The next step up from wire recordings was paper tape recording. Paper tape with magnetic oxide adhered to it was invented in 1928 by Fritz Pfleumer. It also used the idea of storing information through the use of altering metal magnetically. This creation was modified by a company known as AEG for the purpose of recording music. AEG developed the first practical tape recorder called the K1 which was demonstrated first in 1935. During the same year, a company known as BASF manufactured a plastic based tape to enhance the durability of the tapes. It was mainly used by the Germans during the times of World War II but eventually made its way to the United States in the late 1940’s and into the early years of the 1950’s.
During this time period, The United States was using what most people believe to be the first recording process, cutting grooves into circular discs of plastic most commonly known today as vinyl records. This meant that in the United States at this time, editing audio tracks was not possible due to the fact that a vinyl record could not be clipped out and pieced back together and no audio could be erased. A vinyl record was literally cut directly into the disk that was going to become the master and then dupicicate disks were created from molds of the original. If something was messed up or incorrect on the master record, that record had to be completely discarded and the entire track or even a couple of tracks had to be redone from the beginning.
In the United States, vinyl records were still being used during World War II while some of the rest of the world, mainly Germany, was advancing their audio technology through the use of paper tape machines. American audio engineers such as John T. Mullin helped develop this new form of music for the States during his time in the U.S Army Signal Corps. He discovered and sent two Magnetophon tape decks back to the States in a series of of mailbags. A company known as 3M developed a black paper oxide tape and introduced it as a product called Scotch No. 100.
America Advances
The major change that was finally made in America in 1948 was changing the medium that the tape was made out of. During World War II, Germany was using paper tape to transmit audio signal that sounded just like a real voice and was indistinguishable from actual voices over radio transmissions. When it was discovered and brought back to the United States, engineers changed the medium of the tape from paper to thin plastic strips, just as the Germans had done almost ten years earlier, to help make the tapes more durable although they kept the same magnetically alterable oxide on the tape to store the information. This newly found technology now allowed for the first decent versions of audio editing to begin (although the technology was not immediately picked up by engineers to actually be used in the industry). Tape recordings were now the highest form of editing available even though it did not become the main style of audio recording until the mid to late 50’s. Magnetic tape now allowed engineers to physically cut out pieces of the tape and replace them with new sections but gluing or taping them back into the reel. Engineers would later begin to take multiple takes of the same audio and cut the pieces out of the reel, then listen back to them and decide which sounded the best before completing a song.
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