"Tape recording in your basement or bedroom used to be a freak thing. Now anybody can do it."
Les Paul, musician
At the end of the nineteenth century, Valdemar Poulsen developed the telegraphone as a means of recording sound on a magnetized wire. However, the sound quality of these machines was poor, and the wire itself was usually built into the machine, making it of little use for long-term audio storage. A breakthrough came in 1928 when German engineer Dr. Fritz Pfleumer (1881-1945) successfully fixed magnetic powder to a thin strip of paper. This was then able to record magnetic signals more effectively than magnetic wire.
In 1930, the AEG company of Berlin began work on the magnetophone, an audio recorder that would make use of the Pfleumer principle. To develop the tape itself, it collaborated with another illustrious name in German electronics, BASF, which used its expertise in plastics to create a new type of recording medium. The system BASF developed used a narrow band of cellulose acetate coated with a lacquer of iron oxide, thus enabling the tape to be magnetized in the recording process. The AEG K1 magnetophone and the BASF magnetic tape were exhibited together at the 1935 Berlin Radio Fair.
The AEG K1 was used extensively by the Nazis during World War II. After the war, a number of models were shipped to the United States, where they formed the basis of a revolution in audio recording.
