The Magnetic Tape Viewer - see the sound on a tape
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- An intriguing piece of retro gadgetry that lets you view the magnetic patterns recorded on tape.
A modern day version can be found here: store.arnoldma...
Special thanks to Andy on Twitter who first made me aware of this device back in 2016
an...
FAQs
Q) CAN IT SEE WHATS ON A FLOPPY DISK?
A) No - It didn’t show anything on a 5.25” floppy I tested (BOTH SIDES)
Considering the viewer is pretty much maxed-out for resolution by an 8 track, (8 tracks recorded on a tape 1/4” wide at 3.75 ips) I’d imagine that anything more dense than this will be beyond the capabilities of what can be displayed by the device. I’ll try an 8” disk soon - but I would be shocked if it shows anything for the same density reasons
Q) You can buy these sheets of magnetic viewing paper that do the same thing.
A) They don’t have the same resolution or sensitivity - at least the ones I’ve bought don’t. They can’t show the magnetic signal and track layout on a tape. Nothing registered when I tried.
Q) You can use this fluid stuff that does the same job
A) A few people are mentioning various ways to do this with a liquid smeared on the tape - These were known about - and likely made by 3M as well - but one reason for the development of the magnetic tape viewer was that it was a ‘non destructive’ way to read the tape - here’s an except from their patent application where they mention one of the existing and alternative methods to do the same thing.
“Heretofore magnetic signals recorded on magnetic tape have in a sense been rendered visible by smearing finely divided ferromagnetic material over the tape and allowing it to migrate to points of maximum magnetic flux. Besides being slow and messy this procedure involved the greater disadvantage that thorough cleaning of the recording medium was required to prevent the applied ferromagnetic material from supplying false signals. This procedure is treated in the television industry as unacceptable for the splicing of magnetic recording tape and splicing has instead been confined to tape areas in which the picture is blanked out.”
Q) Who is the voice in the Datsun Commercial?
A) Danny Dark
Q) What’s the white pad on the left for.
A) Thats the ‘Viewing Pad’ - to see a picture of it being used - freeze the video at 02:51
Q) What’s the spectrum analyser to the left of the Reel to Reel?
A) It’s demonstrated in this video • Nixie Tube Spectrum An...
Available from here: www.nixiekits....
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Did you try both sides of the C64 floppy disk? The bottom side has the data btw.
Yes - it took a second to look.
@@Techmoan The gap caused by the sleeve of the disk and the disk it's self may be too large. If you have a scrap floppy, take it out of the sleeve...
@@nethoncho the Raison d'être for the device though is that it’s ‘non destructive’. If you need to destroy a disc to view a tiny fragment of what’s on it turn you could have used some ferro fluid on it instead.
The logo displaying when you put it in the case is a brilliant idea!
The magnetic field generated by the case probably also keeps the ferrite particles from settling to one side of the viewer while in storage. Techmoan's viewer was probably stored on its edge like a book.
They didn't want you to forget it is a 3M product LOL
that`s why we still have 3m today
@@darinb.3273 Good old Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. 3M, for short.
@@OofusTwillip Oooh, so that's what it stands for! Wait, this is the same company as the modern day 3M tape, right?
I'd never have thought that the magnetic field on tapes is strong enough to move a ferrofluid.
They are likely using something the size of the grains in actual tape, but of higher quality to be as sensitive as possible.
i guess ferrofluid can react to weaker magnetic fields as it get finer and finer
You just wanted to say ferrofluid didn't you
I guess because you are already disturbing it by moving the viewer, that's enough.
"You're probably not wondering that, but I'm gonna tell you anyway" - that's the attitude I love this channel for.
Interestingly enough that was actually the first question I had when I saw the sound pattern. It looked almost like digital data to me, so I thought for a second it was encoded as pulse-width modulation that would be played back via a low-pass filter to make audio, but then I realized the tape would have to be moving much to fast for that to be the case.
that's literally why I'm subscribed
I was actually wondering that ... :)
That made me laugh out loud as well and i wanted to comment on it but then i came across yours.
This blows my mind. Seeing the series of simple lines that make up such complex sounds.
look up the Fourier Transform. :)
Trust me, the content on that tape is FAR more complex than the simple lines that show up on that viewer. You would see a far more detailed picture if you were to play the tape onto an oscilloscope, or frequency analyzer; 2 very different ways of looking at waveforms.
You are looking at the peaks. Think of the sine waves going in and out of the tape and you are looking down at it with something that can only pick up a certain amplitude.
@@pentachronic Yeah, that's the best way to think of it. When you look the pattern first, it looks almost digital, but it's analogue all the way!
Records get me like holy cow
Techmoan: This device lets you see sound.
Me after hearing voice actor clip: Never mind that shit, I gotta get a Datsun Z!!!!
Nice car, very rust prone, though. My cousin's one disintegrated after 7 years.
Give him a couple more years and, at two to three packs a day, you’d have the voice of someone who should be hawking a used C3 Vette instead
How I'd love to have a 240z
Notmah Cuppatea same, that’s been my dream car since I watched Let’s Make a Deal on the Game Show Network when I was in art school back in 2000. That was a prize on the reg on that show.
I believe that's Ernie Anderson, the ABC announcer whose job it was to convince you Saturday's Love Boat was a good idea.
6:30 - if Duke Nukem is telling that I need that car, I need it!
That's why it sounded familiar.
Come get some!
He sounds like the K-DST radio announcer from GTA SA lol
Thank you! I scrolled down to check the comets just for this!
Hail to the King, baby.
Now this is a gadget I never knew it existed. Thought this can't be achieved without electronics, yet here it is. Fascinating.
Great video as always, thanks!
There was also a magnetic developer solution, this was commonly used in cut and splice video tape editing of the old 2-inch quad system.
Credit card thiefs use a liquid that dose the same to steal credit card data
The modern version will require always on internet and a subscription
@@sub-vibes Those films are a lot less sensitive, great for seeing where the magnets in your phone/ipad are, but no use for the tiny fields an audio tape contains. Still fun though, I've got several.
Magnetic Viewing Film - Magnet Field Viewer - Magnetic Pattern Viewer - 3X4
www.ebay.com/itm/Magnetic-Viewing-Film-Magnet-Field-Viewer-Magnetic-Pattern-Viewer-3X4/321293664571?hash=item4ace98413b:g:vo0AAOxyUrZSzKnn
I believe these were originally used to assist in cutting and splicing the 2 inch quadruplex video tape that was used in the 1950s all the through early 80s. One could achieve a jitter-free physical (!) splice if the tape was brushed with a ferrous oxide fluid to “develop” and view the magnetic pattern on the tape. This allowed the editor to make a precise cut at the blanking interval used for NTSC. Of course brushing anything on the tape caused it’s own problems, and back then electronic editing was unknown. 3M was the dominant supplier of quad tape. This was their solution to customer’s editing problems.
Pre video: I have absolutely no legitimate need for this.
Post video: I must have one.
Exactly!
Yep! Hahahahaha!
I didn't knew this existed and it has almost no practice purpose for me, I must have one.
I'd never seen this specific implementation. Very interesting.
Back in the early era of 2" Quad video recording, a similar technology existed for use by video editors. At that time, videotape was spliced with a razor blade and adhesive tape, much like film or 1/4" audiotape. A liquid solution (Edivue was one common brand) was brushed onto the tape, and from this, the editor could see the location of the sync pulses and the vertical interval, allowing the cut to be made precisely on the interval, and maintaining the proper distance between adjacent frames so that the machine would play smoothly across the edit point.
Personally, I don't miss those days.
god bless digital editing
I immediately assume that was what this was for. I knew about video editing by viewing and cutting the tape, as that was a schoolfriends Fathers job back in the 1970s working on BBC nature programmes. Occasionally we would see his name as "Videotape editor" in the credits.
The thing that puzzles me:
With the Edivue liquid, you could still see the magnetic signature while you were lining up the tape in the cutting block and making the cut. With this device, you'd have to lift it up off of the tape before making the cut, and its presence would obscure your view of the cut-point mark on the block while it was still on. I'm struggling to envision how it would be possible to do an accurate cut with this device.
@@joeperez I rather doubt this specific device was meant for that purpose.
I mean, it's own advertising seems to suggest it's primary purpose is for determining what kind of tape you're dealing with when faced with an unknown recording, so you can decide what kind of playback equipment to use.
Like in this video ruclips.net/video/7YtmwB9Ds5Y/видео.html
I've never seen a device like this before, but it takes me back to the early days of videotape editing. The tape was 2 inches wide and edits were made by physically cutting the tape using a specially designed editing block. Very fine magnetic particles in a volatile liquid were applied to the tape to make the "edit pulse" recorded on the control track visible so you knew where to make the cut, which had to be in the vertical interval. The two ends were joined with a special sticky tape. Thankfully electronic editing soon made this obsolete but it was still occasionally used to repair a damaged tape.
This liquid of course was/is "Magnasee" -- widely used throughout the industry for many years. A bit messy, and not exactly non-toxic, but it got the job done. Effective too, when you consider that fast cut shows like Laugh-In were manually edited this way on 2 inch Quad tape! A lot of work!
@@LaurenWeinstein Ah yes, Magnasee. I still have a sealed can of that stored away in a carton.
SteveMallison I used Ampex branded liquid when I had to see the video tape signal.
We used Magnasee extensively in the computer industry to check the inter-record gap on magnetic tapes.
You guys misspelled manganese. ;-D
Probably just as hard to find one of these in good condition as finding a mint-condition Datsun 240/260Z!
My Father owned a 280ZX, what a car :D
This man spent *4 YEARS* to make a 9-minute video.
@@_Piers_ ha ha ha ha ha
Now THAT is some dedication.
I really liked techomoan's dedication to his videos..
#1 fan from The Philippines
But how long is that in centimeters of tape? :P
@@Fuzy2K That depends on the recording speed.
I use a reader similar to this one quite regularly at the audio facility I work at. I'm an audio engineer and I specialize in archiving older media formats for preservation. Many times, I will get tapes and magnetic film with minimal or no documentation which makes playing them back properly difficult. The magnetic tape viewers I have at my disposal is a big help in that regard.
This was useful for tape splicing in studios back in the day
Makes sense...so you can get a perfect splice
My dad should have had this for his job, then I would have gotten to use it, damn!
@ezzz9 It's the way everybody did it - splicing block, tape, razor, extreme patience...
@@mark314158 I actually enjoyed it because I was only 11, it was the best quality time I ever spent with my dad and it made me feel important, plus I just enjoyed the activity (It was for the biggest show on the planet that no longer exists).
Does anyone else think it's fun?
@ezzz9 Yes we did !
Not sure whose voice I like more: Techmoan's classy British accent or the deep, groovy voice on that Datsun Z advert. Tough call.
Nice stroke of marketing genius to have a magnetised view of the 3M logo in the little cradle.
I was born just as cassettes were on the way out, and am only now realizing exactly why they are called "tracks"
Not totally sure but I think tracks came from records not tapes
this makes me wonder what the steel wire recorder looks like under the viewer
Considering steel wire needs speeds so fast, I don't think it will be easy to get a clear signal.
@@mrmimeisfunny ...and considering it is very-very thin, it would be impossible. The particles in the viewer aren't that fine to show the magnetization
@@TheHitmanAgent Its that, probably also just the strenth of the magnetic fields. I would imagine the steel wire has very strong signals compared to a tape.
@@mrmimeisfunny Well, at 24 in/s, it's only going to be a 3 1/2 times less dense than a reel-to-reel 7 1/2 in/s speed or less than 8x less dense than a standard cassette. It probably would be visible enough since it appears to only struggle with more dense magnetization. The thinness of the wire would most likely be the only issue. I feel like the strength of the magnetization could certainly make or break whether or not it's visible... but who really knows until it's tested.
I concur with the replies. Based on what I've seen on _The Secret Life of Machines_ series, I have my doubts this would display a wire recording; the medium would be simply too small.
Fantastic video as always! That tape of VO artists contains many who worked in animation. Danny Dark was Superman for Hanna Barabara's Super Friends and later the main voice of the NBC television network. Michael Bell was Zan from the same show. Bob Ridgley was Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle and Thundarr the Barbarian. Walker Edmiston was on many of the Sid and Marty Kroff shows and featured in Land of the Lost as Enik. Lennie Weinrib was Commissioner Gorden in the New Adventures of Bat Man for Filmation. Oh and Richard Baseheart and Rober Brown and Bob Holt and... I could go on and on as I see many more I recognize, but that is one really great tape!!! It would be fantastic to hear the full thing. Keep up the great work!
I love all those finishing touches -- the wooden box, the magnetic 3M logo, the overall solid construction. Man.
They used to build quality, not just crap like now
For anyone wondering, the green $5 magnetic field detectors don't work. Audio signal is way too weak for those.
That answers the question I was going to ask.
Use a super sensitive ferrocell. Just like this detector.
I think that is probably one of the most satisfying gadgets I have see for a while! Lovely box, 3M logo is a nice touch, chrome metal ring looks lovely, a portal into a magnetic world of wonder
I used one of these in the 70's to adjust the gap size on digital mag tape drives on a Honeywell Bull Gamma M40 ... good old days ;)
I have looked for one of these for years. I used one in the early 1970's at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD (USA). We used it to splice damaged data tapes as well as audio recordings of tests. It was very cool.
Oh, that is nifty!
That will make archiving unlabeled boxes of media a lot easier for me.
Thanks for sharing this, Matt!
A good find Techmoan. We had one of these in my studio days in London in the 1960s/early 1970s. The 8 tracks on a 1-inch multi-track tape could be viewed quite clearly with it.
So fascinating! I love the actors tape; stuff like that makes me wish I was an archivist that could make sure little random things like this are preserved forever!
I googled a few of the names, I don't know why lol
One of the names listed on the voice actor reel is Ernie Anderson, who was the voice of ABC back in the 80s and 90s, and was the father of famous director Paul Thomas Anderson.
I just came here from a Paul thomas Anderson movie here on youtube
This is why I love this channel - I get to learn about things I never even knew existed. Well done as always.
This is why your channel is so good: you show us these interesting pieces of tech. Keep going, love your videos!
I love how it comes with a nice wooden box. Today it would arrive in vacuum package you need scissors to open.
And when you buy scissors, guess what, they often come in vacuum packaging or shut tight with cable ties to prevent them from being opened in the shop, and most often you need something like a pair of scissors to get the packaging open.
If you buy nice or delicate tools it's still common that they come in nice boxes but for cheap items it's just unnecessary
And also with a space to put your fingers above and below it, to be able to pick it up!
@@SimonSideburns Who 'came' first, the chicken or the egg? The egg because it got 'laid' by the chicken.
7:30 looks like chipboard/LDF
I saw one of those magnetic 3M readers in about 1986. The person worked for a company that made credit card magnetic strip readers. He showed me about similiar items that you showed. Thanks for the memory refresh.
What a simple yet incredible device! It's interesting how linear analog recordings on tape sort of resemble barcodes.
Only one word: "Wowzer!" Great stuff. Love how you have blown the lid off of tape recording technology. I now have an even greater level of appreciation for my old school compact cassette tapes and your RUclips videos.
1:34 That has to be the coolest sounding thing I've heard in a while.
I am an audio buff from the 1960's and never heard of this but it is fascinating! Like every other audio gadget and toy (including pocket sized stylus microscopes, etc) if I would have known it existed, I would have been playing with it on my Roberts 770 XSS! Thank You So Very Much! I really enjoyed this video and I am grateful for your enthusiasm and the time and effort you put in to share this!
Really cool little device. Was anxiously waiting to see if you'd try it on a video tape - and you delivered!
We used those when checking mag. stripes on credit cards and tickets that used mag. stripes back in the 80's. Forgotten about them completely. Thanks for the memory.
I'm only a minute in and it's already fascinating.
This is extremely cool and entirely useless in the modern age. Perfect Techmoan video!
I can't believe we can see what is on the tape. Holly crap..
In the mid seventies I was a volunteer at a (dutch) hospitalradiostation. Somebody once took such a divice into the studio. So this video is a trip down memory lane; I very much enjoyed it! 😀
When I was in college, I had a summer internship at a 3M plant that manufactured floppy disks. This video reminded me of using "magnetic developer", which was a liquid you could spray on magnetic media to see the recorded patterns. It was basically very fine iron particles suspended in liquid (maybe alcohol) that evaporated after the particles aligned themselves with the magnetic field on the media. Similar concept, but I've never seen one of these devices before!
They mentioned something along these lines in the patent:
_Heretofore magnetic signals recorded on magnetic tape have in a sense been rendered visible by smearing finely divided ferromagnetic material over the tape and allowing it to migrate to points of maximum magnetic flux. Besides being slow and messy this procedure involved the greater disadvantage that thorough cleaning of the recording medium was required to prevent the applied ferromagnetic material from supplying false signals. This procedure is treated in the television industry as unacceptable for the splicing of magnetic recording tape and splicing has instead been confined to tape areas in which the picture is blanked out._
@@Techmoan That's cool! I guess it makes sense that the guys who invented the viewer would have been aware of the magnetic developer method. Apparently you can still buy magnetic developer liquid today - it might be fun to do a follow-up video that compares the magnetic developer with the viewer (hint, hint).
Although, as the patent application says, I wouldn't use it on any media you wanted keep. I don't know if the developer damages the media or not, but it does leave behind a fine, powdery residue that might be tricky to clean off, and I don't think you'd want to run the treated media over a playback head.
It’s looking like I’ll have to do a follow up where I demonstrate the things it won’t read and which suggested alternatives also don’t work. e.g. No ‘magnetic sheets’ can’t display the same patterns on a tape, No the viewer can’t read 8” floppy discs, no it can’t read (insert anything here with a greater track or data density than a 8-track tape). That sounds like a pretty negative video though. I prefer showing things working - the things that don’t work are usually intentionally omitted.
@@Techmoan I think the magnetic developer / Magnasee should work on the same media that the viewer does. The developer should also work on floppy disks, if it's the same stuff that was used at 3M. It should at least show the locations of the individual tracks on a 5-1/4" floppy disk (but don't expect to see individual 0/1 bits).
This also makes me wonder if one could make a "poor man's" version of the viewer by putting a bit of the developer solution in between two thin pieces of glass (like microscope slides)...
This brings back memories. My dad had one at work (radio station) which I played with when I visited.
I've been meaning to buy some 'Magnetic Viewing Film' for a while. Just ordered some from Amazon after watching this (only £4.85). It'll be interesting to see if it has the same resolution.
I have a feeling this might be one of your videos that goes viral; an absolutely fascinating little gadget.
Alas, regarding the Magnetic film from Amazon, the answer is a resounding no. It's fantastic to have, but seems to have been designed for much stronger Magnetic fields.
Let us all know if yours works as well as the 3M one.
I have some and I can definitely make out the stripe on credit cards etc so it should work okay
I was under the impression that magnetic film is really intended to view the poles/field lines of actual magnets or strongly magnetic material, so I can't imagine that the resolution would be very good when used on tape.
No, i just checked
I really want to hear that whole actor demo reel. Those guys' voices were all over cartoons and tv in the 70s and 80s. Lennie Weinrib was on a lot of Sid & Marty Krofft shows. Michael Bell shouted "Yo Joe” on the GI Joe opening (not sure about Action Team) and also said "butter" in the Parkay margarine ads. You gotta upload that whole tape!!!
That would be an interesting tape to listen to!
@TC Fenstermaker Classy, classy man!
Tom Bosley on there as well, of Happy Days fame.
Hey. Tom Bosley... AKA Howard Cunningham from Happy Days is on the voice actors tape.
Now that's a voice I wanna buy a car from.
Everyone's favorite dad
Aaargh I was convinced I was the only one who'd spot that. Fair play, Rick, well done!
As is Jack Angel who has voice work for.... Like everything!
@@BenHeckHacks There's certainly a few familiar names on here if you've seen anything they've done before.
Really, these were some mind-blowing inventions in those years. How much time and dedication was put into these devices. 👍
Wow. This is real, really neat. I never had any idea this was a thing. Thank you for showing us this really neat piece of history.
That's incredible. I've often wondered how audio appears on a tape. We all know that the dimensions of a groove in a record dictate the sound but magnetic tape is something we can't really see.
As a "Z" car and classic Datsun fan I really enjoyed the little snippet of the old Datsun ad you played. I get excited every time I see a new Techmoan video, your work is incredibly high-quality and packed with information. Thanks for everything you do. :)
You may not know that these devices were used to identify corrupted data on the reel to reel data storage devices used with mainframe computers. One of my instructors back in the early 80's said they were able to identify the corrupted section of tape and restore the data so that it could once again be read. The data on the tape was stored in specific patterns that were visible under the viewer. They would literally read the data stream until they located the damage sections and then used some sort of magnetic encoder to restore the damaged patterns back to their original form. This technique was especially useful in computer installations used by the military and is the earliest form of magnetic data recovery.
Would have loved this back in the C64 tape days...
I was just thinking that: data tapes should display similar to audio tapes, just in mono.
Or some old floppies! Tracks on the common formats were 0.33mm or 0.115mm wide. Those should be visible.
@@SomePotato: This actually runs into the topic of copy protection. A fascinating suggestion, *Some Potato,* well played. Here's *LGR* to explain (EDIT: I was looking for the video that was more specifically about floppy copy protection; I'll apply the correct link and remove this 'Edit' when I find it): ruclips.net/video/HjEbpMgiL7U/видео.html
6:39 The Datsun Z! Sweet! My first car was a 280Z, and I'd never heard that advertisement before.
Might've been a made-up ad, so that they didn't have to get clearance?
@@andrewgwilliam4831 Who knows lol. I still liked it 😎
Mine was a 73 240z
my wife watched this over my shoulder, she shook her head and walked away
She was expecting to see WORDS and MUSIC NOTES 🎶
show her the credit card part
@@soritessoreites1207 :-D
That's a completely different kind of tech moan. That a recognition of what is inevitable.
@@threephase69 Singer's mouth shapes.
you have illuminated my curiosity with this thing. thanks for showing something interesting that I didn't even know exists. I hope you continue to show interesting things like this in the future
When I read the title and saw the thumbnail I was expecting some kind of visualizer that would move to the music. For the first couple minutes of video I was waiting to see if you'd hold the viewer up to the moving tape to get a visualization. But now that I understand what it's used for I'd bet it wouldn't show much of anything against a moving tape. Interesting device none the less.
Agreed I definitely think the fluid would be way too slow to react that quickly
Yet another amazing item on your channel being reviewed, the vintage tech that you show here is absolutely astounding.
I'd love to see this sowing the data layout on 3.5 & 5.25 discs, and maybe even an extracted hard disk drive data platter.
I'd expect it would have to be a VERY old hard drive to show anything much on a device like this.
Even a drive from 2000 would likely be storing on the order of 1-2 gigabytes of data on a single side of a 3.5 inch hard drive platter.
That's 2 billion bytes (hard drives for whatever reason tended to use the metric 10^3 definition rather than binary 2^10 that software often defines kilo/mega/giga as)
That's 16 billion bits (ignoring whatever redundancy and formatting is involved to make it reliably readable) stored on at best 9.6 square inches. (less in fact, given the spindle in the centre).
That works out to about 1.66 billion bits per square inch, or very roughly 40,000 bits per linear inch.
the window in that viewer is 3 cm, which is slightly more than 1 inch...
So you'd somehow have to be able to see 40,000 individual dots in that space.
A modern drive is an order of magnitude worse, and would show at least 40,000,000 dots in that space.
If this thing can show a pattern at that kind of density, I'd be highly surprised...
A floppy disk storing a few hundred kilobytes to 1.44 megabytes though? That might just show a visible pattern...
This. is. so. cool.
Would have never even thought about something like this. Thank you!
6:30 That sounds eerily similar to those Matthew Mcconaughey weird car commercials.
I guess time really is a flat circle.
I like cars with _rich Corinthian leather._
I was thinking Frank Zappa
I was thinking Ken Nordine.
@@justpassnthru i got Zappa vibes too
That is amazing! It is really cool to see how the tracks are actually laid down on the tape and really helps nail down my understanding of how it works.
Nice tiny Magna Doodle.
But seriously, this is pretty neat.
_Magna Doodle_ is quite similar in function, but a different toy from _Wooly Willy._ I had both toys when I was little.
This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
Great, now I want a magnetic tape viewer and a Datsun Z 😉
Ha ha, I remember those "Top of the Pops" albums. They were cheap albums with chart songs played by other musicians to cut down on the royalties. My folks had loads of them on vinyl.
If you were lucky they might be played by some unknown musician called Reginald Dwight
Or Larry Lurex
As a Computer Field Service Engineer we used to use similar devices to check and adjust head alignment on vacuum column tape decks. Important job to get right as if you just slapped a new head into a deck it probably wouldnt be able to read older tapes - pretty important for getting data from backup tapes!
some great names on that showreel, recognised a few
My father had a similar device at work when I was young, 1976 iirc. It was for manually checking bit errors on magnetic data tapes, yes the density was that low.
how on earth do you find out about this stuff Techmoan? I never knew such a thing existed. Fascinating!
It's all part of growing up and being British
@@pummisher1186 No idea what that is supposed to mean?
@@lazycalm41 It's a Monty Python joke.
ruclips.net/video/2gm29WZpBJc/видео.html
At this point people just writing him ideas up
9 minutes watching a video on an obscure little device I've never heard of and will probably never stumble across in the wild. That's what I love about this channel. As always...thanks for sharing.
Was hoping that you'd drag the viewer along the tape 😂
Kevin Song might damage the tape as it’s a block of metal. Notice the advertisement photos showing how you’re supposed to place the tape on the white cushion inside the case, then put the reader on top.
@@joermnyc thanks man didn't realize that
It also takes a moment to settle, so it wouldn’t likely show anything useful.
@@nickwallette6201 Absolutely. But could be pretty cool in stop motion animation.
@@Taped0uT1 That would look awesome. Split screen with an oscilloscope view of the track being played would be even better.
If only we could see it while the tape was playing! Thanks for sharing. God bless
@6:30 As my parents owned a Datsun 280z when I was a kid and I owned a Nissan 350z as an adult I can confirm he is absolutely right!
It's sad how Nissan has gone in the past decade or so. The GT-R and 370Z are the only desireable things they make, and they're ancient now. Despite being around so long, I've never seen an R35 GT-R in real life because they're 200k+ here, and 370Zs are a bit chunky and tasteless driven by real estate agents.
I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota and old 3M stuff is all over the place. I will keep my eye out for one of these! Thanks for the video!
Now when someone says they can see sound, you don't have to assume drugs are involved.
Or a head injury. 😀
Everything is frequencies so... Some have brain confusing frequency bands ;-)
One time I had too many edibles, listening to music, and I was flying through a giant hallway in which the pillars were made of the music.
Or synaesthesia.
Or REALLY loud sounds.
I love your videos. I may be 45 years old but I’m like a kid watching Tony Hart or Why Don’t You?, all over again.
6:36 - I see a "Tom Bosley" listed on that voice actors tape. I wonder if it's the same one that played Mr. Cunningham on Happy Days in the 1970's.
Almost certainly. And I think we need to hear Mr C reading some cheesy 70s ad copy ASAP. Please, Mr Techmoan, make it happen!
He also turned up on Murder She Wrote as the local sheriff and the Father Dowling Mysteries I think.
I want to hear this entire tape. Reminds me of 'Toast of London'...imagine Danny Dark saying, "I can hear you, Clem Fandango!".
I remember him from Charlie's Angels mostly. Happy days as well.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid I could be mistaken but I think you're mixing things up. The actor Tom Bosley played Richie's father on Happy Days. On Charlie's Angels the voice of Charlie (we never see him) was played by John Forsythe (maybe best know as Blake Carrington on "Dynasty") but there WAS a character named "Bosley" on Charlie's Angels, played by David Doyle.
This is fantastic; I get analog tapes to transfer all the time, and it's almost always a guessing game as to which format has been used. Most consumers "back in the day" just didn't know enough to at least mark the box. Now I can "Look" at the tape itself and know ahead of time. Thanks for posting!
Great video, and an interesting little gadget! Don't suppose you have any Floppy Disks laying about? I'd guess that 3.5" would be too fine to see, but an old 5.25" single sided single density (like, for example, used on the Apple ][) might show something interesting? If you've none to hand i could always post you one :) Edit* Having done the maths, each bit on the outermost track would be (5.25*pi*25.4)/16/256/8 ~ 0.0125mm wide - not enough to be seen. An appropriately recorded disk with large blocks of 1s and 0s might work though.
Yes a 5.25” C64 game disc has been tested - predictably nothing visible. We were maxing out the capabilities with an 8-track, which is only 8 tracks on a 1/4” - so likely anything more dense than that won’t show.
Would a data cassette be visible?
In the 1960s, when video tape began to be used for prerecording TV shows. There was a liquid "developer" that was used on the 2" tape, to facilitate splices. Watch an old "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In". ALL those fast cuts, and scene changes were made with manual splices, like editing film. Pretty amazing. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. Interesting the viewer doesn't show the diagonal video stripe on the VHS tape.
"A Datsun Z"
Excellent car. Nissan knows best.
The Z was an awesome car!
Jaguar? Nah. Ferrari convertible? Still had some doubts. Now... with my Datsun Z, I finally know I have *everything* other people wish for!
C M B 100k car today.
@@whendeathdeclareswar7458 no it's not haha
Datsun Z!!! Yea lol, it’s legendary for sure now.
Your channel is nothing but pure gold! Love it 🥳
This device is oddly fascinating, especially using it to see the data on the store card.
They used to use these to align computer data tapes too.
When I was at school back in the late 1970s, the maths teacher managed to obtain for the school a mid 60's Digital PDP 4 computer, complete with 64K of 18-bit magnetic core memory, a teletype, and two types of magnetic tape drive - DEC tape and something bigger. The whole thing came in vast pale blue cabinets, was fully transistorised apart from the valves in the power supply (no ICs back then!), and required a 30 amp 3 phase power source..
It was completely obsolete when he bought it - for £10 - from the Harwell nuclear research place, including stacks of spares, manuals, etc.. But we managed to get it going, and I used it to produce my A level computer science project - a text editor written in PDP-4 machine code - goodness knows how they marked it!
In amongst the spares and manuals was one of these magnetic tape viewers - almost identical to this one, though I seem to remember it came nestled in an oaken box with a green baize lining. Good find!
First time I saw one of those was in the hands of a computer engineer, who was checking the tape from a Honeywell mainframe back in 1968.
Cool little device. Amazing how we've become accustomed to low quality goods. The 3M viewer screams quality, from the device itself, to the clasp on the wooden box, to the nice touch of the 3M logo showing up when put away.
This is one of those things you see and think. "I bet I can get some modern version for cheap or something used cheap." NOPE
The modern version shown at the end of the video is considerably cheaper than the original was when it was released, though.
I wonder if standard magnetic viewing film would work for this?
That is one of the coolest inventions I have ever seen.
I just love magnets, man. That’s so cool!
Very nice. At first I was thinking it would be that green "magnetic viewing film" you see quite a bit that lets you see where magnets are placed inside devices.
If your channel were cigarettes, I'd be missing a lung by now. Thanks for not being cigarettes.
That first voice actor, with that music, I thought was going to be a Citroen commercial. Especially with those bongos.
What the... I never knew about the existence of such a device. And I expected to see some sort of a sinus not this kind of digital patterns. Really interesting thanks.
It is a type of sinusoidal analogue wave, only it is in the 'Z' direction, i.e in the direction you are looking, rather than left-right or up-down. Hope that makes sense?
@@risvegliato like when you're looking at confidence interval bars, but you can visualize it as a bell curve being seen from the top?
@@polygondwanaland8390 Yes indeed! And that is very pertinent to a UKAS inspection I have coming up at work which involves 95% confidence intervals, error bars and bell curves... how strange you should bring it up!
@@risvegliato I'm in quantitative analysis in school right now and am following election polling in my free time. Lots of stats :)
Reel cool! I love the marketing aspect - a real window into "past mindset"
Wow - that is not how I imagined audio to look on a tape. I don't know what I did imagine, but it wasn't that!
Didn't expect the "bar code" shape either. I rather though it might be some kind of continuous horizontal line. Now I'm wondering what information one of those bars contain and how a group of bars is converted to music or whatever audio the tape contains. Or vice versa when recording audio.
Very interesting device and video :)
@@mrjsv4935 it must be, because its analog, a literal representation of the position of the speaker cone. So a dark black would be full excursion of the cone, and white the opposite.
So that's like a top down view of the waveform?
Still can't get my head around it though!
really very amazing how this lines represent this sounds that stored in magnetic tape
"You probably aren't wondering that, but I'm gonna tell you anyway":
I wondered EXACTLY that!
1:01 actually, I'm really glad you answered that. When I saw the bit in the device, my first question was actually how long of a sample that was.