The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here is something I haven't seen before or even heard of. I came across this excellent website last week and it details a machine that records onto camera film. Not in the way you would expect though as instead of doing it optically it instead cuts a groove into the film itself. Not sure what the quality would of been like - but I thought a novel method of sound recording.

Here is a link to the website with photos of the machine and diagrams showing how it records onto the film. Has anyone ever seen one of these machines? Or even heard of them before?

The recordgraph webpage

Additional technical information:

Additional technical information


S-B-H

A quite interesting machine. While I haven't either heard of the Recordgraph brand before, this type of machine is clearly a clone of a Teficord. To my knowledge, Dr. Karl Daniel was the first one to have a technically sufficient sound tape recorder working. He started working with grooved tapes in 1926. Ten years later, in 1936, he showed his working machine to the public at a radio exhibition.

Here's a closeup of a Teficord:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... 0615024900

The Tefiphon would only play endless loop tapes while the Teficord would also record on blank tapes. Such machines would be very rarely used in a home environment. The handling of open endless loop tapes would have been way too much for an average user. As far as I remember, these early tapes could play about for 30 minutes.


After WW2, Daniel continued his work, developing a cartridge based version called the Tefifon - now spelled with an 'f'.

Apparently, they weren't that much popular. One Tefi cartridge would normally play for one full hour. A large cartridge would run for up to three hours. The KC-1 was introduced in 1951 and the most widely used one:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQueUrqwfR8[/youtube]

The quality of the late ones is quite close to a period vinyl and clearly Hi-Fi. I can't speak for the early ones, of course.


This one shows some interesting pictures and an earlier cartridge machine, likely from the late 40's with a faster running tape and open mechanics:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWI4RwSt-BU[/youtube]

There was also a Goodale phonograph that played celluloid strips that dates to the external horn era.

The idea was tried a few times during the Acoustic era, probably the most successful was the Hiller talking clock:

http://www.hiller.netfirms.com/

There are quite a few out there but I don't know if anyone has be able to get one of the fragile strip recordings to play.

How about this Filmon Endless Sound belt made out of celluloid from the 1930s Japan? Here's the link for an article by Jean-Paul Agnard about this invention.

http://app.onlinephotofiler.com/images/ ... _0ade1.jpg

Of course, how could I have forgotten the Hiller clock!

To my knowledge, the early open tapes were all individually recorded, but the later cartridge tapes were actually pressed from a steel master tape. Unfortunately, the book I have does not cover the problem of putting the ends together but it did work. From the tapes I listened to I cannot recall any audible intersection.