Forgotten audio formats: Wire recording

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

Read the whole story

 

[Oldmanalex]

dlux[/url]":294gog4f]

stormcrash[/url]":294gog4f]...the Ghost Army...

Those guys were stealthy, but also strong:

(That's a topic that's fascinating on its own.)

Going back to WWII stories, I remember an ex-Air Force guy telling me about their faux-squadron, they lined up on a dummy airfield in the desert. One day a German fighter bomber flew low over the airfield and dropped a bomb in the middle of the runway. It did not explode, and after waiting a while, so as not to get caught by a delay fused bomb, they cautiously went out to see what went wrong. The bomb was made of wood.

 

[dlux]

Oldmanalex[/url]":3sgbb34d]I remember an ex-Air Force guy telling me about their faux-squadron, they lined up on a dummy airfield in the desert. One day a German fighter bomber flew low over the airfield and dropped a bomb in the middle of the runway. It did not explode, and after waiting a while, so as not to get caught by a delay fused bomb, they cautiously went out to see what went wrong. The bomb was made of wood.

That's how wars should be fought. And after a tough day both sides get together at a pub and the loser buys the first round.

 

[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)

 

[talon_262]

unequivocal[/url]":3g8pybo2]I believe modern commercial airplanes use this technology in their black boxes. I think the stainless steel wires are on a continuous loop, so that the black box records some number of hours of data on the wire and the records over the old data.

The advantage is that even if the black box itself is ruptured, the data on the wire wire, even if the wire is severed, will still be recoverable and playable, unless it's been heated over the curie temperature for stainless steel.

Not for some years now; "black boxes" moved to solid-state storage long ago

 

[Peevester]

mltdwn[/url]":2wgddx3x]I still have my grandfather's wire recorder sitting in my study. I never use it and have no spools for it but it is a magnificent thing and still in mint condition. They knew how to make products back then. Course I also have his 1950s era circular saw that is made of chromed steel and still works like a champ.

Recording wire spools, and even full recorders, are amazingly cheap on ebay. That'll happen with something that was made in the millions and never thrown out.

Edit: Big thanks for the links to recordings before and after restoration. It's astounding!

 

[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.

 

[jstevej9491]

When I worked as a senior producer at Courtroom TV Network, I had an intern who swore that film existed of the Nuremberg war crime trials. He convinced me to let him go to D.C. to check out the National Archives. He returned to tell me that what they had was a wire recording of the entire trial, which lasted for months. And they had 5 minutes of silent film that was shot every day, presumably one reel of film. More importantly (this was maybe 1995) they had a player and would make us a dub of the wire recording... but not of the entire trial. So we needed a transcript to pick out what portion of the recording we wanted dubbed. But the transcript was thousands of pages, only available in Boston, and would take weeks to read, so that wouldn't work. Then we discovered that a professor had somehow scanned and OCR'd the typed transcript, and was selling it on a set of CDs for less than $100.
So we divided up the transcript among several staffers, focusing on the key players such as Goering and Speer, and whittled what we needed down to 10-15 hours of testimony. We then got our wire dub, married that to the film we had from each day, and still photos, and recreated about six hours of the trial, which we showed over several days.
Anyway, the point being that it was amazing to hear for the first time in 50 years the actual voices of Hermann Goering and Albert Speer and other top Nazis—all surviving because of the durability of the wire recording. Thank goodness it was not done on 8-track tape.

 

[Peevester]

palisade[/url]":31q2ky42]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

Definitely a Guthrie trait. He kept all those songs in his head and changed to suit his mood, what was going on in the world at the time, or just to tinker with lyrics to see if something fit better. You could probably fingerprint which performance it was by the lyrics, if you were a time traveler and had all of them recorded.

Edit: or, you know, he slightly lost his place in the song and repeated a verse. That third verse though, it's not in the lyrics from woodyguthrie.org. It should be, "Like a silver running stallion down her seabed she does sheen" is so great.

 

[Mazarin]

But later on, during the 1930s and again in World War II, the secret services of several nations would use wire recordings, massively sped up, to broadcast on shortwave radio to their agents in the field. The agents would be standing by, ready to "wire tape" these broadcasts, already aware of the exact tempo to play them back at. Of course, the enemy could sometimes decipher these broadcasts if they had enough experts and wire recorders with which to try speed experiments...

That's silly. The reason "squirt" transmissions were used was to make them more difficult to intercept and record by the enemy, and to prevent triangulation of the sender. The latter was particularly important if the sender was a field agent in an occupied country. If the transmission was recorded by the enemy, then slowing it down so that the characters could be distinguished was a trivial problem. Usually, the messages would be sent in Morse or a similar encoding scheme, so you would just slow the recording until you got the dots and dashes. After that, reading the message was a question of how well it was encrypted in the first place.

 

[Peevester]

Mazarin[/url]":37br9eho]

But later on, during the 1930s and again in World War II, the secret services of several nations would use wire recordings, massively sped up, to broadcast on shortwave radio to their agents in the field. The agents would be standing by, ready to "wire tape" these broadcasts, already aware of the exact tempo to play them back at. Of course, the enemy could sometimes decipher these broadcasts if they had enough experts and wire recorders with which to try speed experiments...

That's silly. The reason "squirt" transmissions were used was to make them more difficult to intercept and record by the enemy, and to prevent triangulation of the sender. The latter was particularly important if the sender was a field agent in an occupied country. If the transmission was recorded by the enemy, then slowing it down so that the characters could be distinguished was a trivial problem. Usually, the messages would be sent in Morse or a similar encoding scheme, so you would just slow the recording until you got the dots and dashes. After that, reading the message was a question of how well it was encrypted in the first place.

It's amazing what passed for encryption in the past. Interestingly, the dictionary of espionage and intelligence says that squirts were 60x or faster, pretty high tech for the time.

 

[ChadD]

Fritzr[/url]":2dcv9t3q]

ChadD[/url]":2dcv9t3q]

bongbong[/url]":2dcv9t3q]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.

Visual organic-mechanical analog interpretive reproduction format.

 

[goldencbrf4i]

bongbong[/url]":171gans8]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

I think its fairly accurate. The former being analog formats, the latter being digital formats.

 

[speedr]

I can't put my finger on why, but this article really bothers me. (Besides the grating spelling 'peirce' of the device pictured.)

Is Ars now trying to get readership in a new demographic? Is it time to try to attract the Olds to Ars?

This is out of place on Ars. I probably don't speak for myself alone when I say that younger, tech-savvy people (20s) don't want to hear about dinosaur devices.

The celebration of anything "Analog" in the digital age really rubs me the wrong way, like a scuff on a brand new shiny. The baby boomers aren't going to come. Stick with real technology that matters, maybe?

We're in a far better age now, but the old people won't let go of romanticizing when the human race had to stumble so badly. Every and any device in your bag or pocket replaces this thing, even better.

I understand the anthropological angle, but this is a tech site, not an anthropology exhibit.

 

[berrardo]

This collection of (historical) audio-format articles by Strongman is golden. Thanks for publishing them!

 

[Hat Monster]

Umbaglo[/url]":261dhbdu]Is this format what was being referred to by all my old tape players that had a switch for various tape formats that included "Metal" as one of them? I don't remember ever seeing any alternate tape format at the time, but I remember thinking "Metal" was certainly a strange one specifically.

No. Tape players were usually set up to handle iron oxide tapes (Type I) or chromium/cobalt oxides (Type II), which were very similar. Type IV wasn't oxide at all, but actual metal particles. They needed different bias and equalization.

 

[dlux]

speedr[/url]":3vxww0kr]This is out of place on Ars. I probably don't speak for myself alone when I say that younger, tech-savvy people (20s) don't want to hear about dinosaur devices.

Then you will lack context in many topics throughout your life. Enjoy your self-inflicted ignorance.


Edit to add, a few hours later:

Of all the comments I've read here at Ars, I find this to be one of the most disturbing. Never mind all the political trolling and gamergate bullshit, the idea that 'tech-savvy (20s)' people have no interest in anything outside their own limited experience (which in some cases amounts to shallow social-media apps and cloud-dependent minefields) is the epitome of narrow-mindedness and arrogance. If this comment is an accurate appraisal of the current generation of technologists, it's no wonder that we, collectively, never seem to learn from previous mistakes.

 

[SPCagigas]

markratledge[/url]":3coz20th]Old Woody Guthrie sounds like Bruce Springsteen

I think you've got that backwards. Bruce was a big admirer of Woody Guthrie. "There was always some spiritual center amid Woody's songs," Springsteen said in 1996. "He always projected a sense of good times in the face of it all. He always got you thinking about the next guy, he took you out of yourself. I guess his idea was salvation isn't individual. Maybe we don't rise and fall on our own."

Quote source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists ... e-19691231

 

[Z1ggy]

speedr[/url]":12b5dau3]I can't put my finger on why, but this article really bothers me. (Besides the grating spelling 'peirce' of the device pictured.)

Is Ars now trying to get readership in a new demographic? Is it time to try to attract the Olds to Ars?

This is out of place on Ars. I probably don't speak for myself alone when I say that younger, tech-savvy people (20s) don't want to hear about dinosaur devices.

The celebration of anything "Analog" in the digital age really rubs me the wrong way, like a scuff on a brand new shiny. The baby boomers aren't going to come. Stick with real technology that matters, maybe?

We're in a far better age now, but the old people won't let go of romanticizing when the human race had to stumble so badly. Every and any device in your bag or pocket replaces this thing, even better.

I understand the anthropological angle, but this is a tech site, not an anthropology exhibit.

so do we need to get off your virtual grass or something? dont like it dont read it.
as someone in their mid 30's I quite enjoyed the article. But then my dad had all sorts of old electronics in the house(never had a wire recorder though).

 

[Errum]

My father used to have a small wire recorder dictation machine. As the wire was fed a cam mechanism moved the the entire head assembly/wire guide up and down to precision wind the wire on to the reels in smooth layers.

I can tell you from personal experience that unsnarling defective cassette tapes is nothing compared to sorting out a wire misfeed.

 

[marsilies]

speedr[/url]":1wb8ryfn]I can't put my finger on why, but this article really bothers me. (Besides the grating spelling 'peirce' of the device pictured.)

Is Ars now trying to get readership in a new demographic? Is it time to try to attract the Olds to Ars?

This is out of place on Ars...

I'm not sure where you've been, but this is part of a ongoing "Forgotten Audio Formats" series that started back in March with the Highway Hi-Fi:

http://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/2016/03/ ... yl-player/
http://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/2016/06/ ... cassettes/
http://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/2016/08/ ... e-history/

 

[cactusbush]

speedr[/url]":3fu4n1ki]..."tech-savvy people (20s) don't want to hear about dinosaur devices. .........The celebration of anything "Analog" in the digital age really rubs me the wrong way.......... Stick with real technology that matters....... the old people won't let go of romanticizing ............ this is a tech site, not an anthropology exhibit"....

The arrogance of your ignorance is awe inspiring...

 

[Oak]

Fritzr[/url]":285q2kgu]
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.

How on Earth did that not knot up constantly???

 

[marsilies]

Oak[/url]":1w1jz1hn]

Fritzr[/url]":1w1jz1hn]
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.

How on Earth did that not knot up constantly???

I'm guessing the cabinet is only as deep as the tape is wide, meaning the only place new tape entering it could go is laying on top of the earlier tape.

 

[Derp Derpus]

My Dad had Webcor and Webster-Chicago wire recorders. When I got on his nerves he'd give me a spool of tangled wire to attempt unraveling. I can still see the bobbin moving up and down when they were in use. The very first recordings I ever made were back in the mid-50's on them.

 

[Oak]

Oak[/url]":1vajev6s]

Fritzr[/url]":1vajev6s]
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.

How on Earth did that not knot up constantly???

I'm guessing the cabinet is only as deep as the tape is wide, meaning the only place new tape entering it could go is laying on top of the earlier tape.

That would require no tape crossing past other stretches, even as tape was pulled from the bottom of the pile of accumulated tape. There was definitely crossing over. See the larger image http://i.imgur.com/6IbqBJn.jpg

(Sorry for late reply back. The new post to this old thread brought it back to my attention.)