Media Capacity and Speed
Compared to tape recorders, wire recording devices had a high media speed, made necessary because of the use of the solid metal medium. Standard postwar wire recorders used a nominal speed of 24 inches per second (610 mm/s), making a typical one-hour spool of wire 7,200 feet (approx. 2200 m) long. This enormous length was possible on a spool less than 3 inches in diameter because the wire was nearly as fine as hair. 30 and 15 minute lengths of wire were also available on these small spools, which were employed by the majority of recorders made after 1945. Some heavy-duty recorders used the larger Armour spools, which could contain enough wire to record continuously for several hours. Because the wire was pulled past the head by the take-up spool, the actual wire speed slowly increased as the effective diameter of the take-up spool increased. Standardization prevented this peculiarity from having any impact on the playback of a spool recorded on a different machine, but audible consequences could result from substantially altering the original length of a recorded wire by excisions or by dividing it up onto multiple spools.
Read more about this topic: Wire Recording
Famous quotes containing the words media, capacity and/or speed:
“The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognises neither pity nor pitilessness.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“... the majority of colored men do not yet think it worth while that women aspire to higher education.... The three R’s, a little music and a good deal of dancing, a first rate dress-maker and a bottle of magnolia balm, are quite enough generally to render charming any woman possessed of tact and the capacity for worshipping masculinity.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)