Fritz Pfleumer and the magnetic-tape 💫

 

Worth re-posting… 

Fritz Pfleumer (March 20, 1881 ~ August 29, 1945) was a German engineer and inventor of the magnetic tape for recording sound. 

Fritz Pfleumer was an engineer who had previously worked with coatings (up to technologies for “cigarette paper”). And he figured it out: if you can evenly apply a layer of substance on a thin flexible base, then you can make a flexible medium for magnetic recording instead of heavy and inconvenient options like steel wire. 

1927-1928: “paper tape”

Pfleumer's first experiments were as simple as possible -

he took thin paper strips (about 16 mm wide) and coated them with fine iron/oxide powder, 

I fixed the powder with varnish/binder so that the layer would hold and the tape would bend. 

In 1928, he received a patent for the idea of such a medium (in the sources it is called "sound paper machine" / "sound paper"). 

Fritz Pfleumer was an inventor, but in order for the idea to become a product, a company was needed that could:

• make electromechanics (motors, broaches, heads), 

• bring it to mass production, 

• embed it into real hardware. 

So in 1932, he transferred/licensed the rights to apply the idea to AEG (Berlin), so that they would develop a tape recorder. 

The paper was too fragile and unstable - it tore, deformed, and did not tolerate broaching and storage.

 Later, a key alliance took place:

• AEG took over the machine (the future Magnetophon), 

• and BASF is the carrier material, replacing paper with a plastic base (cellulose acetate) and a normal magnetic layer. 

 In 1934, BASF supplied AEG with the first 50,000 meters of magnetic tape, and in 1935, the Magnetophon K1 and tape were shown as a single system at the Berlin Radio Exhibition. 

Thus began the great era of magnetic-tape audio recording technology.