Artifact No.: CSTM 1969.0727
Date: 1933

Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

By 1930, advances in electronics allowed the first commercially successful magnetic recorders to be introduced as dictating machines and telephone recorders in Europe and North America. Recording on solid steel media, whether wire or tape, remained the dominant form of magnetic recording outside Germany until about 1950. The Museum has 17 such recorders dating from the 1940s and 1950s. Perhaps most interesting, however, is the Blattnerphone, or Marconi-Stille recorder. This large device, which recorded on steel tape 3 mm wide, was developed in Germany and sold to several radio broadcasters, including the forerunner of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1933.