Re: [ARSCLIST] Magnetic Recording History (was OTR online?

[Anthony Baldwin <jazztrash@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for putting me right on the composition of Magnetophonband Typ  
C and L. This neatly explains why a retired German friend of mine has  
always insisted that, as a Wehrmacht radio engineer attached to a  
Soldatensender German forces station in late-1944, he used "plastic"  
tape with his Lorenz-AEG machines to record broadcasts off-air from  
Berlin.

Incidentally, being a 20-year-old swing fan he also used the  
Wehrmacht's machines and elaborate antenna array to record Glenn  
Miller's ABSIE broadcasts from England on 583kHz AM, at considerable  
personal risk. Reception was apparently rock solid, and (ironically,  
in view of the noiselessness of German recorded broadcasts) his off- 
air tapes also captured the surface noise of the original  
transcription discs.

Tony B.

> The German tape from 1935-1944 was an acetate-based tape called  
> Magnetophonband Typ C. The factory where this was manufactured was  
> destroyed in an industrial accident (not a war-related explosion)  
> and from 1944 until the end of the war, only homogeneous PVC  
> Magnetophonband Typ L tape was available. In the Typ L tape, the  
> gamma ferric oxide was embedded in the PVC matrix and not coated on  
> the basefilm like current and preceding tapes. The "Typ L" refers  
> to IG Farben's trade name "Luvitherm" for their brand of PVC, just  
> as "Mylar" became perhaps better known than PET for this later  
> basefilm.