And now come the Tape Recorder.pdf

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extracted text: The wonderful machine And Now Comes the TAPE RECORDER machine and has now become as familiar as a typewriter to most households. In the enter tainment market, it is a "close second to the phonograph. The tape recorder was devel oped in Germany shortly before the war. However, it was adapt ed to practical use by about 1944. During that time, it was used only by businessmen, radio stations, recording companies and army interrogators. The German engineers brought the tape recorder to near perfecover Radio Luxembourg, they found recording apparatus that experts never thought existed. The first commercial tape recorders were widely used as business dictating machines. In the business areas, what was needed was mere sound trans cription. Hardly any attention was given to fidelity recording. However, manufacturers en gaged in the production of sound equipment were quick'to see mass market possibilities for the tape recorder. By 1948, BO Panorama the American producers had created a machine for a domes tic market. The British were getting ready for full-scale pro duction. The Germans put their first commercial recorder on the market at about the same time. At first, sales were small. Only specialist users and a few enthusiasts bought the ma chines. But by around 1955, sales started to rise. In the Brit ish domestic market, it reached 40,000. Today, there are about a hundred different models on the market and sales had ex ceeded the two million mark. The price of a tape recorder ranges from P300 to PS^OO. The market for tape record ers is split into three fairly distinct parts. The business part requires cheap, easy-to-operate machines that can reproduce intelligibly. The second part re quires accurate sound repro ducers for such special jobs as music recording. And the third part is composed mostly of people who regard the tape rec order as a novelty machine for use in the home or for instruc tional purposes. y here are of course other marginal uses. The psychia trists, for example, use it to catch the outpourings of their patients. The ornithologists use it to record exotic birdcalls. Some hobbyists use it to record the sounds emitted by celebri ties. But mostly people want to buy for some musical pur pose. “Our average customer is looking for good reprouuction of good music,” one dealer said. The tape recorder has made it possible for the lover of good music to collect a library very cheaply. A new trend in the business is the teenage market. The at traction here is that “pops” can be recorded at a fraction of the price of an ordinary disc and erased as soon as the song becomes unpopular. The tape recorder is definite ly an economic proposition. Once the initial basic expendi ture has been met, one can get years of good service out of the machine. An ordinary rec order costs 50% less than a good phonograph. The manufacture and distri bution of tape recorders is con ducted in a rather unusual way. The precision machines are im ports from a big German con cern. The mass market is con trolled by the Americans and the British. Only a few manu facturers produce all the com ponents of their machines. Most of them buy the spare parts and assemble them. In this way, small enterprises are able to produce good machines. A good example is a small British com pany. This company does not manufacture any part of a tape recorder. All it does is to buy November 1958 81 the parts from the different companies and assemble them. It turns out two or three dozen machines a week. All the signs suggest that the industry is going to see a great deal of technical innovation in the next few years. Now, even the ordinary user demands pre cision performance from mass market models. The British and American manufacturers are aware of this trend. Lately, they have been experimenting with stereophonic machines which they hope to put on the market soon. A nother trend will be to wards changes in the size of the machines. Some present tape recorders are much too bulky for most of their uses. In recognition of this, console models have been on the market for some time. But for business men and others who want to carry their recorders about, even a 20-pound burden is an inconvenience. One trend in the industry therefore is towards copying those midget radio sets that can be carried in the poc ket. These need very small valves called “transistors.” The main difficulty with a midget recorder is the quality of the reproduction. It is not as accurate as the bigger mo dels. Another drawback is price. A midget recorder uses very ex pensive components and unless the price of the parts is brought down, manufacturers do not see a wide, immediate market for the baby recorder. Boon for Housewives T1 earproof grocery sacks now can be made using a new stretchable paper, Kraftsman Clupak, in vented by Sanford Cluett, inventor cf Sanforizing process. Paper is made of pu^p treated by standard chemical methods, then placed on rubber drying belt. Belt, with its pulp load, is expanded passing over over drying roll. When it snaps back into nor mal dimension, finished paper goes with it. Resulting bunched fibers will stretch; in drop test new paper outlasts conventional Kraft paper about 10 to 1 with out tearing. ♦ Panorama
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