Forgotten audio formats: Wire recording

From espionage to home recording, the colourful life of the longest-used audio medium.

Read the whole story

 

[Fritzr]

cbreak[/url]":1waqm0sk]I would have expected "Wire Tap" to come from tapping the wires of a phone / telegraph / whatever.

That is the origin of tapping telephone wires.

"On the wire" usually meant telegraphy (wire service), but obviously in an office environment you would also put dictation "on the wire" just as we say it is "taped" today.

Wired for sound beginning in the 1930s meant the place or person was bugged. Apparently from the wiring connecting the bugs to the monitors.

Trent Park (UK) was "Wired for sound" in 1939 in preparation for the German officers who would be kept their as POWs.

"The joint is wired. . . . The next step is cameras and infrared and tape recorders, I guess."
--"A Man of Affairs", J. D. McDonald,1957.
(A somewhat prescient bit of dialog for a 1957 novel )


"Radio wire" shows up in a 1952 court decision where a "wired" investigator was used to record incriminating statements in a laundry using a body worn bug connected by radio to a distant recorder.

In the '50s it also referred to a hearing aid. With an electronic hearing aid, you were "wired for sound".

By 1981 in a direct extension of the hearing aid meaning, it also meant you have a personal playback device delivering sound by wire, whether hearing aid, radio receiver, or audio media player (tape/wire/disc etc.)
Cliff Richards "Wired For Sound"
Text of the lyrics

Michael W. Smith recorded a song in 1986 about the power of personal playback devices.
Micael W. Smith "Wired for Sound"
Text of the lyrics

Wire is a very complex word with many meanings. The linked piece mentions just a few of the ways we use this word.

By 1965 there was some ambiguity. Robert McNeil (Later founder of WNET's "The PBS NewsHour") was "wired for sound" by NBC for the making of the "The Big Ear" Special NBC News Report. In the summary description of the show, they say the microphones are connected by wires. They could have been connected to a tape recorder in the briefcase (the briefcase handle was also a microphone), but were actually connected to a wire recorder carried in a shoulder holster. The long description of the News Report has a lot more detail.

Was he wired for sound because of the wiring connecting components or the wire recorder? The statement that he could have used tape implies it is the wiring, not the recorder that is referred to in 1965.

That 1965 News Report is still relevant today as the only change in the behavior of "The Big Ear" is the technology used to illegally spy on US citizens in the US by US intelligence agencies. Related to this meaning "Justifying the Big Ear" (Christian Science Monitor, 2006)

 

[Fritzr]

nbs2[/url]":1ug6oa5s]A quibble and a question

Quibble - usage into the 70s yields an eventual lifespan of 72-81 years. Vinyl, at 67, is neither a relative spring chicken or dead, and will likely surpass wire recording's lifetime.

Question - mention is made of a debated stored program computer. Can someone provide more information about this?

The computer was SEAC 1950 to 1964.

SEAC also used a loose tape auxiliary memory subsystem. (The tape was simply stored loose in a cabinet, not on a spool, as an endless loop that passed through the tape drive mechanism.

SEAC was a rather advanced system as it also used an image scanner as an input device.

Horace M. Joseph

and George A. Moore

using the SEAC image scanner to analyze metallurgical photographs

The actual scanner is the small device that looks like a lathe to the left of the desk.

Pictures are from NIST Digital Archives​

 

[Fritzr]

ChadD[/url]"d06ri5i]

bongbong[/url]"d06ri5i]is it really accurate to call wire recording or tape or vinyl, an audio format?
Im not trying to sound smart alecky or be a nitpicker.
but is this the proper form so i can use it without error since the audio formats i know are flac, wav ,mp3 etc which I KNOW are file fomats.
wont audio device be a better term?

BTW their recovery methods are brilliant and awe inspiring

Of course... the word format does predate the internet. lol

We have always used it when comparing any two items that perform similar jobs in a different non interchangeable way.

Also before the internet people said things like, does that movie store rent VHS or Beta format movies. Old computer magazines used to publish basic language programs that would state which format they where intended for.

So yes audio format is the correct term. I guess if you wanted to get technical you could say Analog audio format. Although if you called Mp3/Flac/ogg ect digital audio format... then what would you classify something like a Sony Mini Disc reader using ATAC... Physical digital audio format?

Sheet music is the original audio format

Reproduction from the stored form is definitely an art form with this storage format and fidelity to the original is often lost in the playback.

 

[Fritzr]

twinstronglord[/url]":3m5v4cfd]

Hopefully Smarter[/url]":3m5v4cfd]According to the Firesign Theatre, the Aztecs invented the wire recorder.

citation: Everything You Know Is Wrong (1974)

I came here to see or make the FT reference. I was hoping I wasn't the only person that would immediately make the connection. Triggered one hell of a nostalgia trip. I recall learning a great deal about audio formats and converting analogue to digital just to preserve my sadly inherited Firesign Theatre albums.

Great article, but what was missing was a look at how they work. But again the wonderfully curious (and pedantic) Ars readers are on the ball with links.

And may as well drop a favorite line from that album

"Hush now. It's a new world, Honey. Nobody gowan have to be a slave all the time no more. We gowan to take to toins. And guess who's toin it is now! Ahuaw huaw huaw!"

The original Firesign Theatre video is on Youtube

 

[Fritzr]

palisade[/url]":1ms3tf05]When I was listening to Woody Guthrie's "Grand Coulee Dam" I pulled up the lyrics on google and found they didn't match. The lyrics I'm hearing go something like this:

This old world has seven wonders a travelling salesman tells
Some gardens and some towers (flowers?), I guess you know them well
But, ahhhh the greatest wonder in Old Sam's fair land
Oh in King Columbia River it's that big Grand Coulee Dam

She heads up the Canadian Rockies where the rippling waters glide
Comes a-rumbling down her canyon to meet that salty tide
Of that wide Pacific Ocean where the sun shines in the west
And that big Grand Coulee country that's the land I love the best

She rides down a granite canyon and she bends across the lean
Like a silver running stallion down her seabed she does sheen
Catched a ride upon the biggest thing yeah built by human hands
It's that King Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee Dam

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray
We carved the mighty history of the sacrifices made
Well she ripped our boats a-splinter, so she'd give us things to dream
Of the day that Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream

Uncle Sam took up this challenge in the year of Thirty three
For the farmer and the worker and for all of you and me
He said, "Roll along Columbia. You can ramble to the sea."
But river while you're rollin' you can do some work for me

Now up in Washington and Oregon you hear the factories hum
Making chrome and making manganese and light aluminum
And there flies a super rocket ship across this land of pots and pans
Spawned upon that King Columbia by the big Grand Coulee Dam

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray
We carved the mighty history of the sacrifices made
Well, she tore our boats to splinters but she gave us dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream

That was a problem with Woody's music ... He never played a piece the same way twice

 

[Fritzr]

Danathar[/url]":7n4d3hyo]I wonder, was there ever an attempt to do digital recording onto a wire? Something incredibly long lasting might be useful somehow.

I'd imagine the bitrate would be pathetically low by today's standards, but with enough wire you could record something digitally and archive it for a VERY long time.

Connect a wire recorder to the cassette recorder port of a digital output device and you have a digital wire recording. You can be sure that at least one computer hacker (hobbyist meaning ) has done this just for the sake of doing it

Bitrate would be similar to tape storage. Adding excessive amounts of ECC data to allow recovery of degraded recordings would lower the bit rate, but allow much more resilience.