Magnetic Recording

Favourite quote for today:

"Magnetic Recording. Although the principle of magnetic recording is over sixty years old, it is only during the past few years that the modern tape recorder has reached perfection. Recording on magnetic tape is the most accurate and versatile means of reproducing sounds today. It is used almost universally for making master recordings of music from which disks will be pressed for public sale; in another form it is used for recording television; and in still another. it is the heart of the data retrieval systems of the modern computers."

Stack, E.M. (1966) The language laboratory and modern language teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.

This book is older than our library and isn't catalogued - it's from the days before we were a university in our own right, and just a branch of the University of Queensland. I found it on our shelves and insisted the folks downstairs put a barcode in it so I could check it out. On the front, there's an imprint from an old tape spool.

Among it's many features, it includes a whole chapter on magnetic tapes - as in, the what, why and how of using tapes, channels and speeds to create magnetic recordings.

It's somehow wonderful. A snapshot of a world that briefly existed and will never return. It's completely useless for my thesis, but I can't help but like it.

Sadly, I know the minute I return it the book will probably be "decatalogued" (as far as any book which isn't on the catalogue can be decatalogued) and probably thrown out. We just don't have space for this sort of thing.

And yet, we've had it on the shelves for all these years...