WIRE RECORDS OF SOUND

Evening Star, Issue 20049, 14 December 1928, Page 10

WIRE RECORDS OF SOUND

LONDON DEMONSTRATION OF MEW INVENTION A demonstration »s given in London recently of a new apparatus for recording sound by means of magnetised wire. Amon" the items recorded were a vocal solo, a whistling solo, a small orchestral selection, and a recital ol a buresouo of a short selection from Macbeth J attributed to Mr .Bernard blunv. These were “ recorded. ” into a microphone connected to tho coils of small clcctriKiingnels, past the ores ol winch ,a thin steel wire was conducted at a constant speed. Tho electric, or acoustic, vibrations, it was explained, wore converted into magnetic vibrations by tho electro-magnets, and in tins way became magnetically fixed on the steel wire. After several minutes waiting the whole programme by reversing the mechanical process reproduced through a loud speaker the complete programme, including the announcer’s remarks between the numbers. 1 The reproductions were clear and strong in volume, tho tonal effect resembling that of a fairly good gramophone. Members of tho audience also spoke into the machine, and heard the reproduction of their voices immediately afterwards. Sponsors of the scheme announced that originally the idea was theoretically conceived by a Danish physicist, Mr W. Poulsen, thirty years ago, but the practical x’ealisation of it was duo to Dr Curt Stills,; who had spent twenty-three years in perfecting it. A British group, it was added, had obtained from a German bank the rights of manufacture for the whole world outside Germany. The machine, it is asserted, can be used for recording speeches and office letter oictations to replace shorthand writers, the wire “ record ” being wound on a spool tor iise when required. Another use is ns an attachment to a telephone to record messages in the absence of the receive!;. By the same means, it is held, the provincial or Continental correspondents of British newspapers could transmit ieWhonically nows to their head offices at a quarter of the present costs.