Mondo Knows Facts
The first practical tape recorder was German
AEG's Magnetophon and BASF plastic tape appeared in the mid 1930s AEG showed the Magnetophon K1 in 1935, recording onto plastic tape made by BASF rather than steel wire. German radio used the machines for late-night orchestral broadcasts, and Allied engineers who heard them could not tell the music was recorded. Examples were found in Germany at the end of the war. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
Magnetic tape was introduced for computer data storage on the UNIVAC I in 1951UNISERVO tape drives replaced heavy punched card stacks with flexible magnetic mediaBing Crosby paid for America's first tape recordersThe singer invested in Ampex so his radio show could be pre-recordedLes Paul helped Ampex build an eight-track recorderSel-Sync let him overdub a new part while hearing the ones already recordedThe first recording was played back on tinfoilEdison's phonograph cut sound into a sheet wrapped round a spinning cylinderFlat discs beat cylindersEmile Berliner's gramophone made records cheap to press and stackThe Beatles recorded their first album in one dayPlease Please Me was done at Abbey Road on 11 February 1963
🎵 Musicfact 90 of 200
← → to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: recording, magnetic-tape, germany
The first practical tape recorder was German: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- AEG's Magnetophon and BASF plastic tape appeared in the mid 1930s. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.