There is a law set in stone about communication on the internet that I have come to realize is an undeniable truth. This is Godwin’s Rule on Nazi Analogies. The rule, simply put, states that:
“If an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler”
And since I like being right about the truths I uphold I am going to get Hitler into the discussion really quickly, by making this article about Hitler and his contribution to HI-FI.
Now the man of course was a psychotic, a terrible savage who destroyed, tortured and killed more people than arguably anyone else in history. And as a somewhat complicated truth, his obsession about world domination has also advanced science and technology in a shorter period of time than I can begin to fathom in retrospect. Of course this spur in technological advancement was also driven from the other side, the allies, defending themselves against his blood quest for world dominance.
We have all read about the advancement of rocket science first by development of the V1 and V2 rockets, and later on through the involvement of Wernherr von Braun whose work ultimately put a man on the moon.
But here is a side note in history that many might never have heard about: Hitler’s obsession with Hitler really did wonders for the advancement of audio recordings and, in particular, magnetic tape.
Now, the concept of magnetic tape is a bit older than Hitler’s unfortunate rise to power; back in 1888 American engineer Oberlin Smith produced a noteworthy short article in the journal “Electrical World” which mentioned the use of permanent magnetic tapes as a possible alternative to the phonograph.
So, as far as we know, Oberlin was all talk but no action, but his approach to using metal filings glued to cotton tape to be magnetized by alternating current was certainly as promising as it was novel.
In 1928 Fritz Pfleumer developed, and in 1929 patented, a magnetic recording tape, but it was different from Oberlin’s idea as he used oxide bonded to a strip of paper or film. The German company AEG bought the patent and developed the Magnetophone, a device to playback Fleumer’s invention; however it took until 1935 to get the German industrial chemical conglomerate BASF to sell the first functional magnetic tape. Now to be very clear on this subject, both BASF and AEG were outright terrible companies forming an integral part of the NAZI destruction machine by profiteering from concentration camp slave labour and in the case of the BASF subsidiary IG-Farben producing the chemicals used to ruthlessly murder millions. Talking about technical merit of their contribution to magnetic tape recordings will be a hard read for some, but it is an undeniable part of what happened at the time.
The final design champion for the first functional magnetic tape for the magnetophone was cellulose acetate foil coated with a lacquer of iron oxide bound with additional cellulose acetate. Worked like a charm.
Around the same time on Christmas eve 1932, the BBC ran its first broadcast of using magnetic encoding on razor wire 3mm wide. The wire ran at 90m a minute and an average 30 minute broad cast would require as much as 2.7km of the medium.
The sound quality really was astonishing. In the video that is to follow you can get a feel for the potential of the technology played back on a 1932 prototype of the Magnetophone.
What you hear is what was recorded in 1935 in the Ludwigshaven Theater using an early AEG Magnetophon prototype. Four different prototypes were built between 1932 and 1934, and this is the last one. It should have been exposed in the 1934 Berlin Radio Fair, but still had some troubles, especially a major design issue where the tape would break if you did not wait until the reels stop before.
What find entirely enjoyable chamber music in what I consider remarkable quality for the time, could have been a ver happy begiining to this new technology. But, as usually seemed to be the case, Hitler had to use it to make a mess of things. One of the first people who saw the potential of this novel recording device, you see, was the Führer and his minister of propaganda Jospeh Göbbels. The technology was quite deceptive you see. Unlike gramophone records that had highly audible shortcomings, the quality was so good that it was indiscernible from a live radio broadcast or public address using the microphones available at the time.
For Hitler this must have really been a rather welcome magic trick. He could now be at several places at the same time and spew his psychotic bile much more effectively. As difficult as it is to imagine now, before the Magnetophone, it was actually impossible for several radio stations to broadcast the same message at the same time. By the 1940’s, German radio stations broadcast Hitler’s speeches simultaneously from all over the country which by itself was an impressive feat for the time, but when the war took a turn for the worse for some Germans and for the better for everyone else, Hitler and his minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels actually pumped the magic up a notch. Since the Third Reich was falling apart from the rims with the Russians progressing from the east, The British from the north, the Americans via Normandy and France through the west, propaganda was needed to send different messages to different parts of the country. Those who could already hear the mortar fire and the approaching troops got a customized message to fight to the last man, while all others were left in oblivion through messages that the German war effort was indeed advancing.
All of that was made possible with BASF magnetic tape played on AEG Magnetophones. During the war, The Allies at some point realized German superiority in this technology. Very late in the war, US forces advanced and the US Army Signal Corps was assigned to capture and analyze all enemy radio equipment. At some point they ran into the Magnetophone and in 1945 General Dwight Eisenhower decided to use it to send a message to the German people. New to the technology, his technicians must have been unclear about how to erase the tape properly. In what already must have been confusing times, the German people got a broadcast of Hitler and Eisenhower in a strange duet of conflicting messages of attack and surrender.
Jack Mullin accounts how he was made aware of the exceptional sound quality of the Magneotphone through a British Radio Technician who had heard one at Radio Frankfurt:
When travelling back to the US Mullin took two suitcase sized AEG Magnetophones back with him and demonstrated them on several occasion after tinkering and improving them for some time. His main idea was to make them available to the movie industry that was evolving beyond silent films at the time. At a demonstration at Metro Goldwyn Meyer, the technical director introduced Mullin to the famous Bing Crosby who immediately saw the potential for his very pupolar radio shows. Crosby went on to invest invested $50,000 in a local electronics firm, Ampex, and the tiny six-man concern soon became the world leader in the development of tape recording.
At the same time captured German experts were enlisted to set up America’s first tape manufacturing facility. The rest is history and the conquest of magnetic tapes for music, data storage and video lasted well into the end of the century. The expertise that went into its development still lingers on in the computer hard drive that might well be humming inside the computer you are using to read this article right now.
Arved Deecke is founder of the Danish / Mexican Loudspeaker company KVART & BØLGE that makes audiophile quarter wave loudspeakers and sound systems at a price anyone can afford. In his free time he blogs about all things related to sound, music and audio.
