Overview

A number of experimental sound recording devices were designed and developed in the early 1900s in Europe and the United States. Recording and reproducing the sounds were two separate processes, but both were necessary in the development of the tape recorder. Up until the 1920s, especially in the United States, a type of tape recorder using steel tape was designed and produced. In 1928 a coated magnetic tape was invented in Germany. The German engineers refined the magnetic tape in the 1930s and 1940s, developing a recorder called the Magnetophon. This type of machine was introduced to the United States after World War II and contributed to the eventual widespread use of the tape recorder. This unique ability to record sound and play it back would have implications politically, aesthetically, and commercially throughout Europe and the United States...