THE TALKING MACHINE THAT LOST ITS VOICE FOR NEARLY60 YEARS. Visitors to the Paris Exposition of 1900 were shocked. Seconds after they spoke into Valdemar Poulsen's odd-looking machine, it repeated exactly what they ; d said. The astonishing device was the Telegraphone, the world's first magnetic recorder. It converted human speech to electrical signals and stored them on a length of piano-wire steel. The Telegraphone recorded continuously for up to thirty minutes, moving at 84 inches per second. Information could be played back or erased at will and its Danish inventor hoped it would find a place in homes and offices recording telephone messages. Unfortunately for Poulsen, the Telegraphone's ingenuity did not outshine its drawbacks: cumbersome weight and poor fidelity. Public interest waned rapidly and it wasn't until the 1960's that magnetic recording machines again caught the public imagination. In the intervening years, professional magnetic recorders became highly sophisticated and plastic tape replaced steel wire. Tape, however, was for many years both expensive and short-lived. The difficulty of handling reel-to-reel machines further prevented magnetic recording from becoming widely popular until the invention of pre-recorded cassette and 8-track tapes. Starting from zero in 1962, the year of their introduction, pre-recorded tapes were grossing well over $400 million as
early as 1967. By 1976, the combined sales of pre-recorded cassette and 8-track tapes had topped $800 million. The magnetic tape which makes this entertainment giant possible is basically a ribbon-like sandwich. The bottom layer is a polyester film which carries magnetic iron oxide particles on which audio signals are recorded. These particles are held in position by a resin binder which also serves as a protective top coating. Since the mid-1960's, the binders used in the vast majority of pre-recorded tapes have been Union Carbide products, solution polymerized vinyl resins. These unique resins provide the adhesion, flexibility, abrasion resistance and purity that have made magnetic tape so incredibly successful. Today, the growing tape industry's needs for binders such as solution polymerized vinyl resins are being served by Union Carbide Sales Representatives Al Diaz, Larry Goff, Milt Harmony, Mike Jones, Dan Neri, Bruce Orr and Ron Weldon. When they take your call, you'll find they offer still another improvement on the Telegraphone: they not only take messages accurately, they give you the information you need.
PEOPLE PLANNING THE FUTURE. UNION CARBIDE Chemicals and Plastics
