Wire for Sound

The dream of every U.S. warcaster is to talk from the scene of battle itself. But live broadcasts from the fighting fronts are not practical (the enemy might intercept them). And most recording equipment to date has been too bulky for much front-line use. Last week, however, it looked as if the broadcasters were coming close to their dream.

U.S. Army & Navy technicians had given the nod to a highly portable little gadget called the Magnetic Wire Sound Recorder--an instrument about the size of a portable typewriter. It records the human voice and other sounds within earshot.

Colonel Edward M. Kirby, radio chief of the War Department's Public Relations Bureau, wants to use the Wire Recorder to bring the battlefronts nearer home. With this device the radioman makes his comments into a hand microphone, which would also pick up surrounding battle sounds. The microphone actuates an electromagnet which records the sounds on a thin wire moving through it (by magnetically rearranging the molecular structure of the wire). The spool of wire, loaded with its temporary magnetic record, can then be sent away and "played back'' for radio broadcasting or transcription disk recording.

Ten Potential Pounds. The Wire Recorder weighs only 10 lb. (minus the amplifier and tubes) and, when electric pow er lines are not available, runs on 25 lb. of batteries in a pack sack. Its ten miles of wire are good for four hours. Unlike a wax or rubber recording, the wire can be used again & again, because it can be wiped clean merely by reversing its run through the instrument, which unscrambles the molecules.

The Wire Recorder's potential uses, military and otherwise, are legion. Pilots can plug it into a plane's electrical system and record what they see--things they might forget to tell Intelligence when they get home. Signalmen can use the Recorder for intelligence reports. The instrument is, in effect, a simplified portable dictaphone.

Unlike many obscure inventors, Marvin Camras, who developed the Wire Recorder, benefits directly from its production. Stocky, shy, 27-year-old Researcher Camras now gets a 25% royalty on each set. Current production is three handmade sets a day, turned out by Camras and six associates of Chicago's Armour Research Foundation, but General Electric production is scheduled to begin in about three months.

Fundamental principle of the Wire Recorder is not new. Danish Physicist Valdemar Poulsen first suggested it 40-odd years ago. Last week U.S. commercial radio sound engineers adopted a "show me" attitude toward the Wire Recorder. But if Inventor Camras' machine turned out to have bugs in it, the Army felt certain he could shoo them out.

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