FWIW I read that this presentation to the RCA engineers was made in Berlin. GE may be a separate matter or this might be another part of the same story. The person speaking about it was from Germany.
Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
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-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Fine
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 8:39 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Noise floor and AM X-mitter bandwidth, was: The revival of the audio cassette
I might be wrong on this, but wasn't the Magnetofon obtained and studied by GE one of the DC bias ones? So it probably would sound, at best, like an optical sound-film recorder? Didn't the Germans change to AC bias during WWII or during the years where the US was gearing up to fight them?
In partial answer to Randy's question, some WWII era German tapes, including 2-channel stereo experiments, were released on an AES CD a while back. One thing I've wondered about -- the German material from Telefunken that Mercury and then Capitol released in the US in the early days of the LP, I think all of that was mastered for US release from German disk masters. But had any of it been recorded on tape and, if so, wwre tapes actually used to make any of the US LPs?
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Durenberger" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Noise floor and AM X-mitter bandwidth, was: The revival of the audio cassette
>A couple of thoughts:
>
> 1) Sarnoff and Paley would not have been interested in promoting a
> technology that would allow for high-quality syndication doing an end-run around the wired networks.
>
> 2) On the other hand, one would think they WOULD have been interested
> in a technology that could potentially decimate program costs...since
> it wouldn't be necessary to do a repeat show for the far time zones.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark Durenberger
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 6:48 PM
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Noise floor and AM X-mitter bandwidth, was:
> The revival of the audio cassette
>
>> I'd like to see proof of that first tale, too. It's very fashionable
>> in recent times to slag Sarnoff. He's fallen out of favor with
>> certain would-be historian-elites. I'm interested in facts, not
>> agendas, so I'd want to see some RCA memos or other proof that a man
>> being slagged for being "too" capitalistic and "ruthless" would make
>> an anti-business and potentially self-harming move such as described
>> below. And then there's the fact that RCA purchased many inventions over the years, and started out as a company with a file cabinet full of cross-licensed patents developed by WECO, GE and others.
>>
>> -- Tom Fine
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 7:31 PM
>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Noise floor and AM X-mitter bandwidth, was:
>> The revival of the audio cassette
>>
>>
>> From: Bob Olhsson <[log in to unmask]>
>>
>>> Something that came out a few years ago is that RCA was offered a
>>> worldwide license for manufacturing and distributing Magnetophons
>>> outside of Germany during the 1930s and turned it down because Sarnoff refused to build anything using somebody else's patents!
>>
>> I don't think that RCA held the basic theremon patent, but they build
>> it.
>>
>> I would like to see some accurately researched data on this because
>> General Electric had been offered the machine, had one sent to them
>> to examine (the one I own might be that machine), and they wrote a
>> report on the machine which was not too encouraging. They called it
>> no better than an oversized dictating machine. I have a copy of the
>> report. Was the RCA story in Friedrich Engel's definitive book?
>>
>>> Another historical tid-bit is that apparently Bell Labs developed AC
>>> bias before anybody else but never did anything with it.
>>
>> Yes, as my friend Friedrich Engel expanded to me many years ago and
>> wrote in his book, AC bias was discovered four separate times, first
>> by Carlson and Carpenter in 1921, and then again in the 30s by the
>> Japanese, the Germans, and again in the U.S. by Marvin Camras.
>> Camras did mention to me that he indeed did not know of the others
>> until long after his development of it -- and even the patent office
>> did not notice the Carlson and Carpenter patent. Most of the
>> discoveries came about when the oscillating of malfunctioning
>> equipment provided better recordings.
>>
>>> A high school friend was the son of Ford's lead patent attorney. He
>>> told me that according to his dad there is all kinds of advanced
>>> automotive technology from the first two decades of the twentieth
>>> century that will never see the light of day because it can't be
>>> patented and thus wouldn't provide enough competitive advantage to cover the cost of putting it into the level of mass production
>>> required to make it affordable. Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
>>
>> The lacquer recording disc also wasn't patentable, and it was a
>> pretty profitable device. Nothing about the Columbia microgroove Lp
>> was patentable. And much to Westrex's surprise, the patents on the
>> 45/45 stereo groove had expired long before 1957 -- and they had been
>> held by Bell Labs since the 30s and not used.
>>
>> Mike Biel [log in to unmask]
>
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