Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years

"The first magnetic recording device was demonstrated and patented by the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen in 1898. Poulsen made a magnetic recording of his voice on a length of piano wire. MAGNETIC RECORDING traces the development of the watershed products and the technical breakthroughs in magnetic recording that took place during the century from Paulsen's experiment to today's ubiquitous audio, video, and data recording technologies including tape recorders, video cassette recorders, and computer hard drives.

An international author team brings a unique perspective, drawn from professional experience, to the history of magnetic recording applications. Their key insights shed light on how magnetic recording triumphed over all competing technologies and revolutionized the music, radio, television and computer industries. They also show how these developments offer opportunities for applications in the future.

MAGNETIC RECORDING features 116 illustrations, including 92 photographs of historic magnetic recording machines and their inventors."

Sponsored by:
IEEE Magnetics Society

About the Editors Eric D. Daniel has worked in magnetic recording since 1947. He worked ten years with the BBC Research Department, three years at the National Bureau of Standards, two years at Ampex, and twenty years at Memorex. As Director of Research at Memorex, Mr. Daniel worked on a wide variety of magnetic recording media, including computer, instrumentation, video and audio tape products, and rigid and flexible disks. In 1979 he was elected as a Fellow of Memorex, and in 1982 he retired from full-time employment.
Denis Mee worked on audio recording for five years at CBS Laboratories. He then worked thirty years at IBM where he specialized in advanced storage technologies, including magneto-optical storage, magnetic recording heads, media, and recording subsystems for computer rigid disks. In 1983 he was elected as an IBM Fellow, and in 1993 he retired from IBM. Dr. Mee continues to represent a consortium of companies supporting storage research at various universities.
Mark H. Clark is Assistant Professor of History in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Oregon Institute of Technology. An authority on the early history of audio magnetic recording, Dr. Clark spent the summer of 1996 as a Fulbright Professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark where he researched the life of Valdemar Poulsen.

Acknowledgments.

Contributors.

Introduction (C. Mee & E. Daniel).

AUDIO RECORDING.

The Magnetic Recording of Sound (M. Clark).

The Telegraphone (M. Clark & H. Nielsen).

Steel Tape and Wire Recorders (M. Clark).

The Introduction of the Magnetophon (F. Engel).

Building on the Magnetophon (B. Gooch).

Product Diversification (M. Clark).

The History of Digital Audio (J. Watkinson).

VIDEO RECORDING.

The Challenge of Recording Video (F. Remley).

Early Fixed-Head Video Recorders (F. Jorgensen).

The Ampex Quadruplex Recorders (J. Mallinson).

Helical-Scan Recorders for Broadcasting (H. Sugaya).

Consumer Video Recorders (H. Sugaya).

Digital Video Recording (K. Sadashige).

DATA RECORDING.

Capturing Data Magnetically (J. Monson).

Data Storage on Drums (S. Rubens).

Data Storage on Tape (W. Phillips).

Data Storage on Hard Magnetic Disks (L. Stevens).

Data Storage on Floppy Disks (D. Noble).

Instrumentation Recording on Magnetic Tape (F. Jorgensen).

Index.

About the Editors.