Why Transfer your Wire Recordings to CD's?                  

CD's do not wear with repeated play, do not warp or crack, and have a shelf life of decades.  
Your wire recordings are deteriorating right now. We can transfer them to a more stable media before it's to late.

We are dedicated to preserving your treasured Wire Recordings.
 
Using special software, powerful studio equipment and lots of experience, we can drastically improve the sound of your original tapes. Click here for examples.
 
We can make additional copies of your CD for your own use.
 
Our turnaround time is generally 2-3 days from the time we receive your tapes. Often the work is done and shipped back to you the very same day.
 
We offer very reasonable pricing and also provide generous discounts for large collections.
 

 Click here for details on the entire process

 

  Restoration vs. Straight Transfers.      

Straight Transfers do not include the removal of  hiss, surface noise, or equalization to enhance the audio.
Restoration includes those services.

Wire Recordings to CD Pricing   

Have a Question?  Click here to email us...
 

There are many steps involved in restoring and transferring Wire Recordings to CD.

Each incoming order is inventoried, added to our inventory system, and an email notification is sent to the customer.
 

Each tape is then examined for playability. Any repairs requested are then completed.
 

The best playback equipment is selected for your project. The recordings are then played and digitized on our computer
 

Each recording is then analyzed and restored individually. We use the very best software and hardware for this process.
 

Before the recording can be put on a CD, a master file is created. This file is then used to create your CD's.
 

We slow burn the master recording to a CD which on completion, is labeled and placed in a jewel case, ready for shipping.
 

Each outgoing order is re-inventoried and carefully packed, ready to ship back to you.

---


 Some History of the Wire Recorder

Before the development of oxide based magnetic tape, "glorified" stainless steel piano wire was the dominant audio recording format of choice.

The technology of magnetic recording dates back to 1878, when Oberlin Smith proposed the idea of recording telephone signals onto a length of steel piano wire. Over the next thirty years the technology evolved at a "snail's pace"; stalled by lack of adequate and cost effective electronic amplification.

By 1930, advances in electronics allowed the first commercially successful wire recorders to be introduced as dictating machines and telephone recorders in Europe and North America. During WWII, the machines found their way into the BBC who employed banks of them for sending messages to the French underground. Meanwhile the US Army & Navy also employed them for similar purposes in their operations centers.

Following the war from 1947 to 1952, wire recorders became popular in America and across Europe, and started showing up in many homes. The wire recorder was the very first reliable audio recorder to find it's way into the American home in significant numbers. In their "Hay-Day", wire recorders were quite the item !

Signals recorded on steel wire recorders have held up quite well over the years and the sound quality was fairly good considering the limited technology of the day.

 

At the top of this page is a Webster 80-1 which sold for around $150 back in 1947. Though early wire recorders used a DC bias which literally "brute forced" the modulated audio current and subsequent flux change onto the wire, the Webster's used a 40 kHz bias frequency for greatly improved fidelity.The advent of oxide based magnetic tape had many benefits over steel wire....  Mainly the ability to record and playback in stereo. Thus magnetic tape put an end to the wire recording era.

Chronology of Wire Recordings

1878 - An American mechanical engineer named Oberlin Smith proposes the idea of recording telephone signals onto a steel wire. Though it never went any further than just an idea, the concept of magnetic wire recording was born.

 

1898 - Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen explores further the principle of magnetic recording.  The machine he developed was called the Telegraphone, and is described as a device to record telephone messages in the absence of the called party... in effect, the world's first answering machine.  Wire ran at a brisk 100 inches/second to create a viable flux field sufficient enough to drive a magnetic  reproducer, since this was well before the advent of electronic amplification.

1911 - Lee DeForest, then working for the Federal Telegraph Company, is asked to develop an amplifier to allow the recording of high-speed radio telegraph messages received on a type of receiver called the tikker.   Deforest uses his Audion tube, invented in 1907, to make the first practical electronic amplifier.

1918 - German inventor Curt Stille modifies & improves on the Telegraphone by using electronic amplification.

1939 - Marvin Camras at The Armour Research Foundation invents an improved wire recorder. Several thousand were sold to the American Army and Navy. Following the war, licenses were sold to dozens of American and European manufacturers to make wire recorders.

1946-47 - The first Amour Research Foundation licensed wire recorders that appeared in America.

1947-52 - The consumer hay-day for wire recorders which were then superseded by magnetic tape.



Audio fidelity of a wire recording is very limited by today's standards, but still quite acceptable considering the technology at the time. What's amazing is how well those early recordings are holding up. Typical Webster style wire recorder spools hold approximately 7200 ft of wire which allows approximately 1 hour of play/record time at 24 ips (inches per second).