's. Camras to Haldon Leedy, 23 February 1945, file 797, MC. 503"Patent Situation," typescript, n.d. [1944]. "Magnetic Wire Recorder" file, Armour Research Foundation box, IIT. 5?4Wire Recorder Development Corporation, "Wire Recorder Development Corporation: Report of the President to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Armour Research Foundation at a Meeting on January 15,1946," typescript, "Magnetic Wire Recorder," file, MC; The actions of the Foundation and the WRDC contrasted sharply with the official rhetoric of Armour's patent policy. A 1946 memo entitled "Foundation Policy Regarding Staff Inventions" contained a remarkable section that is worth quoting in full: In view of the general policy stated above, rt becomes apparent that is not a function of the Foundation to acquire ownership of a number of patents for the purpose of engaging in a general licensing program. Rather, the Foundation's primary reason for existence has always been, and continues to be, the provision to industry of an effective research and 384 experimental engineering service, and all of our efforts and activities must be directed to this end." (file 792, MC) 505"Amour's License Policy," ms, n.d. [1944]. "Magnetic Wire Recorder" file, "ARF" box, IIT. 506Lucius A. Crowell to C. F. Gill, 3 December 1945, file 793, MC. 507?superheterodyne," was invented by Edwin Armstrong after World War I and sold to RCA. It is used in virtually every radio and television even today, and allows for simple, single-knob tuning. Hazettine's Automatic Volume Control circuit is also universal in broadcasting. It is a feedback circuit that boosts the signal level of weak stations and attenuates the level of strong ones, allowing a radio user to change channels without adjusting the volume level. 5u8"Minutes of the Technical Meeting on Wire Recorders," 6 December 1944, file 65, MC. 509vvRDC report 15 January 1946,11; "Business Progress of the Armour Magnetic Wire Sound Recorder," ARF box, IIT; Camras to Vagtborg, 10 November 1974, file 693, MC. 51 ""Business Progress," 2-4; "Wire Recorder Semi-Monthly Report #9," February 16, 1946 file 792, MC; H. A. Leedy to L. A. Crowell, 18 January 1946, ibid.; H. A. Leedy to L. Maytham, 30 January 1946, ibid.; Columbia Records approached the Foundation about the possibility of purchasing a master recorder, but there is no record of further discussion between the two. Hobson to Haldon Leedy, 30 April 1945, ibid., file 793. 511 Camras described a promotional visit to Stromberg Carlson company in a letter to G. E. Ziegler, 14 February 1944, file 794, MC; on the initial inquiry from Farnsworth Radio, see R. J. Tinkham to Hobson, 28 May 1945, ibid., file 793; on Vee-Mac Co. (Rockford, III.) see Zenner to Kemp, 26 July 1949, ibid., file 789; On the Ansco Corporation (Binghampton, N.Y.) see Titus to Camras, 21 March 1947, ibid., file 791; on Eicor, Inc. see Titus to J. E. Hobson, 4 December 1947, ibid.; Perhaps the last American licensee was Harman-Kardon, which took a license in late 1968. See Arne Berg to Camras, 10 September 1968 and J.P. Skinner to W. Goodman, 16 November 1968, both in file 455, MC. 512Minutes of the wire sound recorder licensee meeting, 7 October 1944, file 795, MC. 513Lucius A. Crowell to R. J. Spaeth, 8 August 1945, Wire Recorder Development Corp. file, ARF box, IIT; Camras to H. Leedy, 23 February 1945, file 795, MC. 514Regarding visits to Colonial Radio, see Titus to Hobson, 21 April 1947, file 791, MC; on Webster Chicago, see Titus to Hobson, 10 September 1947, ibid.; On WiRecorder, see Kemp to Hobson, 5 June 1945, ibid., file 793; on Stromberg Carlson, see Camras to Ziegler, 14 February 1944, ibid., file 794 515Magnetic Wire Sound Recorder Licensee meeting minutes, 11 January 1946, file 795, MC. 516L. C. Holmes to Carl. I. Titus, 10 May 1946, file 792, MC. 517A memo in late 1945 describes in outline form Camras' early experiments with oxide-coated media. Camras' sudden shift is remarkable in many ways, not the least of which is his sudden interest in chemistry. It is not clear whether Camras actually precipitated the oxides himself as he claimed or whether researchers in other departments helped him. Workers in other departments clearly had experience in the field of iron oxides, as shown by the Foundation's annual reports. See Camras to D. E. Wiegand, 16 November 1945, file 78, MC; Camras to D. E. Wiegand, 12 December 1945, ibid. 518Zenner to Leedy, 22 May 1946, file 792, MC; H. A. Leedy and W. E. Mahin, Research and Development Toward Magnetic Recording on Moving Picture Film (Chicago: Armour Research Foundation, 1947), ibid., file 791; Camras personally attended motion picture engineering conferences and visited the offices of a number of California-based studios and equipment manufacturers in an effort to interest possible licensees. In 1947 and 1948, for example, he made numerous contacts at the annual meetings of the Society for Motion Picture Engineers, and met with representatives of Standard Recorders, Inc., Dalmo Victor Manufacturers, Recogram Recorders Co., Cinema Engineering Company, Micro Engineering Corporation, William Standi (a consulting firm), Rangertone Corporation, Palmer and Mullin (a consulting firm). MS notes and business cards, ibid., file 145. 385 519Minutes of the Wire Recorder Steering Committee Meeting, 25 June 1946, file 100, MC; Minutes of the Wire Recorder Steering Committee Meeting, 4 October 1946, ibid.; DuPont was able to make a tape by mixing the oxide into the plastic and then casting the mixture into a film. This resembled the AEG Luvitherm made in Germany during the 1930s. The results of this experiment are not recorded. Ibid.; See also W. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 22 July 1946, ibid., file 100; Dupont's work in plastic films is discussed in David Hounshell and John Kenly Smith, Jr., Science and Corporate Strategy: Du DuPont R&D. 1902-1980 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 474-481, 544-546. 520yv. w. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 6 September 1946, file 100, MC. 521 yv. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 15 August 1946. Camras Coll., file 100; W. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 17 October 1946, file 100, MC. 522Camras, Hobson, and others discussed the Magnetophone in late 1945, and Camras was asked for his comments on the devices high frequency bias circuits. Camras1 comments are not recorded. Crowell to Hobson, Camras, 20 November 1945, file 793, MC; Crowell to Camras, 28 November 1945, ibid.; R. J. Tinkham to Haldon Leedy, 18 April 1946, ibid., file 792. 523Minutes of a meeting with Indiana Steel Products Company, Valparaiso Indiana, 26 February 1945, file 793, MC; Armour made extensive tests of the Hyflux recorder in September 1945. "Ind St. Prod Mach Prelim Tests," manuscript notes 20 September 1945, file 83, ibid.; In late 1946, as Armour tried to attract licensees for its sound-on-film technology, engineers demonstrated an Indiana Steel recorder to Eastman Kodak. Also demonstrated were Camras 16 mm and new 35 mm sound on film projectors. Kodak showed little interest in the Hyflux machine. Carl Titus to J. E. Hobson, 4 December 1946, file 792, ibid.; After extensive re-engineering, the Hyflux recorder was deemed satisfactory by Camras and others by early 1947, and the Foundation attempted to find a vendor the device. Two possibilities were mentioned, the Webster Electric Company and Crescent Tool and Die of Chicago, but there is no record of any further action. Titus to Camras, 8 January 1947, file 789, ibid.; Indiana Steel dropped its tape development entirely after 1948 although it revived briefly in 1949. J. S. Kemp to H. A. Leedy, 20 July 1949, ibid.; W. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 22 July 1946, ibid., file 100. 524Hobson to Crowell, 14 April 1946, file 793, MC. 525yy. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 6 September 1946, file 100, MC. 526Titus to Camras, 19 February 1947, file 791, MC; Similarly, Raytheon Corporation, an electronics firm (and eventually a computer manufacturer) which had begun making magnetic recording devices under a free "war license," balked at becoming an Armour licensee after the war. Haldon Leedy to Crowell, 9 August 1945 and Camras to Leedy, 9 August 1945, both from file 793, ibid.; On Raytheon and on a visit by Armour officials to see a magnetic drum recorder at Harvard University see Zenner to C. E. Barthel, Jr., 18 August 1949, file 789, ibid. 527Thus for example, when a researcher for the IAS announced publicly that he had developed a wire recorder for computers, he claimed that he had used Brush technology. Raymond Zenner to C. E. Barthel, n.d. [28 October 1949], file 789, MC. 528Titus to Camras, 11 January 1947, file 791, MC; Titus to Camras, 5 February 1947, ibid.; Titus to Camras, 19 February 1947, ibid. 529D. J. Simpson, "Resume of the Brush Litigation," Armour Research Foundation Magnetic Recorder Licensee Service. Report No. 49 (Chicago: Armour Research Foundation, 1 December 1948), 2-4. Simpson also noted that "several" infringement cases had been threatened against various licensees, and that Armour's legal staff had supplied assistance in replying to the charges. "I'm very happy to say," Simpson told the licensees, "that has disposed of all matters so far raised against any licensee." Ibid., 4; An undated memo in MC, file 171, also discusses briefly the Brush litigation, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for Ohio as Civil Action 25257. 386 53uHaldon Leedy personally wrote to a number of licensees in 1949, as rf to drive home the point that Armour had "won." See for example Leedy to William J. Halligan (the director of Hallicrafters Corporation), 3 October 1949, file 789, MC. 531A detailed case study is my "The Rusty Ribbon: John Herbert Orr and the Making of the Magnetic Recording Industry, 1945-1960," in Business History Review 67 (Winter 1993). John Orr was an entrepreneur and former army official who gained experience with magnetic tape production in Germany and founded a successful tape manufacturing plant in Alabama in the late 1940s. As it turned out, Orr*s leading supplier of magnetic oxide may have had some contact with Armour, but Orr did not until 1954 when the Foundation sued his company for patent infringement. 532Camras to Vagtborg, 10 November 1947, file 693, MC. 533Trtus to Camras, 26 January 1948, file 790, MC. 534Titus to Marvin Camras, 26 January 1948, file 790, MC. 535See for example Titus to Camras, 14 October 1947, concerning the patentability of a continuous loop dictation recorder with a wide plastic recording belt, anticipated by a Gray Manufacturing Co. patent of 1943, file 791, MC. 536Titus to Kemp, 19 September 1947, file 791, MC. 537"Notes on the Construction of Type 400 Heads," n.d. [circa mid-1945], file 77, MC; "Minutes of the Wire Specifications Committee Meeting" 5 December 1945, ibid., file 78. 538Carl L. Titus to Camras, 3 January 1946, file 791, MC; W. W. Hansen, "Minutes of Magnetic Recorder Steering Committee Meeting," 27 September 1946, ibid., file 100; Camras, untitled manuscript notes, 14 December 1948, ibid., file 148; Michigan Magnetic, Incorporated. "Erase Head Type 55B," and "Type F Record-Playback Head," n.d. [1975-58] engineering drawings in ibid., file 327. 539As of April 1, 1946, the WRDC would have its commercial activities restricted to putting licensees in closer contact with Armour personnel. Lucius Crowed and Lincoln Mytham, president and vice president of the company, both resigned. Hobson to Camras, n.d. [April 1946], file 792, MC; Titus, who was made head of a new Magnetic Recording Division of Armour, resigned in early 1949 to be replaced by Kemp. Haldon Leedy, memorandum for general distribution, 18 February 1949, ibid., file 795. 540Titus to J. E. Hobson, 1 April 1947, file 791, MC. 541R. J. Tinkham to J. E. Hobson, 28 May 1945, file 793, MC; Silvertone recorders were manufactured by Colonial Radio and used St. George components. Titus to Camras, 8 January 1947, ibid., file 791. 542Harold Vagtborg, The Story of the Southwest Research Center: A Private. Nonprofit- Scientific Research Adventure (Austin, Texas: Southwest Research Institute, 1973), 57, 60. 543"ln the past," Raymond Zenner wrote, "Licensees copied the Model 50 and Model C [wire recorders], so licensees would probably be willing to copy a tape recorder closely. On the other hand,, some Licensees now have their own tape designs, and feel ARF is undermining them by making a design available to all licensees." Zenner to Kemp, 21 September 1949, file 789, MC; Zenner to C. E. Barthel, Jr., 31 August 1949, ibid., file 789. 544Titus to Hobson, 4 December 1947, file 791, MC; R. F. Zenner to Kemp, 28 July 1949, ibid., file 789; Marvin Camras, manuscript notes, 26 Jury 1948, ibid., file 148; For a similar episode involving the Sound Recorder and Reproducer Co. of Philadelphia, see Titus to Hobson, 24 October 1947. ibid., file 791; On Armour's revisions to a recorder made by Ectro Incorporated of Delaware Ohio see R. F. Maples to B. F. Skinner, 23 April 1953, ibid., file 224. 545C. J. LeBel [of Audio Devices, Incorporated], "Standards Memo," 2 October 1959, file 402, MC. 546R. B. Vaile to Camras, 14 May 1948, file 791, MC. 547C. F. Sprosty to "Gentlemen," 13 April 1955, file 402, MC. 387 548Some companies were not represented at the meetings or could not make themselves heard. The Indiana Steel recorder, for example, did not meet either the consumer nor professional standards and probably could not have been adapted to do so. Representatives put forth arguments for tape speeds of 15,18, 20, 22.5 and 30 ips, but only 15 and 30 ips were seriously considered. R. B. Vaile to Camras, 14 May 1948, file 791, MC. 549C. L. Titus to H. A. Leedy, 8 November 1948, file 419, MC. 55ftMagnetic Recording Industry Association, "Standards Memo," 2 October 1959. Camras Collection, file 402; later standards committees were formed by the Association of Professional Broadcasters, the National Association of Visual Education, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers; Another organization in which Armour participated, the Radio, Electronics, and Television Manufacturers Association became part of the International Tape Association in the late 1950s. Ray Bierman to Camras, 2 April 1958, file 322, MC. 551ARF-IIT Magnetic Recording Licensee Service Bulletin number 98 (draft copy), n.d. [1958], file 314, MC; ARF-IIT Magnetic Recording Licensee Service Bulletin: Compatible Tape Cartridge (draft), November 1958, ibid., file 313; One memo mentions funding of $5,000 for a three-month study with the intriguing title "Survey of the Means to Produce Magnetic Recordings Competitive with Phono Records." E. H. SchuKz to A. R. Today, 24 July 1952, ibid., file 788; Other work in sound recorders included research in multi-track heads for stereo reproduction, a multi-track, endless loop cartridge (discussed in a later chapter) and a Hall effect reproducing head for tape. ARF Logbook for program A-637, issued 13 February 1957, passim. Ibid., file 282; Minutes of the Magnetic Recording Meeting, 9 November 1956, ibid., file 277. 552"Bi-Monthly Report #5, 1 May 1956-30 June 1956", file 300, MC; After hearing about engineer Jack Mullin's video tape project, J. P. Skinner and another Armour representative tried to interest him in a license. He demurred, but surprised them by informing them that two other licensees, 3M and Ampex, were working together on a video tape recorder. "Contact Report," 4 March 1953, ibid., file 788; Ampex used a rotating head design similar to an earlier device disclosed by Camras, but the rotating head design had also been used by others. One AEG Magnetophone of the 1930s, for example, had used such a head. Contact Report, 11 September 1954, ibid., file 787; "ARF Project #A637. Camras Research Bi-Monthly Report No. 4, 2 July 1956," ibid., file 300; J. Granath, "Notes from Internal Meeting and Supplementary Information," 13 May 1958, ibid., file 333; J. A. Granath, "Study on Magnetic Tape Recording and Reproducing Techniques for Video Information," 2 June 1958, ibid., file 333; "ARF Project E668. Camras Research Bi-Monthly Report 9, January 1 1961-February 28,1961," ibid., file 492. 553H. C. Miller to Camras, 18 October 1954. Camras Collection, file 787; Untitled memo, 26 April 1954, file 787, MC. 554H. C. Miller to D. E. Wiegand, 8 September 1954, file 787, MC. 555L. O. Paul to J. E. Hobson, 30 January 1947, file 792, MC. 556L. O. Paul to E. H. Schulz, 28 June 1951, file 789, MC. 557National Standard Company paid the unusually high advance royalty payment of $25,000 to become a licensee in January of 1947. Price, Waterhouse and Company, "Report on Review of Magnetic Wire Recorder Operations for the Year Ended August 31,1947," IIT. 558This may be because coercivity and remanence figures for Camras tape approximate those for his earlier wire recording system. 559Brief for Plaintiffs. Civil Action 3200, (Chicago: Hill Sherman, Meroni, Gross, and Simpson, n.d. [1958]), file 150, MC7; Plaintiff's Brief Reply (Chicago: Hill Sherman, Meroni, Gross, and Simpson, n.d. [1958]), ibid., file 1510; Reply Brief and Appendix for Appellant (New York: Kane Dalsimer, and Kane, n.d. [1960]), ibid., file 1502; Brief for Plaintiff-Appellee (New York: Pennie, Edmonds, Morton, Barrows, and Taylor, n.d. [1961]), ibid., file 1502; John M. Cashin "Opinion," text of the opinion of a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, Civil Action 101-140, 19 December 1960, ibid. 388 ^"The United States Patent Quarterly, vol. 121 (Washington, D.C: The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., 1959), 3-19; Ibid., vol 126 (1960), 219-225; "Armour V. C. K. Williams," University of Illinois Law Forum 1960 (Winter 1960): 585. By way of a modern comparison, the director of MIT's technology licensing division noted in 1991 that the university had grossed $5.5 million from licensees, but due to high legal fees had netted only $500,000. If this is any indication of the difficulty in maintaining a licensing program, Armour's record starts to look more successful. Marjorie Shaffer, "The MIT Machine," The New York Times 23 February 1992,10. 562Fifty Year Portrait. 48; Bruce L. R. Smith and Joseph J. Karlesky, The State of Academic Science: The Universities in the Nation's Research Effort (New York: Change Magazine Press,), 27-29. 563Most recently in the obituary notices which were carried nationally after his death in 1995; also see the sections on Camras in Kenneth A. Brown, Inventors at Work: Interviews With 16 Notable American Inventors (Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Press, 1988) and John Jewkes, et al., The Sources of Invention (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 271-272. 564Camras to B. F. Meissner, 12 December 1961, file 460, MC 389 CHAPTER SEVEN THE BROADENING AND NARROWING OF MAGNETIC RECORDING IN THE 1950s Magnetic Recording's New, Mostly Invisible Omnipresence Imagine a hypothetical middle class American man of the middle to late 1950s. A bachelor in his 30s, he is a corporation man who works in a large urban office building. He starts his morning at the local "greasy spoon," where he gulps down a cup of coffee and has two fried eggs. The eggs were laid a few days earlier at a giant poultry farm, where they were sorted and packed by a new machine, run by a computer which receives its instructions from a magnetic tape. He neither knows nor cares about all this as pays his tab and rushes back to the car. As he drives to work in the morning, the music he hears on the radio is a tape recording of a tape recording of a tape recording of a tape recording. The original multi-track studio recording was "mixed down" to a master recording, copied to another tape for distribution to stations, and copied again onto a long tape to make a program of music that lasts several hours. The man who hears this music on the radio might even have a tape player in his own car. Taped background music, although he hardly notices, is almost everywhere. It follows him into the lobby of his office building, where the Muzak corporation has thoughtfully supplied him with tape recorded aural pabulum in the corridors, the elevator, and the rest room. If he had chosen to take the train to work, there would have been tape recorded music softly playing there, too. 390 One day, the man leaves town for an ordinary business trip, making a morning jaunt to another state by air and returning the same day. On the plane, he dons a set of headphones and again hears tape recorded music, while in the cockpit the pilot's chatter and signals from various instruments are recorded on tape inside a "black box." If the airplane crashed, Federal investigators would retrieve the box and learn just what had gone wrong. On the ground, a tape recorder runs in the tower continuously, preserving all the conversations between air traffic controllers and pilots. Far overhead, in orbit around the earth, weather satellites gather data both about local weather patterns and conditions on the other side of the world. As they pass over those distant regions, the satellite is silent while the data it gathers is put temporarily on tape. Then, as the tiny satellite crosses the path of our traveler's airplane several miles above his head, it transmits its updates to the National Weather Service office. The satellite transmits for only a few minutes before disappearing once again over the horizon. The traveler never becomes aware of this activity, although the pilot relays information about local weather conditions to passengers during the flight. Still several thousand feet above the surface of the earth, our subject himself is hurtling through the sky in a modern airliner, perhaps one of the new Lockheed Constellations. Parts of the plane itself may have been made on machine tools controlled automatically by data recorded on computer tape. After the plane lands, he drives off the parking lot in a car made of parts that, depending on the company which made them, might have also been turned out on tape-controlled machine tools. 391 Back In the office, his secretary hands him the stack of telephone messages he has accumulated. He calls her into the room a few minutes later, asking her to explain what a few of the hastily-scribbled messages mean. "Wouldn't it be nice," he thinks, "if I had a machine to take these calls." The day is not far off. Opening his briefcase, he removes a super-miniaturized dictating machine and proceeds to rattle off a few short letters onto the tape for his secretary to type later. In his mail is a check for his monthly salary, calculated every month on the IBM computer in the basement. Somewhere in the building he knows there is an archive of tapes holding the reams of financial data generated by the company every month. Returning home, our hypothetical corporation man switches on a television set to view a news program "previously recorded" on videotape. Several day's worth of the New York Times, typeset by computers using data stored on magnetic tape, sit unread on the kitchen table. He picks up the telephone to dial up a take-out Chop Suey restaurant. But, distracted by the din of the television, he dials the wrong number and an operators voice chimes out "we're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service. This has been a recording." Slightly irritated, he snaps off the TV and redials, this time more carefully. Finally, while he waits for his dinner to be delivered, he pulls off his wingtips (the soles of which were automatically cut out by a tape-controlled machine), pours himself a Martini, and switches on the hi-fi set. Sipping a Martini while the tubes warm up, within a few seconds an album entitled Music for Dining begins to soothe his travel-wearied nerves. Here, in the living room, was where many Americans (particularly those like our hypothetical subject: 392 white, male, and middle class) in the 1950s had their first experiences with tape recording, even though by then it was clearly being insinuated into their daily lives.565 This chapter briefly outlines the history of several new kinds of magnetic recording during the 1950s, but then concentrates on its use as a part of hi-fi technology. The first section may seem like something of a digression, but it a necessary one, for there is no understanding the history of magnetic recording in the 1950s without an appreciation of the remarkable events which led to its diverse new applications, a sort of fanning out into a multitude of diverging trajectories. The goal is to use the latter application, audio recording, as a case study of the complex process by which a new technology takes shape. It is by no means a trivial case study. The importance of the magnetic recorder as a competitor to other forms of entertainment including the phonograph is a theme that runs through this study. It is thus a case study which contributes to the overall structure of this dissertation while maintaining the thematic focus of earlier chapters. While a major aim of this study has been to place magnetic recording in the broader context of other types of sound recording, the new and expanding context of magnetic recording brought it into contact with lines of technological development which previously had been quite distinct. That new context included technologies which have not entered into this study so far, but which are worthy of separate inquiry: the computer, television, machine tools, and various obscure scientific instruments, for example. In order to avoid the pitfall of the encyclopedist, who tries to include everything at the expense of analysis, it is necessary to gloss over the details of a great many of these new technologies, and the following discussion is intended to be a survey. 393 The Broadening Field of Recording. 1945-1960 From the outset, recorder manufacturers in the United States who began to design low-cost machines in the early 1950s believed that in some cases the same recorders could be used either by consumers in the home or by businesses. Wire recorders made by the important firm Webster-Chicago, for example, were exactly the same machine whether marketed as a home entertainment device or an office dictating machine. When consumer tape recorders began to appear, they too were marketed in this way. These home- or-office machines were generally of the less expensive variety, say $350 and under in 1950, dropping to $150 or less by mid-decade. American businesses and businessmen discovered that these recorders had a myriad of uses in the office beyond just dictation. Wire recorders found their way into the automobiles of a few traveling salesmen, who dictated their notes on the road, and into factories, warehouses and even henhouses where employees took oral inventories of stock. Businessman seemed to appreciate the fact that once these temporary records were transferred to more permanent media, the wire (or later tape) could be erased and reused an indefinite number of times. The novelty of easy, portable, cheap sound recording prompted a multitude of unusual and often short lived experiments: one company beat a rat to death, recorded the sounds on a wire recorder, and used the little rodent's death squeals to chase other rats out of a building. Manufacturers, too began imagining new ways to use recorders. One of the important early markets was in education. Given the fact that many recorder manufacturers were already in the "audio visual" business, this seemed like a 394 natural outgrowth. The wire or tape recorder easily became part of the audio visual education movement, which itself was at least partly a mix of manufacturers searching for a permanent market for their products and partly a serious attempt at educational reform. In the field of magnetic recording, not only equipment manufacturers but also companies with programs to sell were hard at work in the early 1950s promoting the educational uses of sound recording. These promoters ranged from Joseph Hards, the president of a successful tape recording production firm called A-V Tape Libraries, to Marvin Camras of the Armour Research Foundation in Chicago. The Federal government itself played a large role in the widespread adoption of magnetic recorders in schools through its radio-television bureau within the Office of Education.566 In part because the cost of producing a tape recording was much lower than that for a disk record, and because the equipment to do so was inexpensive and easy to operate, all kinds of new firms began producing educational or training tapes. Of particular interest were subjects like foreign languages. Businesses began producing in-house training tapes for distribution to branch offices, and of course educational film producers by the 1950s began producing films synchronized to a soundtrack recorded magnetically, either directly on the film or linked electronically to an ordinary tape recorder.567 Outside the electronics industry, manufacturers of other kinds of devices began to toy with the idea of incorporating sound recording into their designs, and the technology that they almost invariably chose was magnetic. The use of sound recording as a management tool was especially visible in these efforts. 395 At Westinghouse Electric Company and elsewhere, managers experimented with tape recorders as a way to gather and distribute information. In one system, low-level managers could get "up-to-the-minute company news" by dialing a special number and listening to a continuously-updated tape recording. Managers also found tape recorders handy on the shop floor. Journals devoted to "safety engineering" carried numerous articles from the late 1940s onward which suggested the use of such things as tape recorded messages broadcast over public address systems. Loudspeakers placed over the heads of beleaguered workers blared orders to them as they walked into the building ("Put out your smokes! This is not a good entrance to heaven-- and we do mean positively"), as they sweated over grinding tools ("Wear your goggles while you can still see!"), and even as they left the building ("Good night. Don't Rush or Push at the exit. Drive home carefully"). Westinghouse, Otis, and other elevator manufacturers, wishing to introduce self-service elevators in the post war period, found in the magnetic recorder a way to control and educate users. The 1955 Westinghouse line included a "phantom voice" which admonished those who blocked the doors or who tarried too long before pressing the button for a floor. It is difficult for the modern elevator user to imagine why a pushbutton elevator control panel would be confusing. However, the initial installation of the Westinghouse talking elevator was in the National Distiller's Building in New York, a fact which may explain why users needed so much help operating the equipment.568 Within five years of the widespread availability of magnetic recorders, the technology had also been adapted to uses which eclipsed the recording of mere sounds. Rigid media like disks and drums, similar to the ones developed 396 at Brush Development Company during World War II, became the focus of considerable interest to scientists and engineers working on the first generations of computers. One of the central design problems during the development of these computers was the "memory." Designers wanted a way to store digital signals; they wanted a memory that would remember or forget on demand. There were several options, including such things as cathode-ray vacuum tubes, acoustic delay lines, various photosensitive devices, and magnetic media.569 International Business Machines, the Institute for Advanced Studies, and several other organizations utilized custom-built magnetic drums for this purpose. Typically, these drums rotated constantly at high speed and employed a row of "read-write" heads down their length. A coded digital "word" consisting of a several "zeroes" and "ones" would be recorded on the drum, one digit per head. A spot on the drum in which the orientation of a tiny magnetized region had some pre-determined vector might represent a "one" while a zero was typically represented as a magnetized region oriented the opposite way. Once recorded, a word could remain in memory indefinitely, or (since the drum rotated all the time), it could be replayed almost instantly. As frequently as necessary the word could be replaced with a new one since the medium was erasable. Within a few years, magnetic drums had been superseded by other types of memories, most notably the "core" memory, which was a matrix of tiny, magnetizable rings which could be activated to represent on or off, "one" or "zero." Core memories occasionally are lumped into histories of magnetic recording, although they were clearly not associated with the technological tradition developed in this study. 397 During the 1970s, magnetic media for memory (including magnetic cores) gave way to the kinds of semiconductor-based memory devices used today. This did not spell the end of magnetic recording's role in computing, however. The memory functions of a computer are quite distinct from its archival storage functions, and it was in the latter than magnetic recording found a lasting place. The use of magnetic tapes for mass information storage was the technique of choice from the 1950s on, and encouraged manufacturers like Ampex to experiment with more and more specialized computer tape recorders. By the middle of the 1950s, Ampex and others were manufacturing computer recorders which recorded data on eight, sixteen, or more parallel tracks along the length of a single tape, which was often one inch or more wide.570 While the drum type of medium faded into obscurity, magnetic disks made a dramatic comeback in the 1970s. Disk recorders were among those types designed by Valdemar Poulsen at the turn of the century, although they performed poorly. A disk is less compact than a steel, paper, or plastic tape, and therefore sound records on it must be very short or the recording/replaying speed must be set very low. In magnetic recording, both of these compromises represent disadvantages in relation to other methods. Nonetheless, Brush Development Company introduced a magnetic disk recorder in the late 1940s for "voice mail" messages.571 While the Brush "Mail-A-Voice," as it was called, was a commercial failure, eliciting criticism for its low sound quality and receiving a "Not Recommended" rating from Consumer's Research Bulletin, later computer companies such as IBM were more successful at reviving the disk as a mass storage medium. In particular, IBM and other companies widely 398 adopted the "Winchester" fixed disk drive, a type of rigid disk for use in personal computers.572 One of the more spectacular new professional applications in the 1950s was video recording, a system that was originally designed for television networks. Just as the desire to delay broadcasts had led radio networks to adopt magnetic recording as a cost-cutting measure in the 1930s and 1940s, so too did television networks, which had studios in New York, hope to reduce the enormous sums of money that they spent on photographic film for reproducing shows for the West Coast. Bing Crosby Enterprises, the Armour Research Foundation, RCA, the BBC, and others all worked on experimental machines to record television signals on magnetic tape during the period after 1950, but technical problems proved daunting. It was the Ampex Corporation of California, already the industry leader in professional audio tape recorders, which became the leader also in video tape recorders. (Figure 7.1) Their machine, which utilized a number of novel features and required much less tape to record a program, was introduced to the public in early 1956. Most histories of video tape recording, notably a recent article in the popular magazine Invention and Technology treat the technical performance of the Ampex recorder as the chief factor in video tape's success. Writer Stewart Wolpin recounts how the first demonstration brought the audience to its feet and brought Ampex $5 million dollars in order in four days: "The video age had dawned." Clearly, though, this episode is more complex than historians have suggested. The fact that the networks were ready to accept such a technology so readily, that the old arguments about the quality of 399 Figure 7.1: A Vision of Home Videotape Technology American electronics manufacturers always envisioned that videotape recorders would become common household technologies, even before the audio tape recorder had become one. This vision of videotape was produced by the Ampex Corporation in the late 1950s. From Julian Bernstein, Video Tape Recording (New York: John Rider, 1960), 2. 400 recorded programs had disappeared, and the willingness of so many other laboratories virtually to abandon their own video projects in the face of an early success beg additional analysis.573 While Computers and videotape are only the most familiar of a range of very specialized applications for magnetic recording invented in the post-1945 era, each might justifiably be the subject of a detailed study. Many other important applications existed, though only a few can be mentioned without digressing too far afield. In the field of geophysics, instruments employing data recording on magnetic tape spurred a minor revolution in oil prospecting in the 1950s. These machines were adapted from Ampex multi-track data recorders and used the tape to record the output of geophysical instruments. The data could be more easily reviewed and analyzed, and the speed of the readout could be changed. And just as magnetic recording was probing the depths of "inner space," it was also used in the exploration of outer space.574 Virtually every communications and scientific satellite launched by NASA (and, presumably, foreign agencies) has included some kind of miniaturized magnetic recorder. The variety of these devices has been truly remarkable and has included wire recorders, steel tape recorders, endless loop arrangements, and reel-to-reel types with plastic media. Even more remarkable have been the staggering prices of these machines. Today's toilet seats and other common objects for which the military overpaid by hundreds of dollars pale in comparison to the amounts spent on magnetic recorders for "defense" use. While prices for a series of miniature recorders deployed in NASA satellites in the 1960s started at a few hundred thousand dollars, one recorder manufactured by RCA cost the government over four million dollars.575 401 Many of the new applications of magnetic recording since the 1950s have generated both ebullient enthusiasm and knee-jerk reaction, depending upon whose interests were involved. From the conservative viewpoint, magnetic recording has been a disruptive, difficult technology, a troublemaker and sometimes a subversive force. Often it is the unique technical qualities of magnetic recording devices which contribute to their subversive potential, and the histories of these individual devices beg for a more complete study. But while it must suffice to mention them only in passing, they are important for the understanding of the drastically changed context of magnetic recording in the post World War II period. Most television networks and stations, in public at least, seemed to treat the videotape recorder as simply a way to save costs vis a vis conventional photographic film. Just a few years after its introduction, however, individual users conceived ways to manipulate videotape recorders in creative new ways. The prime examples of this in the 1960s were slow-motion and instant replay. Though motion picture films could easily be run in slow motion, but because videotape required no processing time, tapes made a few seconds earlier could be replayed instantaneously, or even replayed instantly at slower (or faster) speeds. Roone Arledge, a televised-sports producer working for ABC, made extensive changes in the way football was televised in the United States in the 1960s by adding many more cameras and bringing a heightened sense of drama to viewing of the sport. Arledge in 1960 asked an ABC engineer to arrange for slow motion instant replay footage of particular plays to be aired directly. One of the most memorable early uses of the technique involved an 402 exciting 70 yard touchdown play in a 1960 college football game. Sportscasters enthralled audiences by analyzing the footage at great length from half a dozen different angles. As Arledge recalled, "nobody had ever seen anything like that before and the impact was unbelievable. That moment changed television sports forever."576 The instant replay changed sports in more ways than one by undermining the viability of umpires, linemen, and other officials. Now, because television coverage from all angles became commonplace and the slow motion, close-up review of particular plays was possible, viewers rather than participants were in a better position to determine rule infractions, foul balls, and other things formerly within the jurisdiction of uniformed officials. The combination of television and videotape set off a controversy about the use of the instant replay as a more authoritative judge of these types of infractions, and sports governing bodies debate this issue still. The subversive effect of tape extended to unexpected places, such as the struggle between labor and management in machine shops. Two of the important trends in postwar magnetic recording history are apparent in the history of computer controlled machine tools. This development represented a convergence of three previously unrelated technologies: the electronic computer, machine tools, and magnetic recording. David F. Noble has written exhaustively about the way computers were used to automate machining processes, especially under the aegis of the United States Air Force in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Two basic approaches, one which employed skilled machinists to record electronic "templates" and one which bypassed machinists 403 altogether, competed for government sponsorship for a few years, though eventually the military adopted the one which tended to eliminate machinists. In both cases, the computer controlled machine tool required a new form of information storage that was permanent, easily changed, rugged enough for the shop floor, and inexpensive. Experiments with punched paper tape proved satisfactory, although paper tape was more difficult to edit and less mechanically rugged than the emerging form of plastic magnetic recording media. By the middle of the decade, virtually all computer-controlled machine tools utilized this technology. In some ways, magnetic recording was an ancillary technology, interchangeable with other methods such as paper tape. In other ways, the medium was the very soul of the system, and its universal permanently linked magnetic recording with a controversial and ultimately very disruptive technology. Once again, magnetic tape recording dramatically illustrated, because of its "general purpose" qualities, the ability to be used to undermine the viability of other technologies and social structures. Popular author Kurt Vonnegut was a publicist in the early 1950s for General Electric, one of the prime contractors in the field of computer controlled machine tool development. GE's "read-write" machines, by far the more benign version because it preserved the need for skilled machinists at some point in the production process, nonetheless inspired the writer to write a cautionary tale called Player Piano in 1952. Set in a future in which managers have completely displaced the last vestiges of worker control on the shop floor, Vonnegut describes a world dependent upon computer controlled machines for production. The main character, an engineer- manager, meets in a bar the machinist whose skill he recorded on magnetic 404 tape to provide the signals which control the automatic machine tools. In an ironic passage, Vonnegut has the machinist, now out of work and perhaps alcoholic, start a song on the bar's player piano in honor of his old boss. The keys twitching on the piano drive home the point the that the pianist is gone, only his essence remains in the form of holes in a roll of paper. Capturing the essence of such an ephemeral phenomenon as a conversation was one of the dreams of magnetic recording's inventors, but one which met with varying degrees of rejection by American Telephone and Telegraph Company. One of the great ironies in the history of AT&T is the success of the personal answering machine. The company's turn-of-the- century rhetoric on the importance to the public of telephone line security and the confidentiality of telephone conversations turned out to be wrong; customers wanted telephone recorders and were generally willing to accept the fact that their conversations could be recorded. By the 1950s, there was also a sharper distinction between simple telephone recording and the answering machine, in which a caller left a message for an absent subscriber. The latter had been exactly what inventors from Valdemar Poulsen forward had been calling for, so to speak. The door to answering machine use was opened after the 1946 FCC rulings which allowed customers to record telephone conversations. No less important was the development of less expensive recording media, particularly coated plastic tapes, and the invention of miniaturized circuitry and the transistor. Whereas in the late 1940s recorder manufacturers estimated that most customers were large businesses, by the 1970s prices had dropped to as low as $100 and more individuals were buying them.577 405 At the same time, and for many of the same reasons, telephone security was becoming a more serious problem. Although lawmakers had been debating the legality and morality of wiretapping since at least the 1910s, the practice seemed to generate much more interest after 1945. The miniaturization of electronics made "buggings" and the tapping of telephone lines easier. Suddenly, wire and tape recordings made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement agencies, and private detectives became more commonly adduced in courts. The tape recorder appealed to American's litigious nature; even Lucy Ricardo, the character played by actress Lucille Ball on the television show I Love Lucy was tempted to use her husband's new tape recorder to gather evidence secretly against some new neighbors who sold her fraudulent shares in an oil well.578 The secret recording of conversations had a certain air of high technology and glamour in the 1950s and 1960s. Magnetic recorders were commonly seen in b-grade detective films of the 1950s, for example, even before becoming one of the central gadgets in the James Bond novel and movie series, or supporting the opening scene in the television series Mission Impossible.579 The finale, of course was the spectacular publicity generated by the series of tape recordings made by President Richard M. Nixon. These "Watergate Tapes," as they have become known, were only the most famous of the secret recordings made by every administration since Franklin Roosevelt's. Nixon used a expensive Uher tape recorder (a West German brand) hidden in a cabinet to record a number of conversations in his office. The tapes were later subpoenaed for the hearings relating to the Watergate scandal, but not before Nixon (or perhaps someone else) could 406 erase 18 1/2 minutes of them. The "gap" has become perhaps the most famous silence in recorded history. In the midst of the Watergate ballyhoo, the John F. Kennedy presidential library released information indicating that the Camelot years too had seen secret recordings made. Some of these were even recordings of telephone conversations. Then it was revealed that Lyndon Johnson had made a few such tape recordings, as had Harry Truman, who used a wire recorder. Finally, the Roosevelt "tapes" resurfaced, although they in fact were optical recordings made on a Phillips-Miller recorder. Variations of the subversive, disruptive, or otherwise naughty uses of magnetic recording during the period since 1945 are almost endless. Yet responses to these uses from threatened record and telephone companies, government agencies, and sometimes members of the general public have failed in most cases to control successfully the use of this technology. Tape recordings of certain things have been banned outright, such as when the Department of the Interior found it necessary in the 1950s to ban the use of tape recorded sounds being used by hunters to lure game. People have been almost as gullible as those helpless animals, falling time and again to pranksters armed with magnetic recording devices. Several Americans have made their living collecting and selling tape recordings made with hidden microphones. Kermit Schafer of New York was a radio producer and collector of on-air "fluffs" made by announcers over the air. His jewels included the famous semi-Spoonerism spoken by early radio man Harry Von Zell who blurted out "Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, Hoobert Heever." After the war, Schafer used the more 407 convenient and durable tape medium to build a career out of recording the mistakes, "bloopers" he called them, of radio and television artists. Unlike the transcription disks he relied upon in the 1940s, tape was re-usable, so he found that he could record virtually every radio and television show, saving only the bloopers and then re-using the tapes. He compiled his fluffs on phonograph records, and sold them as novelty items.580 The unsettling connection between telephone and tape recorder took a different turn in the 1980s, when companies began offering "dial-a-porn" services, based mainly on recorded announcements (though most now apparently advertise themselves as live). Even in the 1960s and 1970s, erotic recordings on audio tape, a sort of aural pornography were readily available for purchase. Pornography and videotape have grown up like two incestuous siblings. While inexpensive 8-millimeter film gave pornographic motion pictures access to the home, it was videotape that has brought it nearly into the cultural mainstream. Indeed, surveys of videotape use in the early 1980s indicated that pornography was perhaps the second most popular use.581 The most popular use is also the final example of such "subversion": the duplicating copyrighted material. Consumers tended to record broadcasts off the air in order to "time shift" them; that is, record them in absentia for replay at a convenient hour. That use bothered copyright holders much less than the unauthorized mass duplication for sale of both audio and video material. This kind of "bootlegging" had been sporadically popular since the 1950s when American firms began illegally copying music for sale on disk, but it prompted the record companies to sponsor new federal legislation only in the 1970s, when the illegal copying of 8-track tapes reached alarming levels. Tape was 408 inherently easier to bootleg than phonograph records, because the duplicating procedure was exactly the same as the original recording procedure. Bootleggers also found it easy to begin on a small scale and expand as profits accumulated. By contrast, phonorecords were cut on a master recorder, but then used to make a metal mold from which duplicates would be pressed using more capital-intensive equipment. Record companies fought back by pressuring the government to convict domestic "pirates" and shut down foreign ones, and to ensure that new tape technologies would have safeguards against copying (as in the Home Tape Recording act of 1980). The copying of audio tapes by individuals, mostly for entertainment purposes but sometimes for political reasons, also reached national proportions in foreign countries by the later 1970s, as for instance when the Iranian revolution was fueled by cassettes of the Ayatollah's messages.582 If all of the preceding begins to look like either an introduction that is too long or a chapter in itself that should stand on its own, the issue of music pirating as a consumer phenomenon is included as a way to return the focus of this chapter to the relationship between tape and high fidelity in the home. Clearly, the level of interest in bootlegging indirectly suggests that by the 1970s, tape recording had become major consumer technology. The remainder of this chapter will explain how that happened, and by way of doing so will start from the example of home tape recording to begin to illustrate the complex process by which magnetic tape succeeded commercially.588 409 Consumers and Magnetic Recording The introduction of sound recorders on the U.S. market was followed by the exciting discovery among early users that the world was full of sounds to be recorded. The ease of use and portability associated with magnetic recorders certainly were important factors in their success, although such a claim runs the risk of being technologically determinist. Suddenly thousands of people were gathering bits of sound from everywhere, whereas previously only the most ardent of amateur recordists had considered taking a portable disk recorder far from the school or the recital hall. When Sir Henry Lund took an extended trip in 1926 and decided to dictate his impressions of foreign lands into a Dictaphone recorder, the complexity of such a decision was immediately apparent to him. He had to make arrangements far in advance with company representatives in every city he visited for service and replacement cylinders. The use of the Dictaphone was such a novelty that he titled his memoir Round the World With a Dictaphone, even though the little recorder was never mentioned after the preface. Perhaps he was just paying tribute to the Dictaphone company for their generosity. At any rate Lund's work is undoubtedly one of the most dreadfully boring travelogues ever written; Dictaphone should have left the author alone.584 The novelty of sound recording attracted many early hobbyists in the 1950s, even though most Americans were familiar with sound recordings long before that time. Many owned phonographs, and nearly all had heard recordings being played on the radio. Recorders, machines to make recordings, were much less familiar. A small percentage of Americans, particularly men but also many women, had been exposed to sound recorders in the form of 410 Dictaphones as early as the 1920s and 1930s. But only in a few types of organizations, such as insurance companies or welfare agencies, were business dictation recorders commonly used by any but the executives. A very small number of technicians and engineers, those who worked at radio stations, knew about transcription recorders, and perhaps a few thousand Americans had purchased home phonograph recorders during the later 1930s. Additionally, many voice and music teachers had begun using disk recorders in a limited way by the later 1930s. In all, then, the postwar wire or tape recorder was the first such device most people had seen. From the introduction of home disk recorders in the 1930s, through the short-lived era of wire recorders, and into the 1950s, manufacturers and retailers implored consumers to join the home recording hobby. They drew analogies to photography, which had attracted thousands of buyers in previous decades, or home motion pictures, which were becoming more popular in the late 1940s. Tape enthusiasts began sending "voice mail" letters on the new medium, and raw tape manufacturers responded with small inexpensive reels.585 But in the end home sound recording became connected not to "audio snapshots" but to the high fidelity audio hobby, a movement based more on the reproduction of sound rather than its recording. Magnetic Recording and the Emergence of High Fidelity Sound Equipment Engineers and hobbyists had been singing the praises of something called "high fidelity" for about fifteen years before the postwar hi-fi movement took off. By most accounts, the term was first applied to radio receivers in England in the 1930s, spreading to America via the trade journals. But high 411 fidelity audio, like obscenity, was something that everybody could recognize but that nobody could define. High fidelity in the 1940s was portrayed as a "grass roots" sort of movement, but its true roots were in big businesses like telephone service and motion pictures. During the 1920s and 1930s, as organizations like Bell Telephone Laboratories undertook to study what sounded "good" and what sounded "bad," radio broadcasters simultaneously sought to improve the quality of their transmissions, motion picture producers to dazzle audiences with sound, and receiver manufacturers to discover ways to deliver pure, sweet music. Phonograph manufacturers and record companies, on the other hand, moved more slowly. They had introduced "electrical recordings" in the previous decade but the industry in general was in sharp recession all during the 1930s, resulting in a sharp decline in the use of the home phonograph. Yet this was the decade that saw the first experimental stereophonic recordings on disk in the U.S. and in Europe, the development of high quality transcription phonographs for radio use, and numerous advances in electronic amplifiers, microphones, loudspeakers, studios, and other sound recording paraphernalia, particularly that aimed at professional users. During the 1940s, some of that new technology would begin to filter down to consumers. Meanwhile, although expensive radio receivers claiming (and generally delivering) better sound were available to the average consumer before World War II, there were serious weaknesses which engineers could not overcome. With every new advance came claims of "perfection" in sound reproduction; indeed these types of claims were made for both the first phonograph and later for the first magnetic recorders before the turn of the century and they carried 412 over into advertisements for radios. But no one in 1935 would have claimed that even the most expensive home radio receiver sounded like a live symphony orchestra. Radio sounded like radio; The phonograph sounded like the phonograph. While no one could quantify these definitions exactly, anyone with functional ears would more-or-less agree. Curiously, most folks did not seem to mind. They were able to use their imagination to fill in the technology's shortcomings as long as some minimal level of intelligibility was in evidence. 586 Engineers on the other hand were anxious to define fidelity and hence to problematize it.587 The difficulties inherent in quantifying sound, particularly complex sounds as are typically found in music, have proved central to the history of the hi-fi movement. From the 1920s through the 1950s, engineers seemed most concerned about a relatively small set of measurements. Perhaps the most important of these was frequency response. A phonograph, radio receiver, transcription recorder, microphone, or amplifier has a frequency response which determines in some sense the fidelity it can achieve under ideal conditions. Tests by scientists showed that most humans can hear sound at frequencies ranging from about 20 to 15,000 or 20,000 hertz. These numbers have changed somewhat over the years, and indeed, these same scientists recognized that no two people heard the same range, and that an individual's range of hearing decreased with age. By the time most of the electrical engineers who have designed hi-fi equipment earned their college degrees and began work, the frequency response of their ears had already decreased, particularly at high frequencies. A second testable feature was distortion. In general, distortion measurements used a sine wave signal to compare the 413 output of a device (microphone, amplifier, loudspeaker, or other) with the input. Any difference in the shape of a known waveform between input and output was labeled distortion and could be quantified as a percentage of variation from the original. Finally, by comparing the strength of a recorded sine wave signal to the ever-present background noise (the noise resulting from the friction of the needle against a phonograph disk, or the atmospheric disturbances affecting radio transmissions), engineers could quantify a signal-to-noise ratio. High fidelity manufacturers of the 1930s and early 1940s, at this point chiefly concerned with radio receivers and concentrating on these three criteria, sought to maximize frequency response and minimize distortion and noise. High fidelity electronics in areas other than radio receivers, and particularly for professional use, advanced in some areas but lagged in others. 588 By the late 1930s for example, Hollywood motion picture companies were experimenting with enhanced soundtracks and elaborate theater sound systems, the most famous example being the special equipment developed for Disney's Fantasia. Movies, in fact, in the large urban theaters at least, exposed more people to high fidelity sound in the 1930s than any other source. For the most part, though, hi-fi at the movies was an occasional event; run-of-the-mill theaters might bring in special equipment for a one-time event, but their regular equipment was nothing remarkable.589 In the field of radio work, the 1930s saw significant advances in many areas. At the beginning of the decade Western Electric introduced its electrical transcription phonograph recorders, and improvements made over the course of the 1930s gradually transformed these into high quality sources of sound for broadcasts. The best European and American studio microphones by 1945 414 were also high fidelity instruments indeed. Some stations began broadcasting live musical programs using equipment that covered the full range of audible frequencies, even though few home radios were equipped to receive them. But in the main the national networks, NBC, CBS, and Mutual, as well as the numerous other small networks, failed to deliver high quality programming, despite their frequent claims to the contrary. The reason for this was quite simple; strung between their studios and their transmitters were telephone lines supplied by AT&T. These lines passed through central station equipment which was designed to cut off frequencies above about 6000 cycles per second and which had certain other technical characteristics that limited the quality of transmission. Even though the sound to most people was quite acceptable, even by the standards of the day this was not high fidelity. Nevertheless, more people began taking a personal interest in enhancing the quality of audio entertainment, and although electronics manufacturers were slow to recognize it, a new hobby devoted to sound was beginning to emerge. In the 1930s and 1940s, high fidelity enthusiasts were often engineers, radio men, or sometimes musicians, and as interest in high fidelity spread enough people seemed engaged in hi-fi as a pastime that trade journals began regularly carrying articles on home hi-fi. Because affordable commercially available equipment was not available, these men took their own initiative, reestablishing their connections to the early days of radio by taking a do-it- yourself approach. Journal articles on high fidelity carried on the tradition of home built radios by expanding the range of projects to include not just radio receivers but amplifiers and loudspeakers. Certain types of equipment but also certain electronic circuits became established as the norm. The epitome of the 415 home built hi-fi amplifier, for example, was that proposed in 1940 by D.T.N. Williamson, a British enthusiast. The Williamson amplifier became the standard in the hobby for many years, and the basic circuit was even translated into transistor designs by the 1960s.590 The later 1930s and 1940s saw more theoretical treatises dealing with loudspeaker enclosures, and the size of the hi- fi loudspeaker enclosure expanded dramatically until boxes standing over five feet tall were regularly proposed. By the end of World War II, all the technical components were in place and a following of hi-fi oriented men was crystallizing around a small set of electronic technologies. This demarcation of the technical boundaries of the hobby was never truly stable, however, and remains a central problem for hobbyists even today.591 One of the most interesting things about the high fidelity hobby is the connections it makes between high technology and high culture. It has always been associated with classical music, opera and, increasingly after World War II, jazz. Since these types of music were not always available via broadcast, devotees naturally purchased phonograph records and players. Here was an area where hobbyists found themselves completely at the mercy of manufacturers. One might assemble a phonograph (though the evidence strongly indicates that most enthusiasts purchased ready-made units), but the crucial phonograph "pickup" or "cartridge" assembly had to be purchased ready-made, as did all the records.592 The growth of the hi-fi movement must also be understood in some respects as an expression of status, or at least status-seeking. From a sociological standpoint, the formation of hobby groups is a form of community- building; a way that individuals establish identity for themselves by arranging 416 themselves into tribelike clusters. The new movement's choice of music can be associated with status building, for classical music, opera and (later in the century) jazz were the genres of the social elite. One of the most important aspects of the relationship between the high fidelity movement and status relates to changing attitudes about what constituted an appropriate way to listen to classical music. Cultural historians such as Lawrence Levine have examined the ways in which 19th century middle class Americans took opera, theater, art, and symphonic music out of the realm of popular culture, redefined their forms somewhat, reshaped the rituals surrounding their appreciation, and made them the nearly exclusive domain of the elite.593 This status building activity created the urban centers of art and music which characterize large cities and legitimate the aspirations of growing ones. The practice of hearing symphonic music and opera at the concert hall was established as culturally superior to hearing the same music on phonograph disk long before hi-fi started to be popular. Ironically, promoters of high fidelity music had little trouble overcoming the cultural obstacles to making home listening socially acceptable; the improving sonic quality seemed to overcome many technical objections at least. The goal of reproducing music in the home so as to obtain the most "natural" sound did not, perhaps, threaten concert-going. Since it was understood that the source of this music was the phonograph or broadcasts, high fidelity enthusiasts were simply trying to make the best possible use of a second-rate alternative to live music. However, the quality of reproduction had improved so much by the 1940s that aficionados began comparing the "sound" of the best systems favorably to 417 that of the concert hall. Now enthusiasts talked seriously about creating a realistic concert hall sound in their living rooms using increasingly high powered amplifiers and huge loudspeakers. Subsequent enthusiasts embarked upon a quest for a new level of realism, not just realistic sounding instruments, not just the illusion of having musicians in one's presence but the illusion of being transported to a real concert hall. Here is the root of the hi-fi movement's eventual collapse under the weight of its own pretensions, for this quest would create a crisis which constituted an abandonment of all the accumulated wisdom about what hi-fi consisted of. That argument is pursued below. Tape recording as a part of high fidelity was one of several postwar newcomers. By 1945 there were also several new technologies to consider. Frequency modulated (FM) broadcasts, introduced in a few cities in the 1930s, were after 1945 more widely available. At the same time, a decline in postwar advertising revenue and, in the early 1950s, the shift of network spending to television left radio with far fewer broadcasts of live musical presentations. On the other hand, in 1949 CBS introduced the Long Playing microgroove record [LP], which not only had improved sonic qualities but could carry longer symphonic passages on a single side.594 Another major change in audio technology, invisible to consumers though not inaudible, was the introduction of tape recording in movie, phonograph recording, and radio studios. In all of these situations, tape recording accompanied major changes in the way recordings were made. From the standpoint of the high fidelity enthusiast, however, magnetic recording was important mainly as a consumer item. 418 Manufacturers and consumers in the immediate post-World War II years were not of a single mind as to whether magnetic recording would become part of hi-fi or not. The first machines to be introduced were wire recorders, a technology which had seen extensive wartime service from China, the remote jungles of Southeast Asia and the mountains of Italy. They had seemed perfectly suited to the gathering of news from the battlefront and they made sense in the technical context of AM network radio and the 78-rpm phonograph disk, but these rugged sound recorders had returned home to a changed world, and like a shell-shocked soldier the wire recorder had trouble "fitting in." In sum, the technical journals and enthusiasts magazines took only passing notice of wire recorders, and abandoned them altogether after about 1948 when the first tape recorders appeared. Although the wire format survived for a few more years as a dictating machine, ultimately that application also was usurped by the new tape recorders. The burgeoning hi-fi movement did not immediately embrace tape recorders, either. It will be recalled that the modern type of tape recorder was, in the main, invented in the context of German radio broadcasting. The first American tape recorders were also modeled directly on these professional devices. They had features which suited the needs of broadcasting: high quality audio capability, simplicity of operation, an editable medium, direct inputs for microphones or other sound sources, and most of all the ability to record. The first American consumer tape recorders duplicated these professional-style features, as if the home environment was just like the recording studio. In fact, the studio uses of tape recorders were part of a technological system quite different than anything that operated in the home, 419 giving the consumer recorder an ambiguity in this new setting. Other than making numerous cost cutting design changes, the major differences in features between professional and consumer tape recorders were the built-in loudspeakers and amplifiers which the latter carried so that they could be used in a stand-alone fashion. In a sense, then, manufacturers failed to make it clear whether or not tape recorders were to be integrated into high fidelity systems. While the tape recorders might be capable of high quality sound recording, what was a hi-fi enthusiast to record? Hi-fi in the 1940s and early 1950s was built around the reproduction of broadcasts and sound recordings; there had been little interest heretofore in making recordings, only reproducing them. While the hi-fi movement briefly flirted with the home recording movement to encompass such things as the chronicling of one's child's first words, party games, and piano recitals, soon users made it clear that the home recording hobby and the high fidelity hobby would remain somewhat distinct. 595 As manufacturers introduced various technical innovations in the 1950s, those intended to appeal to home recordists failed to register additional sales. One of the most prominently mentioned features of the first generation of wire and tape recorders was the user's ability to edit the recording, for example. While this appealed to the small (but persistent) coterie of home recordists, editing quickly passed out of common practice. Hi-fi enthusiasts sometimes edited the commercial breaks out of long radio programs, but by the later 1950s these programs were almost non-existent, and in any case few people bothered with them when recorded music was available. In retrospect, the vision of tape recording put forth by manufacturers was one that ran counter to the history of entertainment culture in America in the 420 twentieth century, which has been an increasingly passive activity. Historian Craig Roell, for example, has eloquently described the decline in piano playing in early 20th century America as first the piano player, then entirely new technologies such as the motion picture and the phonograph usurped the piano's domestic role. Roell sets forth the theory that Victorian culture emphasized the production of music, while the emphasis of modern culture is consumption. Thus while manufacturers proposed a culture of production for the tape recorder, their vision proved to be a very backward-looking notion of entertainment and one in which the user created his own fun. Such a culture of production simply did not re-emerge in the 1950s except among a very small segment of high fidelity enthusiasts. The most popular uses of tape recorders emerged as a distinct set of practices quite separate from those of either the earlier home recordists or professional users. Foremost among those practices was recording, but with a difference. Primarily, users recorded and replayed music rather than spoken words, the sounds of nature, or other types of noises. Further, the source of this music was almost invariably another recording. The sources of these recordings were various but usually limited either to radio and LP records or, eventually, purchased tape recordings.596 The limitations of the new machines eventually became obvious to manufacturers, many of whom realized that only a small group of consumers would participate in the culture of production implied by their products. A larger market would require the translation of the tape recorder into an analogy to the phonograph. The changing relationships between the design and use of the tape recorder became infinitely more important to manufacturers after about 421 1952, as the high fidelity hobby grew explosively. Many contemporaries attributed this not to the equipment manufacturers by to the successful promoters of trade shows called Audio Fairs, which had sprung up in New York and Chicago as outgrowths of earlier radio equipment trade shows. By 1955, the Audio Fairs were regularly reviewed in newspapers and had become the most important place for manufacturers to debut their latest wares. There was also a surge in favorable publicity for hi-fi, including articles in popular magazines such as Ljfe_ and Popular Mechanics.597 A mass market seemed at hand, and electronics companies began to introduce products aimed at this new market. Between 1950 and 1954, the first generation of ready-made hi-fi equipment appeared, in the form of radio "tuners," phonograph turntables, pre-amplifiers, and main or "power" amplifiers. The growth in ready-made hi-fi equipment challenged the process by which particular pieces of equipment were picked for inclusion in or exclusion from the hobby. In the early years at least, the definition of hi-fi was relatively unproblematical. It depended in part upon a battery of tests and measurements developed in previous decades and undergoing continuous refinement. Further, the community of hobbyists was so small through the early 1940s that determinations of whether any particular piece of equipment qualified could be reached by general agreement. In practice, this meant that a small number of "experts" who wrote for certain magazines and journals gave suitable equipment their blessing in review articles.598 The postwar equipment was often of unfamiliar design, and because it was produced ready-made, the electrical circuits were not available from published sources for ready evaluation. Ready-made equipment, appearing in 422 increasing quantities and changing yearly like Detroit automobiles, increased the evaluation burden. At first the number of manufacturers was small, their reputations well-known, and their product lines small. But the situation grew more complex quickly. Compounding the problems of component evaluation was the fact that new technologies including magnetic recording made it more difficult to delineate the "ideal" system. At first, it was not at all clear whether tape recorders would be included at all in the pantheon of "legitimate" high fidelity technologies. Whereas all kinds of sound sources such as phonographs and radios were fair game for high fidelity reproduction, home recording had not previously been a part of this hobby. This meant that when the new technology of television appeared, with its potentially high quality sound broadcast by frequency modulation, it instantly (but ephemerally) became part of the hobby: promoters of tape recording had more trouble insinuating their product into the mushrooming movement.599 The interests of tape recorder marketers contrasted somewhat with the interests of high fidelity enthusiasts. "True" devotees were willing to spend the several hundreds of dollars it took to purchase top quality recorders, but these people were limited in number. Through the 1950s the prescriptions of magazines and books intended to educate neophytes continued to list tape recording as an optional high fidelity item. Manufacturers, on the other hand, introduced successively less expensive versions of the basic tape recorder in hopes of enticing a broader cross section of Americans to buy. Thus while the most influential high fidelity enthusiasts voiced few objections to tape's technical qualifications, they thought that most people would find less utility in a tape recorder as a source of good music than a tuner or phonograph. In fact, 423 combined with consumer's uncertainty about the utility of a tape recorder, the creation of cheap products did not instantly create a broad market.600 Postwar Technology and the Emergence of Product Evaluation The introduction of new technologies like the LP record in the late 1940s brought also to the fore the inadequacy of the technical definition of high fidelity. While the LP's frequency response, for example, was potentially wider than that of the best 78 rpm disks, ultimately the quality of an LP depended upon what was recorded on it. In the early 1950s, at least, many authorities including the editors of a new magazine called High Fidelity agreed that some recordings on 78 rpm could still qualify as hi-fi. They further concluded that LP technology could not be depended on to deliver hi-fi because ultimately the sound depended upon the skill of the recording engineer. LPs, for lack of a quantified expression of their sound could be "hard, dull, and wiry." Thus the need emerged to evaluate every new recording that appeared, a task that High Fidelity and other magazines have struggled with since that time. Evaluating the growing list of available of audio equipment proved no less daunting, especially as the tight knit community of enthusiasts found themselves surrounded by newcomers who had to be educated and indoctrinated. Entry of Major firms into the Field: The Crisis of Packaged Systems With the expansion of the hobby into a broader movement came a significant redefinition of high fidelity to include new technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. As the major manufacturers of radio and phonograph equipment became much more active in the hi-fi field, they introduced 424 equipment which did not meet the standards of the hi-fi hobby, particularly of journals like High Fidelity. Whereas the ideal hi-fi system before this time was built up from "components" (a phonograph, a receiver, an amplifier, a loudspeaker, and a loudspeaker enclosure), the new offerings were often packaged in a single cabinet and sold as a system. A very similar kind of "radio-phono combination" had been available for years, and to the hi-fi press this seemed like an old product with a new label. The Institute of High Fidelity Manufacturers, representing manufacturers of higher-priced equipment, even launched an anti "packaged goods" publicity campaign. 601 The specifications of the new equipment, however, did not always justify its exclusion in the enthusiast press. In some cases virtually the only quantifiable difference was the power output of the amplifier. By now, amplifiers that could deliver power to the loudspeakers in the range of ten to twenty watts were considered the minimum necessary for hi-fi?an interesting change of tactic given the early emphasis on the quality of the sound rather than the quantity. Packaged systems often supplied power on the order of four watts or less: more comparable to a good table radio. In other respects, particularly in the phonograph and radio sections, there was little or no quantifiable difference between the packaged systems and much more expensive, commercially available components. Brand and Price Exclusion Nevertheless certain brands, usually the "big names" like Columbia, RCA, or Sears-Roebuck's popular brand Silvertone were consistently ignored while the products of other, usually smaller companies consistently received 425 praise. The larger companies through advertisements defined their products in terms of high fidelity, and only occasionally lashed back at their detractors. When they did, it usually consisted of something similar to the comment made by Magnavox Corporation's president Frank Frieman in 1957, saying that the argument against packaged systems amounted to a claim that "your garage mechanic can put together a better car than Cadillac.''602 When all else failed, high fidelity enthusiasts resorted to price as a way to discriminate between acceptable and unacceptable equipment. At some level, it was economically impossible to achieve certain technical goals, such as a high power output from an amplifier, without having the final product cost a certain amount. Thus a high priced amplifier, if it were produced and sold by an honest firm, would usually sound better than a very low priced amplifier. The enormous gray area in the middle price ranges became the real battleground. True enthusiasts tended to establish their status through the purchase of equipment which was in the upper cost bracket. For those who wanted high fidelity but who did not have as much money to spend, magazines helped establish rough guidelines about how much to spend in addition to recommending or deriding particular pieces of equipment.603 High Fidelity Furniture One of the areas of agreement in the early hi-fi field, and one which demonstrated tape's ambiguous membership in the movement, was related to the way equipment was supposed to fit into the home. Early in the 1950s, the hi- fi press began to run articles offering interior design ideas to allow hi-fi enthusiasts, presumably all male, to get their components into the family living 426 room without offending their spouses. These articles contain fascinating assumptions about the demographics of hi-fi enthusiasm which were probably often true. The designs themselves, which emphasized hiding equipment in custom made, built-in bookcase-like enclosures or in converted furniture, in no way clashed with the marketing approach taken by the radio-phonograph manufacturers. The latter merely adopted a long standing approach in the radio and phonograph industries by making the equipment look like furniture. As opposed to the stodgy fake antiques or puffy, streamlined, bent-plywood designs of pre-war radios, however, the new equipment began to take on aspects of the "international style." Cabinets, which were almost always wood, were angular and often painted rather than merely varnished. Loudspeaker grille cloths lost the yellowish, antiqued look so popular in prewar radios and phonographs and became more modern and "space age," often interwoven with silver or gold threads. And, increasingly during the 1950s, cabinets sat high above the floor on spindly, tapered legs. (Figure 7.2)604 All this was supposed to appeal to the woman of the house, who it was assumed had creative (but not necessarily financial) control of home furnishings. High fidelity equipment manufacturers by the early 1960s were trying to lure women and housewives even at the Audio Fairs, such as when the Institute of High Fidelity sponsored "Ladies Day" in 1962. Special events for the "gals" included hi-fi decorating exhibits and classes on hooking up systems. While the assumptions that these firms made tended to perpetuate stereotypes of the woman as housewife and arbiter of domestic taste, the effect of "decorator" cabinets on the appearance of hi-fi enthusiasts' homes was perhaps beneficial, for bare components had little aesthetic charm.605 427 TAPE STORAGE LOUDSPEAKER Figure 7.2: Proposal for a Stereophonic Tape System, 1958 The styling of these cabinets is typical, although this type of "audio furniture" was more often a radio-phonograph combination than a type recorder as shown here. Nonetheless, many tape recorders in the 1950s were, like this one, designed to be "stand alone" devices with built-in amplifiers and loudspeakers. This type of equipment did not have to be used in conjunction with a high fidelity system. From Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 1958, p 80. 428 By contrast, early tape recorders evidence little of this attention to aesthetics. To be sure, by the mid 1950s the major producers of tape recorders, firms like Webster-Chicago or Voice of Music Corporation, had paid lavish attention to the stylistic embellishment of the tape recorder proper, adorning it with fancy knobs, devising clever pushbutton mechanisms, and giving the recorder a facia of plastic and chrome. But cabinet designs often lacked visual appeal. The uncertain status of the tape recorder as a part of hi-fi is further evidenced by the ambiguities in its cabinetry. Almost all consumer tape recorders until 1960 were placed inside a standard type of inexpensive wooden cabinet, which had a top cover and a handle to make it portable- this in spite of the fact that few recorders could run on batteries (and weighed upwards of 25 pounds to boot!). Most recorders included loudspeakers and power amplifiers, which drove up prices but allowed the machines to function independently of a hi-fi system if desired. When used in conjunction with a hi-fi system, the loudspeakers and all the most expensive parts of the electronic section were completely redundant and remained unused. The tape "deck," a recorder that required connection to a system, was a phenomenon of the 1960s, when tape had embedded itself more firmly into the hi-fi firmament.606 Ironically, very few recorders on the market came with legs or cabinets tall enough to be truly stand-alone devices in the living room- they required a proper table or bench. One might surmise that the typical, unadorned tape recorder cabinet of the period 1948-1960, often disguised as luggage, was intended to allow portability for those who desired it, but could be discarded if the recorder was to be made part of a custom system enclosure. If so, it would assume a position if not a function much like the phonograph. Most decks were 429 designed to be operated only in a horizontal position, making their placement in the high fidelity enclosure much like the phonograph turntable, which also required a horizontal space. This emulation of the phonograph was intentional and may have reflected the manufacturer's desire to supplant the disk record with the new medium of magnetic tape. Nonetheless, the making of custom enclosures for audio equipment, like the construction of the equipment itself, remained on the margins of the movement. Independent but unadorned, the tape recorder of the 1950s fit poorly into both the purist and the mass market senses of high fidelity function and aesthetics. Manufacturers moved, mostly unsuccessfully, to narrow the definition of the tape recorder's uses during the 1950s by introducing recorded tapes (the more common term "pre-recorded" is avoided in this study because of its self- redundancy). Once again, the translation from professional tool to home entertainment device made this effort more difficult. Among the problems was the apparent propensity of naive users to accidentally erase purchased recordings: clearly there were serious disadvantages to manufacturers' early commitment to designing tape recorders rather than just tape players. The Convergence of High Fidelity and Tape Recording: Technical Standards and Recorded Tapes More serious certain technical issues which threatened to make it impossible for record companies to issue compatible products. During 1948 and 1949, the two record giants RCA and Columbia introduced two new phonograph formats, the 33 1/3 rpm, LP record and the 45 rpm record. The subsequent "battle of the speeds," seemed to slow the sales of neither, but generated concern among electronics distributors and retailers. Tape had its 430 own battle of the speeds at almost the same time, resulting in the design of multi-speed recorders for home use. Most recorders after 1950 utilized the 7 1/2 and 3 3/4 inches per second [ips] speeds, which had been derived by successively dividing the German Magnetophone's tape speed of 30 ips in half, then continuing to divide the lower speeds in half (the standard for today's cassettes is 1 7/8 ips or one half of 3 3/4). While a few companies in the late 1940s like Brush Development and Amplifier Corporation of America (a Brush licensee) sold recorders which required that the coated side of the tape face "in," by 1950 all recorder manufacturers had settled on the "oxide out" format. Tapes recorded on one type of machine would have played in reverse on the other type.607 More difficult was the problem of electronic equalization. This arcane feature of magnetic recording relates to the fact that tape is not sensitive to all frequencies equally. In order to make the response "flat," the highest and lowest ranges of frequencies must be boosted slightly. From this general premise all sorts of variations were possible, so that without standardization tapes recorded on one machine, perhaps an Ampex professional duplicating machine, would not sound right when replayed on other types of machines. The most serious obstacle to record companies, and one which proved to be nearly insurmountable during the 1950s, centered on recording heads. The first generations of consumer tape recorders utilized the full width of the tape to record a single program, just like professional machines. But even in the early 1940s, the German Magnetophone had been modified to record two programs on a single tape, and although this was for the purpose of experimentation with stereo recording it showed that it was technically possible to reduce the size of 431 recording/replaying heads to allow "half track" recording. American manufacturers either ignored this possibility at first or believed that users would value the ability to edit their recordings more then they would value the economy of doubling the recording capability of a tape. Editing a track on a two-track recording would of course necessarily destroy the program on the other track. Even by 1950, two track machines were selling more rapidly than those of the single or "full track" variety, and full track as a consumer format disappeared except for things like dictating machines. But between 1950 and about 1956, the situation worsened as new formats emerged. All tape recorders passed the tape from the supply reel on the left to the take-up reel on the right. The first pass was usually called program "a." When the tape had run all the way through the take-up reel (now loaded with tape) was switched to the left side and the tape run through again for program "b." Would "a" be on the top half of the tape or the bottom? Manufacturers refused to decide. By 1956, the Voice of Music Company began heavily promoting stereo recorders, and several other important manufacturers followed the lead. Now two heads were used at once to record the left and right channels. Would "left" be at the top or bottom? Again there was no consensus. Further, some head manufacturers almost made available single head assemblies containing two complete heads. In the previous variety of stereo, the heads were placed next to each other, or "staggered," rather than "stacked." Recordings made on one type of machine would not play correctly on another machine. Finally, in 1958 RCA introduced its cartridge recorder, which put two stereo programs on one tape for a total of four tracks. The recording/replay heads were of the "stacked" variety, though 432 the tracks were interleaved. Thus, over the course of about eight years, numerous recording formats emerged, creating a difficult situation for record companies. While the attitude of the Audio Engineering Society, the Institute of Radio Engineers, and other engineering professional groups was to let the industry associations handle the standards mess, the industry associations simply refused to do so. In broadcasting and motion pictures, the situation was somewhat different. In those industries, groups like the National Association of Broadcasters and the Society of Motion Picture Engineers between 1949 and 1953 established professional standards for tape and track widths, tape speeds, reel sizes, equalization curves, and other definitions necessary to ensure that tapes could be exchanged between studio recording machines.608 Industry groups, including the Institute of High Fidelity Manufacturers and the Radio and Television Manufacturers' Association, accomplished little more than this until 1959, even though in the mean time interested firms had formed a new group called the Magnetic Recording Industry Association. 1958-9 saw not a breakthrough but an affirmation of all the existing dimensions for single, dual, and stereo track placement, plus the addition of a new, four-track layout being used by the Radio Corporation of America. RCA's new cartridge recorder, a commercial failure after only a few years, nonetheless set a de facto standard for four-track stereo tapes which was ratified the next year. At about the same time, Ampex and other companies were experimenting with equipment to duplicate tapes recorded at the super-slow speed of 3 3/4 ips. Different speeds required different equalization settings both for recording and for playback, but industry associations proved unable or unwilling to discuss a standard. In this 433 case, American manufacturers followed the lead of a European standards- setting body, the International Radio Consulting Committee [or CCIR], which had set down equalization curves for 7 1/2, 3 3/4, and even 1 7/8 some years earlier.609 Engineers and retailers believed that the lack of standards setting during the 1950s resulted in the failure of the tape recorder to replace the phonograph. While the constant upgrading of the 1950s made standards-setting difficult and continually re-created obsolescence, it was not the only reason. Nonetheless the experience of record companies interested in releasing recorded tapes illustrated the importance of the frustrating standards muddle. Recorded Tape Marketing In an effort to stimulate sales of tape, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company in St. Paul, already the leader in the American tape manufacturing industry, began experimenting with machines to make multiple copies of a tape recording. Manufacturers like Chicago's Magnecord, interested in selling recorders to the home market, also recognized early the need to sell recorded tapes. In the words of Magnecord's assistant advertising manager William E. Farragher, selling the tape recorder in the early 1950s was like trying to sell a "razor without a blade."610 Magnecord and other recorder manufacturers including Webster-Chicago, Pentron, and Concertone founded their own record companies and made arrangements with existing record companies to duplicate recordings on tape. Similarly, a few independent tape duplicating firms began distributing recorded tapes to phonograph record stores beginning in 1950. Prices were higher than comparable LPs, ranging in the 434 years 1950-1954 from about six to twelve dollars depending on the length of the tape.611 Magnecord for example, reached an agreement with the European Vox company in 1953 and formed a jointly owned subsidiary with the somewhat awkward name MaVoTape. Other recorder, tape, or phonograph record companies similarly began to offer a growing variety of music on tape after 1954. Tapes came down in price, but were still relatively expensive for many years, ranging from about six to nine dollars in the mid-1950s in contrast to $3.98, $4.98, and $5.98 LPs 612 Because almost everything in the 1950s available on tape was also available on LP record, tapes offered nothing more than phonograph records except for the higher price. Tape makers were quick to point out, however, that tapes did not get scratchy like phonographs did and never wore out. Even so, music enthusiasts like Edward Tatnall Canby, then a columnist for Saturday Review of Literature, predicted that the "inherent" disadvantages of wire and tape would keep them from replacing disk recordings for music. The difficulties in selling tape to the public encouraged a dependence upon other markets among tape duplicators. Before about 1954- 55, when hi-fi began to become a more popular movement, tape duplicating companies catered almost exclusively to the background-music field (such as the Muzak Corporation) or to distributors of educational tapes. Even in the middle of the decade these specialized markets were, in aggregate, still very important.613 The first stereophonic or "binaural" tapes began to appear in the early 1950s, just about the time when several of the larger record labels entered the field of recorded tapes in a limited way. Many of the early binaural recordings 435 were essentially novelty items, as for example the Chamber Music Society of Chicago released a few recordings of its Fine Arts Quartet. The flexibility of these small companies allowed them to offer their tapes in both half-track monophonic and two track stereo for a few years, but the introduction by RCA of four-track stereo seemed too much to bear. Several companies boasted that they would continue to offer two-track stereo tapes, but they did not do so for long. Gradually, the high fidelity press began to be more inclusive in its attitude toward the tape recorder, in part because of the proliferation of recorded tapes. By the mid-1950s the movement was served by over forty different companies. Still, like the LP, the technical quality of tape recordings proved to be inconsistent. The leading enthusiasts' magazine, High Fidelity, began taking reviews of tape recordings more seriously after the introduction of stereo, although reviewers continued to complain of the low quality of many of the recordings into the 1960s.614 Because of technical objections, changing track standards, high cost, and the limited popular interest in classical music, sales of recorded tapes stayed low. Another set of factors to consider are not however directly apparent from either sales figures or the documentary historical evidence left by industry leaders. The later iterations of tape recorders retained features of professional equipment which consumers continued to act indifferent to. It is true that the high fidelity movement generated additional sales for reel-to-reel recorders and that four-track stereo tapes were by the middle 1960s selling better than any previous tape format. Yet it is also true that tape remained a distant second in sales compared to the LP record or even the 45 rpm record. 436 Manufacturers' efforts to lower tape costs by slowing down tape speeds did not stimulate a mass market as they hoped. Instead, it created a machine which was poorly matched to its intended medium: the commercial recording. The home tape recorder of the 1950s, operating at 7 1/2 or 3 3/4 ips and using the standard 7-inch reel of tape holding 1200 feet of tape had the potential to play a record that could last from 30 minutes per side at the higher speed to an hour per side at the low speed. The short-lived two-track stereo format confused things a bit because the full tape was used for a single stereo program- one could not turn the tape over at the end of the program to play the other side and therefore the total playing time was halved. But later, 4-track stereo, thinner tapes allowing more than 2400 feet per 7-inch reel, and slower speeds allowed tape programs could be quite long. Recorder design in other respects remained static, particularly in the persistence of the use of 7-inch reels. The situation is more easily understandable by analogy to the more familiar phonograph. On the one hand, a phonograph record could be made with a diameter of, say, 100 inches. It would be unwieldy and would require a huge player, but it might be possible for it to hold a record of several hours duration. Would consumers find it desirable to buy a phonograph player if the only records they could buy were of only 45-50 minutes duration? Probably not. Indeed, the vast majority of early releases on tape were of symphonies or other very long programs, reflecting the record companies' belief that long playing time was one of the tape recorder's primary virtues. Record companies and recorder manufacturers also surmised that the high fidelity potential of a tape recorder would appeal to classical or other "serious" music lovers and that classical music was conveniently packaged in rather long movements. But this 437 happy coincidence, which also applied to the LP record, did not answer the question of how to find some type of program content which, combined with the technical features of existing tape recorders, would appeal to a mass audience. Neither record companies nor recorder manufacturers apparently gave much thought to developing something analogous to the 45 rpm record, which had built upon the successes of the earlier 78 rpm record in cultivating a huge market for "singles." There were a few proposals for tape jukeboxes, especially from the J. P. Seeburg Company, but commercial jukeboxes continued to rely on 45 rpm disks until the 1980s. In general, record companies seemed unsure of what to do about non- classical, long-length recordings in the 1950s. Few artists were prepared to issue albums of new material the way they commonly do today. Instead, "popular" albums often consisted of such things as mood music or other "light" instrumental music, collections of folk, marching, or dance songs, motion picture soundtracks, or holiday albums. One of the exceptions was jazz, but while this medium became more popular during the decade its following did not yet represent a mass market. The real flowering of the long-program, reel-to-reel format was not in the 1950s but in the 1970s, and the technology was not that of the 1950s-style hi-fi tape recorder but that of the Compact Cassette, introduced in the early 1960s by the Phillips Company of the Netherlands. By that date, recording artists and the public had thoroughly embraced the album format, and as albums for the mass market became more commonly created and purchased, the market for tape recorders expanded. That argument is pursued in chapter eight, but the data 438 Table 7.1: U.S. Sales of Recorded Reel-to-Reel Tapes ^25 o 20 I 15 c 1 0 w 0>0>0>0>0>0?0)0>0>0>0?0>0>0>0>0>0>0>0>0>0)0>0>0>0>0) x 1 million $ 439 below summarizes sales of recorded reel-to-reel tapes (no separate data is available for the period before 1967, because sales were so low) and phonograph records. The two sets of data are difficult to place in a single table because of the enormous difference in scale. Radio. Phonograph, and Television Markets If recorded tapes were a disappointment to their promoters, so were tape recorder sales, which grew during the 1950s but not as quickly as many thought. Hi-fi equipment including tape recorders fit into an increasingly diverse and complex market for home electronics which ultimately remained dominated by televisions, radios, and phonographs during this period. The domestic radio market (including both foreign and American-made products) was relatively weak during in the 1950s. Sales had stood at about thirteen million units in 1942, before civilian manufacture was cut off, and picked up in 1946 to total fourteen million. By 1949, however, home radio sales were down to ten million units, and never got above that level again until 1958, when just under eleven million units were sold. Thereafter home radio sales increased yearly, reaching 42 million by 1972. Auto radios had increased almost every year since 1930, but also tended to level off or fluctuate in the 1950s at a level between 3.5 and almost 7 million units, never reaching more than 13 million during the 1960s and early 1970s.615 Monetarily, the largest market by far for consumer electronics in the 1950s and 1960s was television sets. While in 1947 only 178,571 were sold, by 1961 that figure had risen to 6,177,797 at a value of over $835 million.616 440 Over 90% of U.S. households had at least one television by 1962, according to an Electronics Industry Association estimate.617 The phonograph industry had seen sales increases since 1940, when about 1,300,000 players were sold, and except for a few bad years sales remained strong through the 1950s. The introduction of television seemed to account for a sharp drop from over 3.5 million units in 1947 to only 860,000 in 1952, but then sales reached 4.5 million in 1960. Monaural phonographs accounted for more than 2/3 of sales in 1958, but three years later, when stereo LP records had been introduced, stereophonic phonographs accounted for almost 2/3 of total sales 616 It is more difficult to interpret the sales of phonograph records for these years, since they include the important category of jukebox sales in addition to home sales. Nonetheless, in terms of the value of recordings sold the industry showed increases almost every year after 1933, rising from a factory value of $8 million in that year to over $244 million in 1961. Increases of up to $30 million per year came after 1954, presumably in part because of the hi-fi movement619 Importantly, only about one half of the value of total sales in the 1950s could be attributed to LP's the rest were singles- 78 rpm records in the early 1950s and 45 rpm records by the end of the decade, which is significant since the singles cost much less. Comprehensive evaluations of tape recorder sales are not available for periods before about 1960. However, industry estimates suggest that the market for tape recorders was small compared to televisions, radios, and phonographs. Annual sales of tape recorders were about 152,000 units in 1952, rising to perhaps 650,000 by 1959. If 90 per cent of sales were units in 441 the low priced range ($150-$250), that would represent a retail value of $130,000,000.620 Clearly, the tape recorder market did become a serious competitor to the phonograph during the decade of the 1960s. Table 7.3: Sales of U.S. Made Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders, 1949-1970 900000 y 800000 - 700000 - 600000 -- *J 500000 ? 3 400000 ? 300000 - 200000 - 100000 ?- ? j' ' ' | | ( The gap between the audio tape recorder's overwhelming acceptance in American culture and the turgid situation evident in the late 1950s still remains to be explained. How did the mass market for tape recorders finally emerge? Its roots lie in artistic developments of the early 1960s, such as the pop album for teenagers, in the continued lowering of prices, and also in technical developments such as miniaturization, portability, and stereophonic sound. 442 The Introduction of Stereo and the Abandonment of High Fidelity To high fidelity enthusiasts, as well as to historians of music and music technology, one of the most exciting and important events of the 1950s was the introduction of a new recording technique called "stereo." Emerging from laboratories in England and the United States as early as the 1930s, stereo recordings on disk remained problematical until the introduction of magnetic tape for "master" recording. Tape, in fact, was central to both the recording and the reproduction of stereo recordings until 1958, when RCA introduced a modified form of the LP record with two programs engraved in a single groove. Stereo, the LP, and tape were thus interlocking developments which cannot be considered separately.621 Stereo had the most profound of implications for the high fidelity movement. It constituted an abandonment of some of the key practices and goals of the movement which not only permanently altered it but also helped convert it into a new, broader, type of movement less connected to elite culture. In turn, the broadening of the movement created new conditions in which tape would eventually flourish. From Multitrack to Stereo Until the introduction of stereo, the goal of recording engineers and high fidelity enthusiasts seemed lie in the recreation of a concert hall in the living room. Toward this end, changes came first from recording techniques, then from reproducing technology, then back again. Post-World War II professional recording and reproducing equipment, still too expensive for most Americans to buy, nonetheless had reached a very high state of sophistication. One 443 company recorded a symphony orchestra, then hid it behind a curtain inside a concert hall. Then, when both the recording and the orchestra alternately played, the audience was unable to distinguish the two. On the consumer side, in 1945 the British record company Decca (which had an important American arm) introduced its unimaginatively acronymed "ffrr" (standing for "full frequency range recording) disks in England, which incorporated an expanded frequency range. Decca ffrr disks became popular among the high fidelity enthusiasts when they became available in America the next year, even though they cost $2.00- twice as much as regular 78 rpm disks.622 Still, even with such advances as historian Roland Gelatt pointed out in 1955, the shellac disk had changed little since its introduction in 1930, and many who watched the phonograph industry recover after World War II wondered if "Emile Berliner's gramophone disc was not really passe, a hardy survivor from another era enjoying one last fling."623 A more radical change in phonograph technology, was the LP record. Drawing upon a variety of techniques developed in prior years, Columbia devised a new, nearly noiseless vinyl medium, a slower operating speed for long playback time, and a narrower groove (and corresponding phonograph stylus). The RCA 45 rpm ran at a higher speed, but incorporated many of the same technical features and also had high fidelity potential. The two disks were compatible insofar as a turntable with two speeds and a simple adapter could play either one. Yet RCA's disk was a "single," reflecting the fact that Americans purchased far greater numbers of 78 rpm singles than albums. While classical music fans saw little of value to the "45," and its introduction spurred a "battle of the speeds" which merchandisers and retailers thought would be disastrous, 444 but RCA had good reasons to introduce the new format. It made a great deal of sense in the context of popularizing high fidelity. Here was a phonograph with greatly improved sonic qualities which seemed likely to appeal to the masses of singles record buyers. Nevertheless "it could not obviate the same upsetting breaks in continuity that had been plaguing the discriminating listener for decades."624 The introduction of stereo recording also had tinges of the conflict between highbrow classical fans and the mass American audience. The stereo recordings of the 1950s were produced on a tape recorder by recording two separate tracks on a single tape. (Figure 7.3) Recording engineers found that, just as in monophonic recording, by using the intermediate step of tape recording the sound of the final master disk could be fine tuned with more certainty and less chance of a ruined recording. But techniques for making stereo were just being developed. Most of the early stereo recordings were of instrumental music, and it was not clear, for example, where microphones should be positioned to achieve the most noticeable stereo effect. Engineers modified existing recording techniques such as "mixing" the outputs of multiple microphones, using microphones which were directional (that is, they had to be "aimed" very carefully at the sound source), the use of equalization circuits (somewhat analogous to tone controls) and so on.625 An independent musician named Les Paul working out of a home studio also contributed significantly to the development of recording techniques. Paul in 1945 or 1946 had produced a recording using conventional disk-cutting instrumental music, and it was not clear, for example, where microphones machines in which he played all the instruments himself, recording them one at 445 DUAL MAGNETIC HEAD MAGNETIC TAPE REEL VOLTAGE AMPLIFIER VOLTAGE AMPLIFIER GANGED GAIN CONTROLS POWER' AMPLIFIER POWER AMPLIFIER II J \^ LOUDSPEAKERS^^ CHANNEL A CHANNEL B Figure 7.3: Stereo Reproduction A stereophonic sound system typically originated from a two-channel tape recording. The two channels, representing two distinct recordings, were parallel along the tape, but were reproduced by separate and physically separated electronic amplifiers and loudspeakers. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 1958, 90. 446 a time and then accompanying the recording of himself on disk as he cut a new "take." By doing so he built up, layer by layer, a recording that sounded like a band with several players. Paul also created a novel sound by reproducing some of the recorded guitar tracks at a higher speed but mixing them with normal-speed tracks for the final record. Unsure as to whether his "new sound" would appeal to people, he waited to audition the record until he found himself at a Hollywood party with several other musicians and record industry people. The decadent partisans, all apparently smoking marijuana except for Paul, perked up when he put the recording onto the turntable. "Well, you'd think somebody'd doused the thing with kerosene- it hit the turntable like an explosion! They'd never heard anything like it, had no idea what or who it was."626 Les Paul's early successes led to more experimentation with this "sound on sound" technique in conjunction with the use of first wire and then tape recorders. While at first he tried to duplicate his disk recording techniques using tape, soon he was attempting to get two recordings synchronized by using two separate recorders. By the middle 1950s, Paul in conjunction with Ampex had modified a multi-track instrumentation recorder for use with audio, and Paul went on to built a career upon clever multitrack sound effects, particularly by recording multipart harmonies of his partner Mary Ford's voice to allow her to, in effect, accompany herself in song. (Figure 7.4)627 This was certainly not the first time sound-on-sound or dubbing had been used in recording; such experiments occurred as early as the 1930s. However, the commercial success of Paul's string of hit singles popularized the technique of multitrack recording and gave recording engineers new ideas about how to 447 manipulate tape recorders. Paul's speeded-up, high pitched electric guitar tracks (a device his songs helped popularize) and Mary Ford's complex, unearthly harmonies used the tape recorder not to maximize high fidelity but to create a new sound.628 Les Paul was certainly concerned with sound quality. Besides convenience, his main objection to the disk recorder was that after five or ten dubs a track started to lose its musical qualities. He found that he had to record the "least important" instruments like percussion, first because the sound degradation of subsequent disk-to-disk dubs was less noticeable there. But he was not attempting to join the high fidelity movement's quest of recreating the concert hall inside a living room. For a variety of reasons, many only loosely unrelated to the technical or economic qualities of the tape recorder, some musicians began turning away from mere considerations of sound quality just as the era of high fidelity began. The avant garde composer John Cage at about this time, generated a sensation among musicians by writing a series of compositions for tape, using the machine to create weird new sounds. While Cage had been using radio squeals, hand tools, and other such things in his compositions for some years, the tape recorder added a new dimension to his work. Cage and several other musicians at this time experimented, for example, with cutting up tape recordings and reassembling them in a new order, sometimes interspersed with reversed bits.629 Ironically, the rhetoric of engineers involved in stereo had since the 1930s focused on creating the illusion of reality. Researchers recognized that the sound generated from real orchestras did not originate from a small area such as that represented by a loudspeaker but from a broad stage. Recordings 448 Figure 7.4: Multitrack head assembly Multitrack recording heads developed by Ampex Corporation were the basis of a line of data and instrumentation recorders introduced in the early 1950s. This technology was also adapted for multitrack audio recordings for studio use, and later stereophonic recordings. This diagram shows the construction of a multitrack head, in which several individual heads ("windings") are stacked to form the complete assembly. Bernstein, Video Tape. 449 made in concert halls and replayed in concert halls were one thing; it was something else entirely to reproduce the realism of a concert hall in a small living room. Engineers began to recognize that even given perfect frequency response and zero distortion that living room acoustics- the way sound bounced off walls and ceiling or was absorbed by couches and rugs- necessarily made it difficult to recreate a convincing concert hall sound. No single recording could compensate for the multitude of variations found in American living rooms, and the quantified techniques of sound recording developed in earlier decades were simply no help. Listening was too subjective an experience, too tied up with notions of aesthetics. "Sound exists as something that is heard and as waves that can be measured. The hearing is more important than the measuring, and the two do not always agree," one writer admitted.630 Ironically, the glaring impossibility of recreating the concert hall helped give stereo its impetus in the early 1950s. The ideal recording and reproducing system, engineers theorized, would place a microphone at each instrument, record each instrument on a separate channel, and reproduce each channel through a separate loudspeaker located in the listening room at approximately the location of the original instrument. Such a system was obviously impractical, but engineers came to believe that three or even two channels could produce the same kind of realism.631 With two microphones, two recording channels, and two reproducers in the form of a pair of headphones, it was easy to create the sensation of being able to pinpoint the source of the original sound in a recording. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, several magnetic-tape based systems appeared which allowed listeners to follow, for 450 example, the sound of footsteps across an invisible sound stage. This kind of recording requiring headphones is known today as "binaural" recording because it keeps the two sound channels separate all the way from initial recording through final reproduction. Engineers believed however, that most people would not want to listen to all music through headphones, and sought to achieve the stereo effect with ordinary loudspeakers, and that implied a compromise in the number of microphones and recording channels. The stereo recordings of the early 1950s, recorded on 2-track tape or on a special (and short lived) dual-groove phonograph record were promptly made obsolete by RCA's 4-track stereo tape (that is, two stereo programs on a single tape) and stereo LP formats in 1958, which established the standard home stereo technologies.632 Writers for magazines like High Fidelity quickly recognized what audio engineers had never discussed; that stereo recording did not represent a step towards "high fidelity" as it had been previously defined. Instead, it represented the abandonment of high fidelity, a break with the past and the plotting of a new course. Why? Because a two channel stereo recording, no matter how carefully made, could never be expected to achieve "concert hall" realism. A distinction was now to be made between high fidelity and high quality, whereas the two had previously been intertwined. There were certainly many stereo recordings which were deemed unacceptable on technical grounds. Reviews of the early stereo records and tapes pointed out their uneven technical qualities and expressed disgust at willingness of record companies to release products of such low quality. But it was the stereo effect, the illusion of being able to locate particular instruments, which constituted a separate and 451 controversial issue, for while listeners often commented that they could visualize the placement of instruments, their visualizations were usually wrong. (Figures 7.5 and 7.6) This controversy began innocently enough, as several reviewers remarked that one could not distinguish the placement of individual instruments from more than about ten rows back in a real concert hall. Why, then, did high fidelity enthusiasts need stereo at all? Critics began to be more skeptical of its supposed advantages.633 But stereo had a unique allure which tended to win over its critics. As one writer described the demonstrations of stereo at the 1957 Audio Fair, even "demonstrated in these poor listening condition, it was impressive. Even bad stereo," he pointed out, can give the spatial illusion.634 Moreover, the remarkable ability of stereo recordings to create a pleasing aural experience even with low quality equipment or second-rate sound sources startled, amazed, and even threatened high fidelity enthusiasts. ABC radio made a few experimental stereo broadcasts which used the technique of "simulcasting"; one channel was broadcast on ABC-FM, one on ABC-AM.635 Most reviews of these broadcasts noted that listeners generally used their monophonic FM systems in conjunction with whatever low quality table radio might be around the house, but that the difference in these unmatched equipments and the difference in quality between AM and FM seemed not to matter. Using his high fidelity system and a portable radio, critic Martin Meyer wrote that "Differences in sound quality between the two channels are surprisingly unimportant in the total effect of binaural [sic] sound."636 The importance that contemporaries placed on the redefinition of high fidelity due to stereo is suggested by the revised editions of books on 452 <5> 4 SOUND SOURCES 2 ~ 2i FREE FIELD ROOM DIRECTIONAL PATTERN MICROPHONE AMPLIFIER ATTENUATOR J AMPLIFIER LOUDSPEAKER CURTAIN A' 2^ ODB IDB H-M4 LISTENING ROOM jZ^Vi OBSERVER FIGURE 7.5: ACTUAL VERSUS PERCEIVED LOCATIONAL DISTORTIONS WITH DIRECTIONAL MICROPHONES DISPLACED LATERALLY THE USE OF TWO SEPARATE RECORDING CHANNELS COULD ACHIEVE THE ILLUSION OF BEING ABLE TO LOCATE THE ORIGINAL SOUND SOURCES ON AN IMAGINARY STAGE. HOWEVER, PRACTICAL STEREO SYSTEMS SHOWED THAT DISTORTIONS IN THE APPARENT PLACEMENT OF SOUND SOURCES WOULD ALMOST INEVITABLY OCCUR. THIS DRAWING SHOWS MINOR DISTORTIONS BETWEEN ACTUAL SOUND SOURCE LOCATIONS, ABOVE, AND PERCEIVED LOCATIONS, BELOW. FROM JOURNAL OF THE AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY. 1958, 90. 453 FREE FIELD ROOM DELAY ? SOUND SOURCE AMPLIFIER ATTENUATOR AMPLIFIER VOLUME INDICATOR LOUDSPEAKER CURTAI A' JAPPARENT SOUND SOURCES Q s' 2, LISTENING ROOM OBSERVER Figure 7.6: Actual Versus Perceived Location Distortion with Directional Microphones Displaced Fore and Aft More obvious distortions of this type are evident in this arrangement. Two closely spaced microphones pick up a single sound source, which to listener perceives as being far from the actual location. The effect is not greater realism, which engineers admitted could never be achieved, but "realism" in the sense that sounds seemed to originate from points other than the loudspeakers. From Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 1958, 90. 454 MICROPHONE A MICROPHONE B the subject which all came out just after 1958. Meyer's popular 1956 book on high fidelity, which went into its second edition in 1958, reported how stereo had undermined the association between equipment costs and acceptable sound, saying that "the difference between two $75 speakers and two $150 speakers in a binaural set is real, of course; but it's considerably less than the difference between one $75 and one $150 speaker monaurally.637 Whether the record companies and equipment manufacturers had intended to or not, the introduction of stereo was a direct assault on some of the basic presumptions and pretensions of the high fidelity movement. In the first place it called into question what was meant by fidelity. "Fidelity surely must be fidelity to something," wrote Robert Charles March for High Fidelity in 1958, "but stereophonic recording as experienced so far exhibits no sure guide to its norms."638 Secondly, because pleasing sound could now more easily be reproduced using smaller, less expensive components, stereo opened the possibility for a "domesticated" and accessible form of audio equipment, and therefore a broader consumer audience. In the next decade, manufacturers would find that their cheap stereos in fact did sell well. The introduction of stereo, along with innovations in electronics and music, by the mid-1960s opened new possibilities for music in the automobile, including the possibility of appealing, relatively inexpensive tape systems for the car. High fidelity enthusiasts based their rejection of these "mid-fi" or "low-fi" technologies on purely technical grounds, but their reaction, as gauged in enthusiast publications, also suggests that low cost stereo was not exclusive enough. As long as status seeking was tied up with the purchase and use of certain types of audio equipment, the movement would survive in some form on the basis of 455 economic exclusion as much as the collection and manipulation of esoteric technical and musical knowledge. But some high fidelity enthusiasts and equipment manufacturers, and all record companies, were ready to embrace this appealing new sound whether or not it was an abandonment of high fidelity. Even ignoring for a moment the argument that high fidelity equipment of the 1950s was too expensive and unattractive to appeal to a mass audience, some contemporaries still denounced the giant loudspeakers and super-powered amplifiers that aficionados claimed made it possible to reproduce the concert hall sound realistically. Even in High Fidelity magazine, the bulwark of convention, columnist John W. Campbell wrote, "we can stop trying to fool that system [referring to "man's highly evolved sensory apparatus"] right now and save a lot of effort. Instead, let's work with it."639 Clearly, there was room for a new approach to music listening, one that allowed pleasure without fidelity.640 Finally, an early reviewer pointed out that the stereo illusion was much more sensational for popular music than "serious" music, hinting perhaps that the stereo technique applied to popular music would appeal to the "masses"641 Conclusions The 1950s saw the expansion and diversification of magnetic recording technology far beyond its previous context among the radio, telephone, and motion picture industries. Drawing on the technologies developed in America and those developed in Germany, American companies invented an astounding range of new ways to use magnetic tape and other media to record information. What had previously been used only as a sound recording 456 medium had truly become something much greater. The computers, data recorders, telemetry devices, video recorders, and other machines using magnetic media resembled their predecessors only in basic operating principle and some aspects of physical appearance. No less drastic was the way magnetic recording was being reshaped during the decade of the 1950s for ordinary sound recording purposes. The high fidelity movement and the tape recorder became popular phenomena at exactly the same time and indeed were intertwined in both obvious and hidden ways. From the consumer's perspective, tape recorders were one of the battlegrounds in the struggle to delineate the boundaries of high fidelity as it passed from the loving hands of the purists to the more ham fisted hoi poloi. Yet from the other side of the consumer-producer line, stereo recording (a phenomenon not inherently but practically linked to professional tape recording devices) would help to unravel the feature of the early high fidelity hobby most cherished by enthusiasts: the high fidelity recording. The first stereo recordings made available to the public were indeed on tape, although stereophonic LPs soon followed. The appearance of the stereo LP sent already weak tape sales plunging, but in the wings were innovations which would by the 1950s recombine stereo and tape in a new and ultimately very important configuration. Yet while the stereo tape player would finally fulfill mass marketers' dreams during the next decade, in the 1950s the consumer tape recorder remained a disappointment. The first generation of manufacturers simply could not discover a combination of technical, musical, or marketing ingredients which would appeal to the American masses, and perhaps there was no such combination. 457 ENDNOTES 565Eugene M. Grabbe, ed., Automation in Business and Industry (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1957),80-83, 101; "Tape Recorder.'' Aviation Week 54 (26 March 19511: 69; Curtis W. Fritze, "Tape Recorder Stores Computer Output," Electronics 27 (July 1954): 166-169; Robert R. Perron, "Shape Recording with Ratio-Modulated Tape," Electronics 23 (November 1950): 104-108; Rich Warren, "Airborne Audio: Hi-Fi in the Sky." Audio 75 (August 1991): 42- 46; "Pilot-To-Tower Recorder for Aviation Safety," Safety Engineering 99 (April 1950): 34; "Machine Makes Record of Airway Reports," American Business 20 (April 1950): 30; "Tape Controls Machine Drill," Radio Television and Hobbies 20 (January 1959): 13; L. G. Killian, "Data Recording on Magnetic Tape," Electronic Industries 4 (April 1948): 3; John W. Hogan, "Magnetic Tape Controls Machine Tools," Electronics 27 (December 1954): 144-1147; J. A. Sargeant, "Egg Processing Equipment," Electronics 23 (March 1950): 135-145; "Tape Records Tower Talk," Aviation Week 53 (18 September 1950): 22; K. L. Klippel and E. A. Dahl, "Railway Entertainment System," Electronics 20 (May 1947): 188-121; The Melachrino Strings, Music for Dining. RCA Victor LPM-1000. 566Camras, Marvin, "When the Professor Can't Be There," Film News 12 (September 1952): 26- 28; Joseph F. Hards, "Education on Tape," Audio Visual Guide 19 (May 1953): 3-4; United States Office of Education, Teaching with Radio. Audio. Recording, and Television Equipment (N.p.: Joint Committee of the U.S. Office of Education and the Radio-Television Manufacturers Association on the Use of Communications In Education, n.d. [1953]), 21-32; Educators took magnetic recording very seriously, as witnessed by the significant number of theses and dissertations built around tape or wire recording devices. See for example Owen McClure Stallard, "An Experimental Study of the Uses of the Magnetic Tape Recorder in Improving the Vocal Aspect of Effective Speaking in the Extemporaneous Speaking Situation," (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1954); Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, The Tape Recorder in the Elementary Classroom (St. Paul: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, 1955). 567J. Wallace Bastian, "Use of Color Slides and Magnetic Tape in Teaching Spanish," Audio- Visual Guide 20 (March 1954): 18-19; Kathleen McBrayer, "How I use the Tape Recorder," Audio Visual Guide 15 (April 1949): 19; Harold Hainfeld, "Saving Radio Programs With Our Tape Recorder," Audio-Visual Guide 16 (March 1950): 16; Dwight L. Arnold and Roy E. Wenger, "Avioot and the Tape Recorder," Audio Visual Guide 17 (April 1951): 33-34; Irving Rosenblum "Tape Recordings in Teaching Business Law," Audio Visual Guide 20 (March 1954): 16-17; William J. Temple, "Magnetic Tape and Wire Recorders," Audio-Visual Bulletin 1 (#2 1948) Daniel E., Denham, Jr. "Care and Maintenance of Tape and Tape Recorders in Schools," Audio-Visual laiiide 17 (October 1951): 8; Ray Liuzza. "What a Small Tape Recorder Can Do." Audio Visual Guide 19 (February 1953): 17-18 John Van Guilder, "How a Radio-Recorder Helped Our School," Audio Visual Guide 19 (December 1952): 30-31; "Investment Firm Uses Tape Recordings," Burroughs Clearing House 38 (April, 1954); 9; "The Reminiscences of Hans V. Kaltenborn," Columbia University Oral History Collection (New York, Columbia University, 1972), University Microfilms edition, 1972, microfilm reel 16, 231-232. 568"Electric Recorders Valued as Agent Training Device," The National Underwriter 54 (1 December 1950): 8; B. A. Tunnell, "Agency Uses Tape Recordings to Help Copy Writers," 458 Advertising Agency and Advertising and Selling 45 (April 1952): 90,106; "Finds New Use for Recorder," American Business 33 (June 1952): 43; "Tape Recorder Solves Mass Training Problem." Sales Management." 65 (20 November 1950): 74-75; "Robot Announcer Keeps Supervisors Informed," Mill and Factory 46 (June 1950): 102; "Electric Recorders Valued as Agent Training Device," The National Underwriter 54 (1 December 1950): 8; "Supervisors Just Dial '80' -And Get All the Facts," Food Engineering 24 (October 1952): 147-149; "Safety Engineer Becomes Superman," Safety Engineering 97 (April 1949): 31, 50; "Now They Have Talking Elevators," National Safety News 72 (September 1955): 57; "Operatorless Elevators Need Not Be Voiceless," Engineering News-Record 155 (7 July 1955): 46, 50. 569Marshall C. Yovits, Large Capacity Memory Techniques for Computing Systems (New York: McMillan 1962), 79-98. 570Gomer L. Davies, Magnetic Tape Instrumentation (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 1-5, 25-74; Kinney, Edward S. "Magnetic Tape Drive... Designed for Minimum Speed Variation," Machine JQesign 25 (October 1953): 219-221. 571 Andrew Gabor, "High-Density Recording on Magnetic Tape," Electronics 32 (16 October 1959): 72-74. 572RCA and Ampex briefly marketed magnetic disk sound recorders for broadcast use. They were intended for use with short announcements or other messages where reel-to-reel tape was inconvenient. Roberta J. Barmore, personal correspondence with the author, 9 November 1994. 573Steven Wolpin, "The Race to Video," Invention and Technology 10 (Fall 1994): 52-62; Lawrence Lichty and Malachi Topping, American Broadcasting; A Sourcebook on the History Of Radio and Television (New York: Hastings House, 1975), 70; Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty.; Eugene Lyons, David Sarnoff: A Biography (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 316-317; Joseph F. Robinson. Videotape Recording: Theory and Practice (London: Focal Press, 1975), 17; Mark Mooney, Jr., "The History of Magnetic Recording," Hi-Fi Tape Recording 5 (February 1958): 37; Robert Angus, "History of Magnetic Recording, Part II" Audio (September 1984): 35; Mark Mooney, Jr., "The History of Magnetic Recording," Tape Recording 5 (February 1958): 23- 24; see also Philip Watson, "ATN Using Video Tape Recorder," Radio Television and Hobbies 20 (October 1958): 61-2; "TV on Magnetic [sic]." Film News 13 (#3. 1953): 26; "RCA's Color TV on Slow Tape," Electronic Week 2 (October 28,1957): 13; Palo Alto Firm Licensed to Build Ampex Recorder," Electronic Week 1 (August 6,1956): 9; "Commercial TV Tape is Here," Electronic Week 2 (July 22,1957): 15-16; "BBC Develops Improved Video Tape Recorder," Electronic Week 3 (26 May 1958): 19; "TV On Tape: Where Will It Lead?," Industrial Design 1 (April 1954): 95. Hugo Gernsback, "Television Recording," Radio Craft 16 (February 1946): 305-306; "Video Tape Recorder Uses Revolving Heads," Electronics 30 (1 August 1957): 138-144; "Bing's Mirror To Reflect in December," Electronics 26 (February 1953): 8; Dennis Moralee, "30 Years of Professional Video Recording," Electronics and Power 33 (November/December 1987): 726- 730; "RCA Shows TV Recording on Tape," Tele-Tech and Electronic Industries. January 1954, n.p.; Waldemar Kaempffert, "Science," New York Times 13 December 1953, p. E-11; Bernard F. Osbarh, "Recording TV on Magnetic Tape," Tele-Tech. January 1954, p 81, 124-125; "RCA Demonstrates TV Tape Recorder and Tells Plans for Perfecting It," Advertising Age. 14 December 1953, p. 68-69; "Magnetic Tape Can Now Record Sight as Well as Sound," Radio and Television Journal, January 1954, p. 16 574Myron J. Stolaroff, "Applications of Magnetic Recording to Seismic Exploration," Proceedings of the Instrument Society of America 8 (1953): 130-132; George B. Loper, "Seismic Recorder for Monitoring Magnetic Tape," Geophysics 20 (July 1955): 585-592; G. B. Loper and R. R. Pittman, "Seismic Recording on Magnetic Tape," Geophysics 19 (1954): 105-115; W. T. Bom, "A Review of Geophysical Instrumentation," Geophysics 25 (1960): 85-86; Many other scientific and industrial applications of magnetic recording were outlined in Paul J. Weber's The Tape 459 Recorder as an Instrumentation Device (Redwood City, California: The Ampex Corporation, 1953), author's collection. 575Skipwith W. Athey, Ph.D., Magnetic Tape Recording (Washington, D.C: NASA, 1966), 215- 270; Eugene Bollay, "Miniature/Portable Magnetic Tape Recorders," Datamation 4 (January/February 1958): 40-43; "Magnetic Tape Recorder." Instruments 22 (April 1949): 328; Gerhard O. Haglund and James J. Ryan, "The V.G.A. Flight Recorder," Proceedings of the Instrument Society of America 8 (1953): 125-128; "Miniature Tape Recorder," Electronic Week 2 (April 22,1957): 16; R. Hanel, R. A. Stampfl, J. Cressey, J. Licht, and E. Rich, Jr., "Tracking Earth's Weather With Cloud-Cover Satellites," Electronics 32 (1 May 1959): 44-49; Experimental guided missiles also made use of magnetic recorders for storing telemetry data. One type, apparently designed by the Armour Research Foundation and United Aircraft Corporation, was described by Albert A. Gerlach, in "F-M Recording in Guided Missiles," Electronics 28 (January 1953): 108-111. This was a 198 channel, 100 track battery operated steel tape recorder to fit into the nose of a missile in flight. Near the end of the flight, the recording tape was jettisoned and later recovered for analysis; "Data Recorders," Tele-Tech. September 1948,61. 578Rcone Arledge, quoted in Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, Winning is the Only Thing: Sports in America Since 1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins: 1989), 117. 577See chapter one, also, Eighth Wonder of the World, reprinted from Exhibitors Weekly Bulletin. 27 March 1915, in William J. Hammer Collection, series 3, box 16, file 2, Archives, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C; "Hot off the Wire," Science Illustrated 1 (April 1946): 111-113; "New Telephone Recorder," Radio-Electronics 20 (December 1948): 56; Leon Laden, "Robot Telephone," Radio News 38 (August 1947): 39-41, 103-104; "Remote Control Telephonograf," Tele-Tech. April 1947, 69, 108; H. G. M. Spratt, Magnetic Tape Recording (London: Hey wood and Company Limited, 1958), 243-244; "Recorder Rules," Business Week. 17 August 1946, 25; "FCC Sets Rules on Telephone Recorders," Business Week. 6 December 1947, 22; Susan Jones and Marilyn Nissenson, Going Gone: Vanishing Americana (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994), 160-161; "Telephone Recorders 300% Ahead," New York Times 28 February 1946, 20; "Telephone Recorders" Ibid., 15 January 1946, 22; "Telephone Recorders," Ibid., 17 August 1946, 12; "Telephone Recorders," Ibid., 17 February 1946, 4:9; J.D. Lane, "Automatic Communications System," Electronics 25 (October 1952): 168, 170; John. Sunier, The Handbook of Telephones and Accessories (Blue Ridge Summitt, PA: TAB Books, 1978),98-133. 578See for example New York State Legislature, Joint Committee on Investigations of Public Service Commissions, Wiretapping in New York City (New York: 1916), Arno Reprints, 1974; "Eavesdropping In Washington," U.S. News and World Report. 9 April 1954, 36-37; "Phone Privacy," Business Week 19 January 1946,19-19; Dr. Allan N. Kornblum, Intelligence and the Law: Cases and Materials (N.p.: Defense Intelligence College, n.d. [1985]), e-1 to e-3; I Love Lucy episode number 84, originally aired February 15,1954. 579The wire recorder as high-tech spy toy of the early 1950s was suggested more recently in the motion picture Dick Tracy. 580Franklin Davies, "Meet Mr. Blooper," Magnetic Film and Tape Recording 2 (October 1955): 20-24; Similarly, Allan Fundt used a hidden camera act in the highly-acclaimed television series (video recorded of course) "The Candid Camera," and then in the 1980s produced an "adult" cable version on this called "The Candid Candid Camera." 581 Ed Powers, "Ed Powers!," Adult Video News 8 (February 1993): 29. 582"Record Albums Take a New Spin," Newsweek 100 (23 August 1982): 54. 583|n Western Germany in the late 1950s and early 1960s, record companies fought hard to get a new law passed which would require a licensing fee of each tape recorder owner. Receipts from the tax would go to the record companies as royalties, since it was assumed that most recordings 460 were of copyrighted material. Apparently the law did not pass, although similar sentiments prompted a congressional hearing in Washington in 1957. "Crosstalk," Tape Recording 8 (April 1961): 11. 584Sir Henry s. Lund, Round the World With A Dictaphone; A Record of Man and Movements in 1926 (London: E. Benn, Ltd., 1927), preface. 58^The taped letter had a brief resurgence in the early 1960s. By that time, Japanese companies had introduced battery powered portable tape recorders at low prices. During the Vietnam War, soldiers purchased these recorders and began sending tapes home to family and friends. American tape manufacturers quickly took note, offering tiny three inch reels of tape for use on these machines, packaged in a special "mailer" with a preprinted address label. "Crosstalk," Tape Recording 8 (July 1961): 13. 586Years later, a writer for High Fidelity discovered that "one conductor who has made some exceptional high fidelity recordings listens to them on a severely lo-fi portable phonograph. 'What's the difference,' he asks, 'when I always have to add a lot with my imagination anyway." Robert Charles March, "Let Us Keep Our Two-Eared Head," High Fidelity 8 (October 1958): 47; Norman H. Crowhurst, Stereophonic Sound (New York: John F. Rider, 1961), second ed., 1957, 16. 587pQger E. Kirk in 1957 confirmed what many enthusiasts knew from experience; that on the one hand the appreciation of sound quality was at least partly learned behavior, and that on the other hand people would be perfectly satisfied with their radios and phonographs until they experienced something "better," after which they wondered how they ever got along without it. "Learning, A Major Factor Influencing Preferences for High-Fidelity Reproducing Systems," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 5 (October 1957): 238-241. See also a rebuttal letter published by Hugh E. Riordan, ibid., volume 8 (October 1960): 269. 588A good survey of the practices developed by the early 1950s for the quantitative testing of audio equipment is given in David Fidelman, Guide to Audio Reproduction (New York: John F. Rider, 1953), 206-229 589David Lander, "Technology Makes Music," Invention and Technology 6 (Spring/Summer 1990): 56-58. 590rj J N. Williamson, The Williamson Amplifier: A collection of Articles Reprinted from "Wireless World." (Peterborough, New Hampshire: Amateur Audio Publications, 1990); "The Williamson Story," The Audio League Report 1 (August 1954): 3, 7; 591 On home building see Robert Mackenzie, "High Fidelity in Britain," High Fidelity 4 (July 1954): 40; Lander, "Technology," 56-63; John M. Conly, "They shall Have Music," Atlantic 185 (March 1950): 91-96. 592lnckJentally, very few tape recorder kits were ever available, either. Joseph J. Kramp, "Build Your Own Recorder," Tape Recording 6 (January 1959): 14-18. Home building has interesting parallels with certain other hobbies characteristic of the post-World War II era in America, such as hot-rodding. Some theorize that industrial work had been so robbed of its meaning by the postwar period that men found enjoyment in technically sophisticated hobbies such as these. See for example H. F. Moorhouse, "The 'Work Ethic and 'Leisure' Activity: The Hot Rod in Post war America," in Patrick Joyce, ed., The Historical Meanings of Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 237-309. 593Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of a Cultural Hierarchy. 13-81, 89- 116, 207-211, 220-224. 594The long playing record was originally introduced by Victor in 1931, though it was not a commercial success. It was simply an enlarged version of the standard 10 -inch disk. Gelatt, 290. ^9^C. J. LeBel of Audio Devices (a tape and transcription disk manufacturer) estimated in 1957 that "99.98 per cent" of home, school, and church recording was now done on tape, but that the home disk recording hobby still existed. He seemed astonished that "we still get letters from 461 enthusiastic home disc recordists." C. J. LeBel, "Tape or Disc?," High Fidelity 7 (October 1957): 56; Jean Cover, "Sounds of Your Life," Tape Recording 8 (January 1961): 27-29; Perhaps the most persistent use of home recording, other than the duplication of existing recordings, has been its use by "pen pals." Especially during the 1950s, there were many state or national correspondence clubs built around the tape recorder, as seen in magazines like High Fidelity, passim. 596Qnly if the making of tapes from a number of different original sources- the kind of "compilation" tapes of various songs that teenagers often make, can be considered an active, creative process, then there is some basis to the argument that tape recording retained its "Victorian" aspects. 597Robert Gorman, "What's all This Talk About Hi-Fi? Popular Mechanics (September 1954): 106-110, 258; "New Yorker Hotel Mobbed for 5th Annual Audio Fair," Down Beat 18 November 1953, n.p. 598see for example Julian Hirsch and Milton Weiss, "Some Thoughts on Evaluating Audio Components for the Consumer," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 4 (October 1956): 145-150; Washington Audio Society to Everett Dillard, 2 November 1953. Armstrong Collection, Columbia University, Box 122. 599As late as 1956, television was regularly included as a part of the standard high fidelity equipment. Televisions were commonly included in how-to articles describing built-in living room installations, and some televisions came ready to be connected to an external amplifier or loudspeaker. See for example Martin Mayer, Hi-Fi (New York: Maco Magazine Company, 1956), 122-123. In the 1958 edition of Mayer's book , the chapter entitled "Tuners, Tape, and TV" had been changed to "Tape and Tuners," reflecting the decline of television's high fidelity status. Idem, second edition (1958), chapter 6. 600?.. for the rich audiophile," tape recorders would provide more "fun" than any other component by providing recordings of "nearly professional quality," wrote Martin Mayer, in Hi-Fi. (1956), 119; John M. Conly, "As the Editors See It," High Fidelity 6 (May 1956): 35 601 "Crosstalk," Tape Recording 9 (January 1962): 11. 602"Discord in Hi-Fi Market," Electronic Week 2 (September 1957): 13; The desire among "legitimate" hi-fi manufacturers to set a definition for hi-fi grew stronger in the later 1950s when inexpensive Japanese imports began threatening their markets. Even the Federal Trade Commission got involved, setting minimum standards in 1963. "FTC Hi-Fi Definition In Works for Early in 1963," Photo Dealer 29 (February 1963): 60; "Let's Get a Meaningful Definition of High Fidelity Now!" Photo Dealer 29 (May 1963): 68-69; "Ampex Calls for Setting up Tape Recorder Standards," Photo Dealer 30 (October 1964): 92. 603John M. Conly, the editor of High Fidelity, claimed in 1957 that a high fidelity system consisted of a phonograph, a loudspeaker, a loudspeaker enclosure, and an amplifier, costing at least $220. "Don't Be Amazed," High Fidelity 7 (July 1957): 25. 604Edward Maged, "An old Look for Your New Sound," High Fidelity 4 (February 1955): 46-48, 114. 605?crosstalk," Tape Recording 6 (September 1951): 3; Jean Gordon and Jan McArthur, "Pop Culture, Magazines, and American Domestic Interiors, 1898-1940," Journal of Popular Culture 22 (Spring 1989): 35-60; "Crosstalk." Tape Recording 9 (September 1962): 13; similar things were going on in the design and marketing of television cabinets, not surprising since many television manufacturers also sold high fidelity equipment in the 1950s. See Cecilia Tichi, Electronic Hearth: Creating An American Television Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 18-23. 606"More Plastics in Tape Recorder," Modern Plastics (April 1951): 80; "Crosstalk," Tape Recording 6 (September 1951), 3; It was sometimes the case that optional cabinets were available for tape recorders, but anecdotal evidence suggests that these were not widely purchased. 462 607The National Bureau of standards, the U.S. Navy, and other government agencies set standards during or after World War II for wire and steel tape recorders, and otherwise adopted RMA or NAB professional recorder standards for postwar tape recorders. "Investigation of Magnetic Tape Recorders." Electronics 14 (May 1944): 133-135; Wesley C. Miller, "Magnetic Recording for Motion Picture Studios," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 48 (January 1947): 57-62; The BBC in 1947 set magnetic recording standards for radio use by simply adopting Magnetophone standards for tape width, thickness, tensile strength, and speed, as well as overall frequency response. "The Standardization of Magnetic Recording," Electronic Engineering 20 (December 1947): 396; A few manufacturers of tape sold their products wound on the reels two different ways through the 1950s. See for example a catalog sheet, Recordisc Corporation, n.d. [c. 1955], Trade Catalog Collection, Library, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C; untitled chart, Audio Record 5 (November 1949): 3, lists the recorder manufacturers who made machines requiring "oxide out" winding. 608"AES News," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 7 (April 1959): 101; W. Earl Stewart, Magnetic Recording Techniques (NY: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1958), 166-181; tape standards were preceded by standards for wire recorders, most of which were established under the auspices of the Armour Research Foundation. One standard which the Armour licensees could not agree upon, however, was that for an interchangeable wire cassette or cartridge. See the following chapter for a detailed discussion of cartridges. "Report of Meeting Committee on Phonograph Combinations and Home Recording Receiver Section, RMA Engineering Department," ms in file 419, Camras Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology Libraries, Chicago, Illinois; "Notes on RMA Wire Recorder Sub-Committee Meeting," 2 August 1945, ms in file 797, ibid.; "List of Published Standards That May Be Applied to High Fidelity Equipment," IRE Transactions on Audio AU-4 (July-August 1956): 88-89. 609Mark Mooney, Jr., "Four Track Recording Developed," Hi-Fi Tape Recording 5 (August 1958): 20-23; "Stereo Tape Standards," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 6 (April 1958): 131- 143; "EIA Engineering Department, Report of Meeting of the Committee on Phonograph Combinations and Home Recordings R-7,H 7 October 1959, file 416, Camras Collection; "Crosstalk," Tape Recording 7 (August 1960): 10. 610"New Pathes in Recording," The American Record Guide 15 (February 1949): 161; "Music on Tape," Modern Packaging 26 (February 19530: 84. 611 "Mass Production Tape Recording," Audio Engineering 34 (April 1949): 21, 47; "Tape Recording Issues First for Commercial Use," Billboard 4 March 1950, p. 16; "Offer Taped Music for Home Markets," ibid., 3 March 1951, p. 10; "Tape Issue for June," ibid., 28 May 1955, p 38; "Currently Available RCA Victor Stereophonic Tapes," Radio-TV News 56 (September 1956): 156. 612Prices of LP's were $4.85 in 1948, rising to $5.95 a few years later, but in January 1955 reduced to as low as $3.98. Gellat, Fabulous Phonograph. 292. 613Ross H. Snyder, "Is Tape the Ideal Medium for Audio?" Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 6 (April 1958): 99-101; A Look into the Future of Pre-Recorded Tape," Down Beat 20 (21 October 1953): p 10-5 [sic]; Robert Oakes Jordan, "Tape Measure," Down Beat 20 (4 November 1953): 95; Reynolds Marchant, "Duplicating Tape Recordings," Electronics 22 (July, 1949): 72-76; Martin N. Olson, "Multiple Tape Recording," FM and Television 9 (March 1949): 30, 32, 33; "Music On Tape," Audio Visual Guide 20 (June 1954): 28-31; Harold Beechman, "Pre-Recorded Tape for Schools," Audio Visual Guide 22 (November 1955): 23. 614"Fine Arts Quartet on Binaural Tape." Down Beat 20 (21 October 1953): 10-5 [sic]; "Music on Tape," 29-30; Robert E. Benson, "Cream of the Crop," Tape Recording 8 (December 1960): 28- 32; RCA, one of the leading record companies in the United States, also offered 2-track stereo tapes in both the "stacked" and "staggered" arrangements but only offered ten different titles, suggesting the low level of enthusiasm the company had for multiple formats. Advertisement, 463 RCA-Victor Corporation, High Fidelity 6 (May 1956): 69; Lee Zhito, "4-Track Tape Gets Industry Accolade," Billboard. 8 August 1960, p. 1; Ralph Freas, "Science Lands Trio of Punches, Knocks Out 2-Track," ibid., 1 September 1958, p. 1,15. 615"U.S. Radio Set Sales, 1922-1973," Broadcasting Yearbook 1975 (Washington, D.C: Broadcasting Publications, Incorporated, 1975), pp. c-290to c-291. 616?consumer Products," in El A Yearbook 1962 (New York: Electronics Industry Association, 1962), 8. 617lbid., 11. 618lbid., 18. 619lbid., 19. 620David L. Morton, "The Rusty Ribbon': John Herbert Orr and the Making of the Magnetic Recording Industry, 1945-1960." Business History Review 67 (Winter 1993): 618-619. 821 John K. Hilliard, "The History of Stereophonic Sound Reproduction," Proceedings of the IRE 50 (May 1962): 776-780. 622Gellat, Phonograph. 282-283. 623lbid., 284. 624lbkJ., 294. 625R. J. Tinkham, "Methods of Recording Commercial Stereophonic Masters," Wescon Convention Record, part 7 (1957): 58-61. 626|_es Paul, quoted in the liner notes for Les Paul with Mary Ford: The Best of the Capitol Masters, compact disk CDP 599617, Capitol 1992. 627lbid.; Mildred Stagg, "The Great Dub," Magnetic Film and Tape Recording 1 (September- October 1954): 26-28; Frank Beacham, "Les Paul Recalls Recording Past," Radio World. 28 April 1993,17-18, 22; C. S. Wooley, "Hack Swain: Master Multiple Tracker," Magnetic Film and Tape Recording 1 (February 1954): 12-15; W. M. Fujii, "Multi-Channel Audio Recorders," Wescon Convention Records, part 7 (1957): 53-57. 628"The New Gordon Jenkins Multi Track Sound," Tape Recording 15 (April 1968): 10-13. 629Vladimir A. Ussachevsky, "The Process of Experimental Music," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 6 (July 1958): 202-207; Jaques Ellul. The Technological Society. John Wilkinson, transl. (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 129-130 ^"Martin Mayer, Hi-Fi (1958), 5-6; also see an interview on the subject of realism with Peter Goldmark, then president of CBS Laboratories in Connecticut. Michael F. Wolff, "How Hi is Fi?," Electronics 36 (14 June 1963): 33-35 631C W. Smiley, "Stereophonic Sound," Magnetic Film and Tape Recording 2 (October 1955): 29-31; A. A. McKenzie, "Stereophonic Sound." Electronics 21 (August 1948): 88-89; L. D. Grignon, "Stereophonic Sound Recording," FM and Television 9 (April 1949): 28-30; Crowhurst, Stereophonic Sound. 34-35. G^Roy F. Allison, "What The Record Companies Plan to do About Stereo," High Fidelity 8 (March 1958): 72. ^^Crowhurst, Stereophonic Sound. 35; Stereo's lack of realism has been noted by film historian John Belton, who notes that stereo and other signal processing techniques make the motion picture soundtrack separate from the image, giving it "the sound of the image" rather than the actual sound. Belton in Belton and Weis, Film Sound. 68-70. 634John Conly, "Thoughts on the Second Channel," High Fidelity 7 (December 1957): 43. ^Mayer, HtFi (1958), 127. 636lbid. 637lbid., 93. 464 638Robert Charles Marsh, "Let Us Keep our Two-Eared Heads," High Fidelity 8 (October 1958): 639]ohn W Campbell, Jr., "Hearing is Believing?" High Fidelity 3 (July 1953), 28. 640See also Abraham B. Cohen, "Reflections on Having Two Ears High Fidelity 4 (August 1954): 28-29 641R. D. Darrell, "The Tape Deck," High Fidelity 6 (July 1956): 71. 465 CHAPTER EIGHT THE EIGHT TRACK TAPE CARTRIDGE: A HISTORY OF THAT WHICH REPEATS ITSELF The Allure of the Cartridge When the first consumer tape recorders were put on sale in the late 1940s, their manufacturers grew uneasy almost immediately. They felt strongly that in order to reach beyond the relatively small hobbyist market some serious rethinking of the technology was necessary. Only years later, in the early 1960s, did a small group of Americans find a way to open that market. The successful new strategy emerged, in part, due to the inspiration of a talking cow, a madman, and an alleged visit from extraterrestrials. This chapter explores the history of the endless loop magnetic tape cartridge, or in more familiar terminology, the "eight track." This music format, benighted in this age of compact disks and digital audio, was once the king of the high fidelity hill, and it helped to make the personal fortunes of several individuals, both independent inventors and seasoned businessmen. It all got started as part of the search to expand the market for wire recorders, those predecessors to the tape recorder. More specifically, the story of mass market magnetic recording began as male engineers started looking for a way to get females interested in home Manufacturers of magnetic recording instruments, a group of businessmen intensely interested in the possibilities of the magnetic recorder as a replacement for the phonograph, felt like a black cloud was hanging over 466 their heads. Nothing, not economic downturns, not production problems, not foreign competition, haunted them so much as the "need" they all perceived for a cartridge. And nothing aggravated them more than their inability to come together as members of an "industry" to decide on a single cartridge standard. A cartridge, they argued, with recorded music on tape would bring about a revolution in home listening. As early as 1944, when Armour Research Foundation patent licensees gathered to discuss technical issues related to Armour's new technology of magnetic wire recording, they demanded a new type of recorder that put the two spools of wire inside a protective housing. Armour's recommended designs used exposed spools and required that the user thread an exceedingly fine wire through the recorder mechanism. The very success of this new consumer technology seemed to hinge upon the adoption of a standard cartridge, and Armour proposed several designs (Figure 8.1) but neither Armour nor the licensees were of a mind on the design of that wire cartridge, and none was forthcoming.642 Over the next few years the implications of that lack of agreement rose to the surface of the increasingly complex primordial soup that constituted the new American magnetic recording industry. The lack of a cartridge did not immediately kill the industry, but neither did the new recorder rise up to challenge the phonograph. Instead of relying on industry groups or de facto leaders like Armour, individual companies tried in the late 1940s and 1950s to exploit market forces in order to arrive at a dominant cartridge format. The Radio Corporation of America, the nation's pre-eminent manufacturer of both radio transmitting and receiving equipment and an Armour licensee, introduced its model Ml-12875 professional cartridge wire recorder in 467 Oct. 23,1951 M. CAMRAS 2,572,596 UACAZINE TYPE UACNETIC RECORDING AND REPRODUCING DEVICE Filed Dec. 29, 1944 33 ty