Recording data to a strand of wire?

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_northernway.net>
Date: Tue Jan 13 18:13:13 1998

At 04:00 PM 1/13/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Long before anyone glued rust to a strip of plastic and called it recording
>tape, audio was recorded on spools of wire.
>
>Whatever you can record audio on, you can record data on. Wire recorders
>are actually incredibly durable, and until recently, the airplane 'black
>box' cockpit voice & data recorders were wire recorders. There are a ton of
>them still in service. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if that's what the
>guy had at the flea market.

Well, to slightly shift the paradigm from classic computers to classic TV,
I saw a voice wire recorder on Hogan's Heroes -- it was made up to look
like a sewing basket.

At first, I thought -- uh, yea, right! -- but then I thought about it and
it's no different than a record album, but in a different form factor.

On the show, they spliced the wire to reformat a message on the wire... do
you know what type of wire was used on these types of voice/data recorders,
and how would you splice them?

(oh, and could you re-record over a previously used piece of wire?)

Just curious,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger Merchberger       | Why does Hershey's put nutritional
Programmer, NorthernWay | information on their candy bar wrappers
zmerch_at_northernway.net  | when there's no nutritional value within?
Received on Tue Jan 13 1998 - 18:13:13 GMT

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