Music Technology Obsessions of Days Gone By

Started by Rhcole, February 02, 2016, 10:07:33 AM

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Rhcole

When I was an adolescent in the late sixties (yeah, do the math...  ::)) I was slowly building my guitar skills and listened to the radio constantly. The kid next door showed me how to hack and modify tabletop radios so you could tap their outputs, add speakers and record from them.

Thus began my lust for... tape recorders! I quickly learned about capstain drive, frequency response, tape speeds, etc. I poured over catalogs from Sears and Montgomery Ward, read hi-fi and stereo magazines and Popular Electronics. Within a couple of years I knew most models out on the market.

As a 13 year old, most decent units were out of my price range. I could take a swing at battery units like the Panasonic shown here, because they usually cost well under $100. Bad specs though, many units had terrible signal to noise ratios and frequency responses of something like 100 - 8,000 HZ! The stereo units were my Holy Grail, far out of my puny reach until another time. When that time came, technology trends were already changing and cassette units were taking over. I still gratified my reel-to-reel lust, but the days of pouring over the catalogs was gone.

On the guitar side, I got my first Fuzz Box from Olson Electronics for $19.95 when I was 15. It was cool, but I quickly tired of it. I wondered- might there be some other way to more radically change the sound of the guitar...?

Elantric

#1
You might enjoy these threads
1974 Olson Electronics Catalog -(vintage Electronics mail order "wish book")
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=16729.msg119919#msg119919

History, or "A combo organ, from Rheem? What's up with that?"
https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=17110.msg122247#msg122247

Rhcole

I knew a doctor when I was 15 who had a Revox reel-to-reel that looked kind of like the one in your picture, Elantric. Big honking deck, and he had really high-end speakers and a Macintosh or similar power amp. Those decks were pricey back then, $600 or more in late sixties money. His whole setup had to have cost over $2K and maybe as much as $3K.

Dude was like a GOD to me! He fired it up once for me and it was spectacular.

Codeseven

I remember being a teen in the 70's listening to my older brothers Akai reel to reel, Iron Butterfly, In a Gadda da Vida no less. That reel to reel was top notch stuff at the time.

DeRigueur

I still have my older brother's Akai reel-to-reel on a shelf.
Fender GC-1 -- Boss SY-1000 -- Alto TS112A

Now_And_Then

#5

I remember visiting a friend in the late 60's who had a reel-to-reel recorder... with sound-on-sound capability! I was incredibly impressed!


I had one of these here, a Craig, very highly rated; this was before there was even such a thing as audio cassettes:

And Koss headphones!

Elantric

#6
This is a must read for anyone interested in the history of tape recording
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bing_Crosby

Bing Crosby:
Role in early tape recording[edit]


During the "Golden Age of Radio", performers had to create their shows live, sometimes even redoing the program a second time for the west coast time zone. Crosby's radio career took a significant turn in 1945, when he clashed with NBC over his insistence that he be allowed to pre-record his radio shows.[50] (The live production of radio shows was also reinforced by the musicians' union and ASCAP, which wanted to ensure continued work for their members.) In On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, historian John Dunning wrote about German engineers having developed a tape recorder with a near-professional broadcast quality standard:
[Crosby saw] an enormous advantage in prerecording his radio shows. The scheduling could now be done at the star's convenience. He could do four shows a week, if he chose, and then take a month off. But the networks and sponsors were adamantly opposed. The public wouldn't stand for 'canned' radio, the networks argued. There was something magic for listeners in the fact that what they were hearing was being performed and heard everywhere, at that precise instant. Some of the best moments in comedy came when a line was blown and the star had to rely on wit to rescue a bad situation. Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Phil Harris, and also Crosby were masters at this, and the networks weren't about to give it up easily.
Crosby's insistence eventually factored into the further development of magnetic tape sound recording and the radio industry's widespread adoption of it.[51][52][53] He used his clout, both professional and financial, to innovate new methods of reproducing audio of his performances. But NBC (and competitor CBS) were also insistent, refusing to air prerecorded radio programs. Crosby walked away from the network and stayed off the air for seven months, creating a legal battle with Kraft, his sponsor, that was settled out of court. Crosby returned to the air for the last 13 weeks of the 1945–1946 season.
The Mutual network, on the other hand, had pre-recorded some of its programs as early as the 1938 run of The Shadow with Orson Welles. And the new ABC network, which had been formed out of the sale of the old NBC Blue Network in 1943 following a federal anti-trust action, was willing to join Mutual in breaking the tradition. ABC offered Crosby $30,000 per week to produce a recorded show every Wednesday that would be sponsored by Philco. He would also get an additional $40,000 from 400 independent stations for the rights to broadcast the 30-minute show, which was sent to them every Monday on three 16-inch lacquer/aluminum discs that played ten minutes per side at 33⅓ rpm.
Crosby wanted to change to recorded production for several reasons. The legend that has been most often told is that it would give him more time for his golf game. And he did record his first Philco program in August 1947 so he could enter the Jasper National Park Invitational Golf Tournament in September, just when the new radio season was to start. But golf was not the most important reason.

With Perry Como and Arthur Godfrey in 1950
Though Crosby did want more time to tend to his other business and leisure activities, he also sought better quality through recording, including being able to eliminate mistakes and control the timing of his show performances. Because his own Bing Crosby Enterprises produced the show, he could purchase the latest and best sound equipment and arrange the microphones his way; the logistics of microphone placement had long been a hotly debated issue in every recording studio since the beginning of the electrical era. No longer would he have to wear the hated toupee on his head previously required by CBS and NBC for his live audience shows (he preferred a hat). He could also record short promotions for his latest investment, the world's first frozen orange juice, sold under the brand name Minute Maid. This investment allowed Crosby to make more money by finding a loophole whereby the IRS couldn't tax him at a 77% rate.[54]
The transcription method posed problems, however. The acetate surface coating of the aluminum discs was little better than the wax that Edison had used at the turn of the 20th century, with the same limited dynamic range and frequency response.

However, Murdo MacKenzie of Bing Crosby Enterprises had seen a demonstration of the German Magnetophon in June 1947—the same device that Jack Mullin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Mullin
 had brought back from Radio Frankfurt, along with 50 reels of tape, at the end of the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetophon



It was one of the magnetic tape recorders that BASF and AEG had built in Germany starting in 1935. The 6.5mm ferric-oxide-coated tape could record 20 minutes per reel of high-quality sound. Alexander M. Poniatoff ordered his Ampex company, which he'd founded in 1944, to manufacture an improved version of the Magnetophone.
Crosby hired Mullin to start recording his Philco Radio Time show on his German-made machine in August 1947, using the same 50 reels of I.G. Farben magnetic tape that Mullin had found at a radio station at Bad Nauheim near Frankfurt while working for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The crucial advantage was editing. As Crosby wrote in his autobiography:
By using tape, I could do a thirty-five or forty-minute show, then edit it down to the twenty-six or twenty-seven minutes the program ran. In that way, we could take out jokes, gags, or situations that didn't play well and finish with only the prime meat of the show; the solid stuff that played big. We could also take out the songs that didn't sound good. It gave us a chance to first try a recording of the songs in the afternoon without an audience, then another one in front of a studio audience. We'd dub the one that came off best into the final transcription. It gave us a chance to ad lib as much as we wanted, knowing that excess ad libbing could be sliced from the final product. If I made a mistake in singing a song or in the script, I could have some fun with it, then retain any of the fun that sounded amusing.
Mullin's 1976 memoir of these early days of experimental recording agrees with Crosby's account:
In the evening, Crosby did the whole show before an audience. If he muffed a song then, the audience loved it—thought it was very funny—but we would have to take out the show version and put in one of the rehearsal takes. Sometimes, if Crosby was having fun with a song and not really working at it, we had to make it up out of two or three parts. This ad lib way of working is commonplace in the recording studios today, but it was all new to us.
Crosby invested US$50,000 in Ampex with an eye towards producing more machines.[55]

In 1948, the second season of Philco shows was taped with the new Ampex Model 200 tape recorder


 using the new Scotch 111 tape from the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (3M) company.


QuoteKeen 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 1956 and a version to record in color later on, both created to record 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.






http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan07/articles/classictracks_0107.htm

Quote"In 1949, Bing Crosby brought an Ampex 300 over to my house in LA, where I was then living. He asked me to go out into the front yard and help him get it out of his trunk, and then once I did that and the machine was indoors he said, 'Well, have fun,' and left. So, there I was, busy recording to disc, and I looked at the machine and all of a sudden the light went on — what if I put a fourth head on this machine? I took a piece of paper and a pencil, I drew it out, and I went to Mary and I said, 'Forget hanging up the laundry, forget the whole thing. Lock the place up, we're leaving. I've just found a way to record without needing the garage or a recording studio. I can do the whole thing anywhere that we wish to record.' All I needed was a fourth head on that mono 300 deck."

Which, as we now know, was perfectly logical. But was Les sure at the time that this would work?

"Oh yes, I knew," comes the reply, "but Mary didn't.




We drove from LA to open up in Chicago at the Blue Note, the machine was in the trunk of our car, and when we got to New Mexico she said, 'What if it won't work? You haven't tried it yet.' I said, 'Oh, it'll work,' but as we kept driving she'd say, 'Well, you didn't make a prototype. This thing may not work.' The closer we got to Chicago, the more concerned I became about the fact that I hadn't made a prototype. Without that I couldn't be absolutely positive it would work. However, I'd called Ampex before we left California and told them I needed another head that they should send to Chicago, and when we arrived in Chicago and went to the New Lawrence Hotel the head was waiting for me.

 So, I got a guy to drill a hole in the machine for me and we mounted the fourth head, and then I turned the machine on, Mary said, 'One, two, three, four, testing,' and I said, 'Howdy, howdy, howdy,' and my God it came back.


"At that time I was still walking with crutches following our automobile accident, and I threw my crutches in the air and we danced around in the hallway. Then we got in the elevator and went to work, and that was a big day. After that we'd record 'How High the Moon', 'The World is Waiting for the Sunrise'... in fact, at least 90 percent of our recordings were made on that [Ampex 300] device, not on the eight-track."

Mullin explained how one new broadcasting technique was invented on the Crosby show with these machines:
One time Bob Burns, the hillbilly comic, was on the show, and he threw in a few of his folksy farm stories, which of course were not in Bill Morrow's script. Today they wouldn't seem very off-color, but things were different on radio then. They got enormous laughs, which just went on and on. We couldn't use the jokes, but Bill asked us to save the laughs. A couple of weeks later he had a show that wasn't very funny, and he insisted that we put in the salvaged laughs. Thus the laugh-track was born.
Crosby had launched the tape recorder revolution in America. In his 1950 film Mr. Music, Crosby is seen singing into one of the new Ampex tape recorders that reproduced his voice better than anything else. Also quick to adopt tape recording was his friend Bob Hope. He gave one of the first Ampex Model 200 recorders to his friend, musician Les Paul, which led directly to Paul's invention of multitrack recording. His organization, the Crosby Research Foundation, also held various tape recording patents and developed equipment and recording techniques such as the laugh track that are still in use today.[55]
Along with Frank Sinatra, Crosby was also one of the principal backers behind the famous United Western Recorders recording studio complex in Los Angeles.
[56]
Videotape development[edit]
Mullin continued to work for Crosby to develop a videotape recorder (VTR). Television production was mostly live television in its early years, but Crosby wanted the same ability to record that he had achieved in radio. 1950's The Fireside Theater, sponsored by Procter & Gamble, was his first television production. Mullin had not yet succeeded with videotape, so Crosby filmed the series of 26-minute shows at the Hal Roach Studios, and the "telefilms" were syndicated to individual television stations.
Crosby continued to finance the development of videotape. Bing Crosby Enterprises (BCE), gave the world's first demonstration of videotape recording in Los Angeles on November 11, 1951. Developed by John T. Mullin and Wayne R. Johnson since 1950, the device aired what were described as "blurred and indistinct" images, using a modified Ampex 200 tape recorder and standard quarter-inch (6.3 mm) audio tape moving at 360 inches (9.1 m) per second.[57]


http://www.dolby.com/us/en/about/leadership/ray-dolby.html
QuoteRay Dolby was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1933 and later moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1949 to 1957, he worked on various audio and instrumentation projects at Ampex Corporation, where he led the development of the electronic aspects of the Ampex® videotape recording system

Elantric

#7
Ampex - Big Auction of Equipment used to produce the last batch of Ampex mag tape recorders

http://hgpauction.hibid.com/catalog/71802/ampex

GLOBAL ONLINE AUCTION
Machine Tools, Material Handling, Facility Support
and Large Quantities of
Assorted Electronics & Test Equipment





Starting: Feb. 25, 2016 | 7:00 am PST

Ending: Feb. 26, 2016 | 10:00 pm PST

Location: Redwood, CA

Preview: Feb. 24, 2016

   8:00 am -4:00 pm PST

Elantric

Les Paul wrote>
Quote"In 1949, Bing Crosby brought an Ampex 300 over to my house in LA, where I was then living. He asked me to go out into the front yard and help him get it out of his trunk, and then once I did that and the machine was indoors he said, 'Well, have fun,' and left.



Elantric


Elantric

#10


My old friend Del Casher - was involved in the Ecco-Fonic Tape Echo , Vox Wah-Wah and the 1st Roland
GR-500 Guitar Syntheziser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Casher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wah-wah_pedal

QuoteWhile on tour for their album "The Three Suns in Japan", he introduced his new invention, the "Ecco-Fonic",[2] a tape echo device that was portable and could create echo effects that were previously possible only in the studio using large, expensive tape machines. At that time he became friends with Ikutaro Kakehashi, who was the founder of the Roland Music Corporation of Japan. Later, Mr. Kakehashi, as chairman of Roland, invited Del to Japan to perform and introduce the first Roland guitar synthesizer. He signed on with Japan Victor and Japan's Union Records as a featured artist on more than 16 hit albums.

https://reverb.com/item/1398561-ecco-fonic-tube-tape-echo-late-50s-early-60s-project
...
If you are an old timer from Los Angeles - you might have shopped for electronic parts at
All Electronics
905 S Vermont St
Los Angeles, CA   
http://www.allelectronics.com/
In the late 1950's  - early 1960's this address was the home of Ecco-Fonic echo machines 
http://www.delcasher.com/articles/DelCasher_EccoFonic.pdf



https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/del-casher






Here's Del Casher performing as part of the original Mothers of Invention at the Whiskey a go go in Hollywood 1967


http://www.manibrothers.com/property/9000-sunset-boulevard/
same stage where Johnny Rivers recorded Secret Agent Man


More old LA photos
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?s=5decd9cd5e1a6315da421ada0f6f8d10&t=170279&goto=nextoldest

Mrchevy

The Smithonian Channel just started a new series called "Rock-n-Roll Inventions". I watched the first episode last night and it pertained to the progression from AM radio to FM, from vinyl to CD's, etc. Next week is suppose to be geared towards guitar and equipment. Seems like a cool show with lots of history of music and equipment. Heres a link to the website for more info....
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/rock-n-roll-inventions/1004509
Gibson Les Paul Custom
Epi Les Paul Standard
Gibson SG 50's prototype
Squire classic vibe 60's
Epi LP Modern
Epi SG Custom
Martin acoustic

Princeton chorus 210

GT100
GR-55
Helix LT
Waza Air Headphones
Boomerang III

And, a lot of stuff I DON'T need

Chumly

#12



Quote from: Now_And_Then on February 02, 2016, 07:24:43 PMI had one of these here, a Craig, very highly rated; this was before there was even such a thing as audio cassettes:
I had the exact same Craig recorder!  My father bought it for me, and I suspect he used Consumer Reports to decide which was best (he had a subscription).  I recall that to change speeds, you unscrewed the capstan to reduce the diameter.
I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. - Richard P. Feynman

Elantric

#13
Great evening with Del Casher, at Thomas Nordegg's Sonica Studio

http://www.laweekly.com/music/50-years-ago-the-wah-wah-pedal-was-born-in-a-hollywood-hills-garage-7767475

Frank Zappa hired Del Casher to record the following tune  "Space Boy" in 1966




Del Cacher interviewed by Vintage Magazine, February 1997:

Frank Zappa was from Cucumonga; he came by one day, said he'd heard about me, and said he wanted to record something for a singer who had a song about a Russian cosmonaut who was lost in space (chuckles). I used to get these strange requests all the time, and Frank's request was no different. In those days he wasn't a guitar player, so he asked me to play guitar and bass, laying down tracks using the Ecco-Fonic to get the spacey sounds, while he played on a snare drum I had in the studio. I think this was one of the first recordings Frank did when he arrived in L.A. He was very pleasant, and he looked as weird as the sounds we created, but boy, was he talented! When he played the drum, I knew something great was going on, and we enjoyed that session so much he asked me to join his new group. I politely declined because my studio schedule was beginning to happen.....
Del Casher (aka Del Kacher) (May 21, 2006)

I produced the Florence Marly Space Boy with Frank in my Hollywood garage studio and then played guitar with the Mothers at the Shrine and the Whiskey in 1966. Later that year I developed and promoted the first wah wah ever with Vox for a 1967 release demo record and films at Universal Pictures...



http://delcasher.com

He put the 'wah' in rock 'n' roll
Del Casher, a pop pioneer, helped invent the famous wah-wah pedal.
You've probably seen Del Casher, sporting a yachtsman's cap as he cruises around town in his fire-engine-red sedan, and never given him a second look. But the 73-year-old musician, who operates a sound studio on Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, is one of the most critical secret weapons in America's pop music arsenal.
His credits alone are mind-boggling.
"In the 1960's, I did the Hollywood music business from A to Z," Casher said with a mischievous grin. "Played lead guitar on Gene Autry's 'Melody Ranch' TV show in the morning, and at night, Frank Zappa would hire me to sit in with the Mothers of Invention at the Whisky A Go-Go."
Casher, who arrived here from his native Indiana circa 1961, also anchored popular trio the Three Suns, was regularly featured as a soloist on "The Lawrence Welk Show," worked as in-demand studio session player with everyone from Phil Spector to Frank Sinatra, and appeared alongside Elvis Presley in 1964's "Roustabout."
Second only to Les Paul in terms of both musical skill and technical innovation, Casher developed the portable tape delay Ecco-Fonic system, the Fender Electronic Echo Chamber and, most significantly, was the first guitarist to use and record with the wah-wah pedal, a revolutionary sound effect that altered the tone and course of rock 'n' roll.
Del Casher, the creator of the wah-wah pedal, in his Burbank studio at CDP Sound, on Tuesday, November 29, 2011.
(Tim Berger/Staff Photographer)
Introduced by the Vox company as the Mid-Range Boost Switch, and proposed for
use with amplified trumpets, it was Casher who re-designed it, in early 1967, as
the foot pedal unit that enabled a player to re-shape his guitar tone into wild, undreamed of new capabilities.
After Casher began experimenting with it, first on a grail-like Vox marketing demo record and then formally introduced the wah-wah on the Vic Mizzy soundtracks of Phyllis Diller's "Traveling Saleslady" and Don Knotts' "The Ghost & Mr. Chicken," the new breakthrough caught the ear of numerous musicians.
Jimi Hendrix quickly elevated the distinctive effect to iconic heights on his masterpiece album "Electric Ladyland," and later, the wah-wah's undulating sound helped Isaac Hayes' "Theme from Shaft" win an Oscar as 1972's Song of the Year.
While Casher's historic role as a behind-the-scenes wizard is impressive, the man is scarcely a relic from another age. His live performances are nothing less than flabbergasting.
Casher's wah-wah laced arrangement of Duke Ellington's "Caravan" goes beyond the exotic, his "Epiphone Blues" is an exercise in melancholy atmospherics that transports his audience into another dimension. From communicative, intricate jazz flights to finger-picking rockabilly workouts like "Big Foot," Casher's breathtaking facility and flawless playing ranks him as one of the world's top guitarists.
Casher, who has appeared locally at Viva Cantina and was a fixture at Mr. B's, both in Burbank, also has some deep Burbank broadcast roots: His performance of the NBC News Center 4 theme aired nightly from 1971 to 1988.
The guitarist currently has a regular, 6-10 p.m. gig every Wednesday at Bel Air's Luxe Sunset Hotel and, with any luck, we'll be able to find him a bit closer to home in the near future.
"I just love what I do." Casher said. "So I'm not turning down any work these days."
JOHNNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and
author of "Ramblin' Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox" and "Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story."

aliensporebomb

My first cassette recorder was a Lloyds 1V92 portable cassette recorder - a friend had a slightly different model that had a demo so I made a room recording of the demo and looking back it's hilarious.  I should clean it up and upload it since I've never heard it anywhere else.

After that, for many years I'd record the audio from television programs, shortwave and police radio, music, anything I could.  I also recorded my early experiments with guitar with it.

Then when I was 14 or 15 I received a Superscope CD302A for Christmas which was stereo and actually had Dolby.  A bit noisy but I  used that thing for a couple of years until it was stolen in a break-in.   I thought I was out of business because my pops had died, my mom didn't have a lot of money and I was too young to work yet to afford a replacement.  But insurance let me get a JVC KD-10J which was actually a better piece of equipment.

It took some years and my first jobs to get an amplifier, speakers, turntable etc.  Then my first guitars and amps. 
My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

bassman4d521


admin

#16
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-brief-history-of-the-selenophone

Only manufactured for one year, the Selenophone captured longer programs than other available devices. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS/USED WITH PERMISSION


The Selenophone, a Short-Lived, Highly Flammable Sound-Recording System
In an exhibit honoring the work of conductor Arturo Toscanini, there's an odd slice of recording technology.

WHEN ITALIAN CONDUCTOR ARTURO TOSCANINI was born in 1867, sound recording was a new technology. By the time he died in 1957, the Golden Age of Television was well underway.

A new exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is putting audio technologies into context by looking at how a wave of audio advancements affected the life and career of Toscanini. The library has an archive of over 40,000 Toscanini recordings, and has laid many of the significant moments of his life against the timeline of audio technology and preservation. The exhibit, a display of vinyl and 78 records, video, reel-to-reel recordings, letters, and other ephemera, also features examples of exactly what kind of technology the composer would have seen throughout his 89 years.

"We're working to preserve 'at risk' media," says Jonathan Hiam, the library's Curator of Music and Recorded Sound. "Formats that are going to be obsolete through technical obsolescence. But we're also doing intense preservation work on equipment that was never really around a lot to begin with."

The Selenophone's highly flammable nitrate film prints were stored in canisters like these.
The Selenophone's highly flammable nitrate film prints were stored in canisters like these. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

In his lifetime, Toscanini witnessed recording technologies of all sorts: the phonograph, wax cylinders, gramophones, and wire recorders. "You have a really interesting interface of Toscanini with technology," explains Haim. "He may or may not have had indifference toward technology during his lifetime, but the machinery that surrounded his cultural presence was deeply industrialized. It was literally capitalizing on him and he's capitalizing on its reach."




Perhaps the most unusual, and rarest, piece of technology that crossed his path was the Selenophone. This odd slice of recording history was only in use for one year, recorded sound onto 8mm film, and, oh yeah, the finished recordings had the tendency to explode. Nitrate film, the type the Selenophone used, is highly unstable, highly combustible, and any resulting fires are not easy to put out.


The last three of Toscanini's fully staged operatic performances were recorded on the Selenophone. The device on display at the NYPL, according to Seth Winner, Preservation Sound Engineer for the library, may be the last working one left anywhere.

The Selenophone was developed in 1936 by Oskar Czeija,
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Czeija

a Viennese engineer who conceived of the device as a longer-recording replacement for 78 r.p.m. records. "They would essentially burn a signal into [the film] using an optical head," explains Winner. "It was an attempt at trying to record live performances or speeches than ran longer than 15 minutes. It was essentially one of the first attempts at trying to record something continually." Czeija, who also ran Radio Verkehrs AG, the first Austrian broadcasting company, not only had the right to broadcast performances, but had full rein to set up his recording equipment at the country's Salzberg Festival, capturing the Toscanini performances.

The exhibit uses audio technology as a lens to examine Toscanini's life and work. 
The exhibit uses audio technology as a lens to examine Toscanini's life and work. N

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS/USED WITH PERMISSION

Although the Selenophone was a precursor to reel-to-reel tape recorders, it didn't fare as well in the longevity department; it ceased production after only one year. "It never held on because it was very bulky, cumbersome, and dangerous. It was nitrate based," says Winner. "Then, of course, what was going on with World War II. He was told to shut everything down, so further development just halted." The only known recordings from Czeija are from the 1937 Satzberg Festival, and these have been part of the NYPL's Toscanini archive since the materials were acquired in 1987. Although a transfer from film to archival tape means that they won't ever have to be played on the Selenophone again.

The NYPL exhibit aims to show that music, and recording history in general, fit into a larger context of world and technology history. Also on display are early attempts at making a record needle (they tried cactus needles, examples of which are also on display), celebrity endorsements for Edison's phonograph (a signed letter from Tolstoy extolling its virtues), and a telegram to Toscanini applauding his decision to pull out of a music festival in protest of Nazi occupation. The exhibit invites visitors to examine larger movements—in art, in music, in technology, and in historic preservation— through one man's life and career. "I want people to engage with Toscani's life and times," says Hiam. "But I also want people to understand what's being done to keep these things vibrant and alive."





Smash

Fascinated yo know what that acrylic display is on the first pic ???? Looks like an interesting bit if kit

Elantric

#18
Quote from: Smash on December 15, 2017, 11:47:32 AM
Fascinated yo know what that acrylic display is on the first pic ???? Looks like an interesting bit if kit

https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/lpa



The exhibit uses audio technology as a lens to examine Toscanini's life and work. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS/USED WITH PERMISSION

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-brief-history-of-the-selenophone