Companies in many countries have produced magnetic recording devices, often in association with radio production. This professional grade machine was made in the 1959 by Tandbergs Radiofabrikk of Oslo, Norway. The reel-to-reel model 2TF unit was used at the National Museum to record interviews.
Recording machines designed for dictation have used many different formats over the years. This “Time-master” unit made by Dictaphone Corporation used a 3.5-inch wide belt coated with a magnetizable material. Sold as “Dictabelt Records” in a pack of 10, these belts were stronger than regular, thin plastic recording tape.
This machine was used in the office of historian Daniel J. Boorstin when he served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology. The unit includes a loudspeaker, two different types of foot-pedal controls, and a “Twin Ear” head set.
.01: Dictaphone “Time-master” electronic dictating machine, (version 1). Includes vinyl cover, power cord (~2 meters) and green extension cord (~ 2 meters). Also includes “Dictabelt Records” (blank recording belts), one full pack of 10 belts and one pack of 9. On bottom: label 1 reads: “UL Listed under reexamination service of Underwriters Laboratories Inc.”; label 2 reads: “Rated 110 VAC 60 Cycles 45 Watts (B)”; label 3 reads in part: “Dictaphone Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. Registered Trade Mark electronic dictating machine”. Patents listed for 9 countries including US 2219030 to 2667613. Printed on front: “Dictaphone Time-master Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.”; knobs labeled: “V”, “T”, “S”. Printed on back: “Dictaphone Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. Transcribing Machine”. Printed on vinyl cover: “Dictaphone Dictating Machine Time-master Model”.
.02: Dictaphone speaker. Cord (~2 meters) to attach to transcription machine. Decals on front and back: “Dictaphone”. Painted on bottom: “51343”
.03: Dictaphone pedal control with 2 pedals and cord (~2 meters) to attach to transcription machine. Printed on bottom: “51349”, “Final OK”.
.04: Dictaphone FC-15 pedal control with single pedal and cord (~2 meters) to attach to transcription machine. Printed on bottom: “Model FC-15”. Bottom: label reads: “UL Listed under reexamination service of Underwriters Laboratories Inc.”
.05: Dictaphone FC-15 pedal control with single pedal and cord (~2 meters) to attach to transcription machine. Printed on bottom: “Model FC-15”. Bottom, one label reads: “UL Listed under reexamination service of Underwriters Laboratories Inc.”; second label reads: “Accepted by H. C.”
.06: Dictaphone “Twin Ear” head set with cord (~1.5 meters) to attach to transcription machine. Stamped on hinge: “Dictaphone Twin-Ear”.
This small, portable wire recorder is an interesting example of transistorized miniaturization. The user can carry the recorder in a coat pocket while wearing the wrist-watch microphone with a connecting wire running up the sleeve. The watch does not keep time but serves solely as an unobtrusive microphone. The recorder does not use transistors but rather uses vacuum tubes. It thus requires three batteries: one for the motor drive, one for the tube filaments and one for the tube anodes.
Accessories include the wristwatch microphone, a power supply, an automobile adapter, a headset, and three patch cords. It is unclear how much noise the motor assembly made and so how useful this recorder may have been in making secret recordings. Since the tubes would have generated heat it’s also probable that the device might have been uncomfortably warm if worn. The donor’s father owned a business equipment store in Washington, D.C., and may have acquired this piece through the store. A handwritten evaluation was critical and did not recommend acquiring the product.
This GE wire recorder is a licensed copy of the Armour model 50 recorder designed and made for the U.S. military during World War II. Based on the work of Marvin Camras, Armour fabricated wire recorders at a small, specially-built plant until 1944. The demand for increased production of recorders led GE to begin production of the model 51.
The Armed Forces Radio Service used a variety of recording devices, including wire recorders, to bring programming to troops stationed around the world. This wire recorder used four vacuum tubes and ran on alternating current.
This is the prototype "Butler In A Box", an electronic home controller system created in 1983 by professional magician Gus Searcy and computer programmer Franz Kavan. The idea was to couple emerging computer technology with novel wireless devices and make a product that could control a variety of electrical devices in a home. Searcy reportedly conceived the idea after friends asked him why, if he could pull rabbits from hats, couldn’t he just tell lights to come on instead of physically operating a switch. Soon thereafter, Searcy and Kavan developed “Sidney,” an electronic controller to do that and more.
This is a commercial version of "Butler In A Box", an electronic home controller system designed by professional magician Gus Searcy and computer programmer Franz Kavan. This unit sold for between $1500 and $3000 depending on the accessories needed to meet a customer’s requests. Butler In A Box required microphones for users’ voice inputs, and different controllers for thermostats, light circuits, alarm systems and telephone access. Aside from sales to luxury-home owners, Mastervoice also marketed the product to physically challenged people who might have difficulty operating traditional electrical switches and controls.
Nippon Electric Company (NEC) produced this reel-to-reel tape recorder around 1962. Japanese industry took advantage of the post-World War II rebuilding effort to modernize their factories and enter markets for high-technology devices. Many of these devices used transistors in place of older vacuum tube technology. Modern, efficient factories and low labor costs made Japanese products price competitive with American products. This recorder has an inexpensive plastic case and operates with seven transistors.
In 1940 Marvin Camras received an engineering degree from the Armour Institute of Technology and began work at the Amour Research Foundation. The prior year he had constructed a prototype wire recorder with a new type of recording head and adapted the technique of “AC bias” for improved sound quality. AC bias involves adding a high-frequency alternating current signal to the recording that significantly lowers noise and distortion.
During World War II, Armour manufactured U.S. military wire recorders using Camras’s design. General Electric licensed the design and produced a version of the Armour recorder. After the war other companies took licenses from Armour to produce recorders. One such company was Webster-Chicago, this model 181 “Webcor” unit is one of that company’s products. Webster-Chicago’s products did well in the market and the company produced wire recorders into the early 1960s.
This hand-made circuit board served as the brain for Gus Searcy and Franz Kavan’s "Butler In A Box" electronic home controller. In addition to the various capacitors, resistors and transistors on the board, there are two integrated circuits. The idea was to couple emerging computer technology with novel wireless devices and make a product that could control a variety of electrical devices in a home.
This audio tape cartridge was designed in 1963 by Cousino Electronics Corporation. Today’s music listeners familiar with audio tape players typically think of the compact cassette format or perhaps the 8-track cartridge. However, other inventors designed many different tape formats while searching for an optimum combination of reliability, economy and ease of use. One such inventor was Bernard Cousino of Toledo, Ohio, who designed a single-loop magnetic tape cartridge for advertising use in 1952. His company continued producing tapes for a variety of uses into the 1960s.
These recording discs were made for the Brush Company “Mail-A-Voice” dictating machine. This set of 62 discs includes several slightly different types, the most significant difference being that some are paper and some are plastic. All are flexible and coated with a magnetizable powder. The Mail-A-Voice was designed by German immigrant Semi J. Begun who also used the device for personal correspondence. Several of the discs in the set are audio letters from Begun to his mother.
This “Red Head” recording-playback head was designed by Brush Company around 1950 for sale to tape recorder manufacturers. Inside the housing is a small, specially-shaped electromagnet designed to produce a focused magnetic field. When recording, a current fed into the head varied according to the strength of the input signal and that variation was captured by the recording tape. For playback, the magnetic field on the tape generated a signal in the head as it passed close. The closer the playback signal matched the input signal, the more accurate the recorded sound.
This Message On Hold telephone answering machine was designed for business use. The user would connect the device to their phone line so that an incoming caller could listen to music and messages while their call was on hold. This allowed the business to entertain their callers as well as providing a sales opportunity. This particular unit is a production model made by Bogen Incorporated for DMS Corporation.
This Code-A-Phone 700 answering machine was produced in 1966, several years before a series of legal battles forced Bell Telephone to allow connection of non-Bell equipment to their telephone lines. Ultimately the Code-A-Phone was produced by Ford Industries with parts made by Western Electric, the Bell System’s manufacturing unit. Having decided that they could not prevent the use of answering machines, Bell used Code-A-Phone in an attempt to control the market.
This PhoneMate model 6950 illustrates answering machine technology in the midst of radical change. From the earliest designs in the 1900s, answering machines used magnetic recording technology, recording on either wire or coated tape. Most machines of the 1960s and 1970s used two tapes, one for the outgoing message and one to record the incoming message. Advances in digital memory design during the 1980s led the model 6950's designers to eliminate the outgoing message tape by using digital memory instead. The incoming message was still recorded on a standard tape cassette. The suggested retail price was $179.98.
PhoneMate’s model 5000 answering machine sold for about $120 in the late 1980s. In order to save space many answering machine makers adopted a tape cartridge that was much smaller than the standard audio cassette. The model 5000 took this miniaturization one step further by reducing the size of entire machine. One advertisement shows the unit being held in a man’s hand.
This Executary dictation machine was designed to allow people to record letters and other information for later transcription. Designs for dictating machines date back to Edison’s cylinder phonograph, and magnetic recorders were also adapted for this application as they became available. IBM introduced the Execuary in 1960 and used a magnetic belt as recording medium. Less likely to break than a thin tape, the belt could be folded and mailed to correspondents with similar machines. The unit could record two tracks, one for the dictation content and a parallel track for instructions to the transcriber.
This Radio Data System (RDS) demonstration car radio was used in a 1995 ceremony on Capitol Hill marking the establishment of the 100th RDS-capable broadcast station, WKYS-FM in Washington, DC. RDS technology consisted of an inaudible text data stream transmitted from specially-equipped FM stations. The data included artist identification, community-service bulletins and traffic information. The demonstration receiver also includes a cassette tape deck with Dolby noise reduction. Engineer Ray Dolby designed a “sound compander” in the mid-1960s to improve audio output quality of recordings while working at Ampex and later founded a company to improve this technique.
The Scott model 2560 Casseiver combined an AM/FM stereo receiver with a cassette tape deck. Scott, a manufacturer of high-end radio receivers, adopted the cassette format invented by Philips in 1962. Philip’s cassette was one of several on the market. After its introduction in their Norelco line, the company offered free licences to other manufacturers who adopted the format. The original price on this Scott Casseiver was about $300, about $1700 in 2012 dollars.
The model 1100 Code-a-Phone was one of several telephone answering machines Ford industries produced in the early 1980s. Not everyone appreciated the new technology. Some callers, offended to be talking to a machine instead of a person, would hang up when the machine began playing the outgoing message. Sensing a market opportunity, Ford Industries began selling an inexpensive book, “How To Make Your Code-a-Phone Talk Funny,” with the goal of using humor to smooth ruffled feathers.