SOUND RECORDER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 117, 21 May 1925, Page 5

SOUND RECORDER

"A GERMAN DISCOVERY."-

(UKIIED FKESS ASSOCIATION—COPIRIOHT.) (AUSTBALUN-KEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.)

(Received 21st May, 11,30 a.m.)

LONDON, 20th May. Ine Star" reveals a marvellous development in broadcasting, by which speeches and concerts can' be preserved and reproduced at will, instead of being lost in the ether as at present. German experts, it says,; have .discovered • a, method of using a hard steel wire, which, when passing through a magnetic field, becomes permanently magnetised by the currents issuing from, the microphone. The wire is then rolled on a. spool, and_ reproduction of the sounds is achieved by running the wire past a magnetised soft iron core, by which the sounds are repeated through a telephone receiver or.a radio transmitter. • Speech is reproduced faithfully, .but music is not yet satisfactory.

The statement that the use of a steel wire for making a permanent magnetic record of sounds, is a now■ German".invention is incorrect. .It has been known for several years, and a fully-developed apparatus produced by an American company was demonstrated in .New Zealand sonic years ago by an Auckland business man. Even then, it was realised that it could be used for recording speeches and music for subsequent broadcasting. A representative of "The Post" saw the apparatus, and heard music played days before reproduced, and had his own words reoorded and reproduced. The appliauce is, in fact, quite well known under the name of telegraphoue. It corresponds exactly with the cabled description. So far was it from being unknown that, according to those interested, it had incurred the hostility of the gramophone industry, to which, in some departments of usefulness, it threatened to become a rival.