Electrical Engineering/History of Technology Magnetic Recording The First 100 Years The first magnetic recording device was demonstrated and patented by the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen in 1898. Poulsen made a magnetic recording of his voice on a length of piano wire. Magnetic Recording traces the development of the watershed products and the technical breakthroughs in magnetic recording that took place during the century from Poulsen’s experiment to today’s ubiquitous audio, video, and data recording technologies, including tape recorders, video cassette recorders, and computer hard drives. An international author team brings a unique perspective, drawn from professional experience, to the history of magnetic recording applications. Their key insights shed light on how magnetic recording triumphed over all competing technologies and revolutionized the music, radio, television, and computer industries. They also show how these developments offer opportunities for future applications. Magnetic Recording features 116 illustrations, including 92 photographs of historic magnetic recording machines and their inventors.
About the Author
About the Editors Eric D. Daniel has worked in magnetic recordingsince 1947. He worked ten years with the BBC Research Department,three years at the National Bureau of Standards, two years atAmpex, and twenty years at Memorex. As Director of Research atMemorex, Mr. Daniel worked on a wide variety of magnetic recordingmedia, including computer, instrumentation, video and audio tapeproducts, and rigid and flexible disks. In 1979 he was elected as aFellow of Memorex, and in 1982 he retired from full-timeemployment. Denis Mee worked on audio recording for five years at CBSLaboratories. He then worked thirty years at IBM where hespecialized in advanced storage technologies, includingmagneto-optical storage, magnetic recording heads, media, andrecording subsystems for computer rigid disks. In 1983 he waselected as an IBM Fellow, and in 1993 he retired from IBM. Dr. Meecontinues to represent a consortium of companies supporting storageresearch at various universities. Mark H. Clark is Assistant Professor of History in the Humanitiesand Social Sciences Department at Oregon Institute of Technology.An authority on the early history of audio magnetic recording, Dr.Clark spent the summer of 1996 as a Fulbright Professor at theUniversity of Aarhus, Denmark where he researched the life ofValdemar Poulsen.
