Magnetophon from a German radio station in World War II.

Magnetophon was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer. AEG created the world's first practical tape recorder, the K1, first demonstrated in Germany in 1935 at the Berlin Radio Show. ^[1][2][3]

History[link]

Germany[link]

The Magnetophon tape recorder was one of the first recording machines to use magnetic tape in preserving voice and music. However, early Magnetophons gave disappointing results. One of the first concerts to be recorded on a Magnetophon was Mozart's 39th Symphony played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, during their 1936 concert tour. The recording was made on an AEG K2 Magnetophon running at 100 cm/s. The tape used was the early black iron oxide Fe₃O₄ type. When Beecham and the musicians heard the playback they were greatly disappointed with the distortion and noise on the recording. This recording survived until the 1990s and has been transferred. The tape is now "lost". Some other surviving tapes show a tendency toward overmodulation.^[4]

Later in 1939, the Fe₃O₄ oxide was replaced by the Fe₂O₃ type, which gave a significantly better recording quality, so much that the formula became a worldwide standard until the 1970s when Chrome Dioxide tapes appeared.

Adding a DC bias to the record head gave some improvement, and in 1941, Hans Joachim von Braunmühl and Dr. Walter Weber, both engineers at the German national broadcasting organisation RRG (Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft), accidentally discovered the technique of AC tape bias in which the addition of an inaudible high-frequency tone resulted in a striking improvement in sound quality. The discovery was made when a Magnetophone producing recordings of extraordinary quality was sent 'for repair'. The machine proved to have an oscillating DC bias amplifier. Magnetic media is inherently non-linear, but AC bias was a technique whereby the tape's magnetisation was left in a state proportional to the instantaneous audio electrical signal. The Magnetophon became a high fidelity recording system that outperformed gramophone recording (which was the 78 rpm system at this time).

Many speeches, concerts, and operatic performances were recorded. Since many of the recordings survived World War II they were later issued on LPs and compact discs. One of the more remarkable series of recordings took place at the Vienna State Opera House, also known as Wiener Staatsoper, in 1944, when the German composer Richard Strauss recorded many of his famous symphonic poems, including Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, and Also sprach Zarathustra, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

AEG engineers made rapid strides in perfecting the system and had practical stereo recorders by 1943. Until 1945, about 250 stereophonic tape recordings were known to exist, including some Richard Strauss and Furtwangler. Only three survived. This includes a performance of Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with pianist Walter Gieseking and the Berlin Reichssenders Orchestra conducted by Artur Rother.^[5] This remarkable performance was later issued on LP by Varèse Sarabande. Later in 1993, the Audio Engineering Society (AES) issued a special CD for the 50th birthday of stereo recording. This CD not only includes the "Emperor" Concerto, but the two other stereo recordings known to exist: a Brahms serenade and the last movement of Bruckner's 8th Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Piano Library also issued the Emperor concerto, and Iron Needle issued the Brucker recordings (catalog IN 1407). ArkivMusic released a CD of the concerto, as well a later recording Gieseking made of Beethoven's first piano concerto with the Rafael Kubelik and the Philharmonic Orchestra.

Magnetophon recorders were widely used in German radio broadcasts during World War II, although they were a closely guarded secret at the time. Allied intelligence experts knew that the Germans had some new form of recording system but they did not know the details^{[dubious – discuss]} of its construction and operation until working models of the Magnetophon were discovered during the Allied invasion of Germany during 1944-45.

American audio engineer Jack Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and fifty reels of magnetic tape from a German radio station at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt in 1945. The allied forces were traveling through Germany during WWII when they first discovered the device. The Allies then handed the Magnetophon over to Mullin.^[6] Over the next two years Mullin modified and developed these machines, hoping to create a commercial recording system that could be used by movie studios. American popular vocalist Bing Crosby would use the technology, as modified by Mullin and the fledgling Ampex company, to record his radio broadcasts in the more relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio, which was a significant break from the then-norm of live studio audience broadcasts.

As a generic noun[link]

Magnetophon became the generic word for the tape recorder in some languages including Czech, Polish (magnetofon), French (magnétophone), Italian (magnetofono - reel to reel), Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian/Croatian (magnetofon - only for reel-to-reel), Greek (μαγνητόφωνο - magnitofono), Russian (магнитофон - magnitofon), Bulgarian (магнетофон), Slovak, Spanish (magnetófono or magnetofón), Finnish (magnetofoni - commonly shortened to mankka), Lithuanian (magnetofonas), Latvian (magnetofons) and Ukrainian.

See also[link]

• Multitrack recording - The Magnetophon in American Music history
• Wire recording
• British Tape Recorder

References[link]

Barnouw, Erik (1968). A History of broadcasting in the United States. ([Verschiedene Aufl.] ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-500475-2. 

• Friedrich K. Engel, "Chapter 5: The Introduction of the Magnetophon". In Daniel, Eric D., et. al. (1999). Magnetic recording: the first 100 years. Wiley-IEEE.  ISBN 0-7803-4709-9

John T. "Jack" Mullen (1913–1999) was an American pioneer in the field of magnetic tape sound recording and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at Santa Clara University to his death, he displayed a deep appreciation for classical music and an aptitude for electronics and engineering. When he died in 1999, he was buried with a rosary and a reel of magnetic tape. A 2006 documentary movie, Sound Man: WWII to MP3, was made about his life and contributions to sound recording.^[1]

Mullin's work with the Signal Corps[link]

By 1943, German engineers had developed a high-quality form of magnetic tape sound recording that was unknown elsewhere. The Nazi radio networks used it to broadcast music and propaganda around the clock.

From their monitoring of Nazi radio broadcasts during World War II, the Allies knew that German radio studios had some new kind of recorder that could reproduce high-fidelity sound in segments of unheard-of length, up to 15 minutes duration. But for several years, they didn't know what these machines were or how they worked, and it was not until Germany fell to the Allies during 1944-45 that the Americans discovered the new magnetic tape recorders. Mullin saw the future potential of the new technology and who developed it immediately after the war.

Mullin served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II. He was posted to Paris in the final months of the war, where his unit was assigned to find out everything they could about German radio and electronics. They found and collected hundreds of low-quality field dictating machines but the major discovery came when Mullin visited Germany just before the end of the war. He was sent to inspect a site near Frankfurt, where the Germans had reputedly been experimenting with using directed high-energy radio beams as means of disabling the ignition systems of flying aircraft.

On his way back home to San Francisco, Mullin made a chance stopover at a nearby German radio station at Bad Nauheim, which was already in American hands. Here he was given two suitcase-sized AEG 'Magnetophon' high-fidelity recorders and 50 reels of Farben recording tape. Mullin had them shipped home and over the next two years he worked on the machines constantly, modifying them and improving their performance. His main hope was to interest the Hollywood movie studios in using magnetic tape for movie sound recording.

Demonstration in America[link]

Mullin gave two public demonstrations of his machines in Hollywood in 1947, in which he first presented live music performed behind a curtain, followed by a concealed playback of the performance. Mullen's recorder caused a sensation among American audio professionals and many listeners could not tell the difference between the recorded and live performances. By luck, Mullin's second demonstration was at MGM Studios in Hollywood and in the audience that day was Bing Crosby's technical director, Murdo Mackenzie. Mackenzie arranged for Mullin to meet Crosby, and in June 1947 Crosby was given a demonstration of Mullin's magnetic tape recorders.

Crosby was impressed by the amazing sound quality and instantly saw the huge commercial potential of the new machines. Up to this time, most pre-recorded programming such as serials and drama were produced on disc, but live music was the standard for American radio at the time and radio networks tightly restricted the use of music on disc because of the comparatively poor sound quality.

Crosby, who was arguably the biggest star on radio at the time, was very receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs. He disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. He had already asked the NBC network to let him pre-record his 1944-1945 series on transcription discs, but the network refused, so Crosby had withdrawn from live radio for a year and returned for the 1946-47 season only reluctantly.

Crosby realised that Mullin's tape recording technology would enable him to pre-record his radio show with a sound quality that equalled live broadcasts, that these tapes could be edited precisely, and replayed many times with no appreciable loss of quality. Mullin was asked to tape one show as a test; it was a complete success and Mullin was immediately hired as Crosby's chief engineer to pre-record the rest of the series.

Crosby became the first major music star to master commercial recordings on tape, and the first to use tape to pre-record radio broadcasts. The shows were painstakingly edited to give them a pace and flow that was wholly unprecedented in radio. Mullin has claimed that he even pioneered the use of the laugh track; at the insistence of Crosby's writer Bill Morrow, he inserted a segment of raucous laughter from an earlier show to follow a joke in a later show that had not worked well.

Keen to make use of the new recorders as soon as possible, Crosby invested $50,000 in a local electronics firm, Ampex, and the tiny six-man concern soon became the world leader in the development of tape recording. Ampex revolutionised the radio and recording industry with its famous Model 200 tape deck, developed directly from Mullin's modified Magnetophones. Crosby gave one of the first production models to musician Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's invention of multitrack recording.

Working with Mullin, Ampex rapidly developed two-track stereo and then three-track recorders. Spurred on by Crosby's move into TV in the early 1950s, Mullin and Ampex developed a working monochrome videotape recorder by 1950 and a color video recorder by 1954, both created to tape Crosby's TV shows.

Through the rest of his life, Mullin continued to follow new ideas. He also kept an impressive collection of early recording hardware, which is now at the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting.

See also[link]

• John Herbert Orr
• Richard H. Ranger
• Charles Douglass
• Laugh track

References[link]

External links[link]

• Santa Clara University Article
• San Jose Mercury News Article
• Detailed biography of Mullin from Mix.
• Mullin recalls his experiences.