You thought you knew this one. It's Thomas Edison, of course...right? Not at all. It wasn't until 1879 that Edison purchased patents
from Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans, a team who actually patented an electric lightbulb in 1875. Edison improved on the "bulb" design, eventually making a bulb that lasted up to 1200
hours. Anyway, here's the scoop on the original electric light.
"In 1809, Humphry Davy invented the first electric light. Davy connected two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip between the other ends of
the wires. The charged carbon glowed making the first arc lamp. Davy later invented the miner's safety lamp in 1815. The lamp called firedamp or minedamp, allowed for the mining of deep seams
despite the presence of methane and other flammable gases."
For more info and to visit the site this reference came from, click here.
The First Fax Machine
Here's one that'll blow you away. The first fax machine was patented in 1843 by Scotland's Alexander Bain. He used cattle jaw bones for
hinges, and heather for springs. Awesome technology, huh? It was based on an electric clock, which was one of his inventions, as well. Though Bain never fully developed his idea,
his design was perfected by a Mr. Cassellie, who opened the first commercial fax service in 1865 and had service between Paris and Lyon. His business was so slow, in fact, that he was forced to
close shop after about five years. Office fax machines became popular in Japan due to the fact that teleprinters could not send Japanese characters and would have to be translated to English to
be sent, then back to Japanese again on the receiving end, lending to much confusion.
The First Consumer Cassette Recorder
It's hard for me to remember all the details of this little gem. The
RCA Instantape recorder was manufactured from about 1958 to about 1965. This was RCA's version of the "cassette." It
contained 2 five-inch reels full of 1/4" wide tape that ran at 3-3/4 inches per second (ips). If I recall, these tape cartridges were
about 1/2" thick, about 6" high, and nearly a foot across. Way larger than even the old 4 and 8 track tapes (also ran at 3-3/4 ips
). But at the time, the only other alternative for the home user was the old open reel tapes, some of which required an engineering degree to operate. Consider the lowly cassette that
most of us are still familiar with. Those are less than a third of the size of the Instantape. Incidentally, the standard audio cassette
was developed in 1965 by Phillips/Norelco, and originally called the "Compact Cassette." It was to be used mainly in dictating
machines. Do you know what the width and standard speed of the tape is in a regular cassette? Speaking of winners, did you
know in the early to mid 80s that RCA also came out with a 12" videodisc that used a NEEDLE to play videos? Failed miserably.
Skips in the videos and expensive needle replacement were a constant problem. Because of the popularity of the VCR, the
public never truly bought into the concept and it was discontinued. Back to my previous question, the width
of tape on a standard cassette is 1/8" and they normally play or record at 1-7/8 ips, though specialty and
professional machines can use up to 7-1/2 ips, and can go as low as 15/16 ips, or slightly slower. A bit more
info on the open reel machines, some of the more popular home brands were Teac, Ampex, Akai, and Pioneer
. Reel sizes up to 10 1/2 inches (a lot of tape!), and speeds of 1-7/8, 3-3/4, 7-1/2 inches per second.
Some pro machines could go 15 and 30 inches per second or more, and some record 32 tracks or more on up
to 2 inch wide tape! With the advent of computer production software, it's hard to find the vintage
machines. Otari, Tascam, and Ampex are among the pro machines that might be worth collecting, so if you
can get your hands on one for a good price, do it. I found a Mitsubishi machine, original cost $160,000 for a
bargain price of $2,000. I'm sure shipping by truck would have been VERY expensve. It was a 32 track machine that took 1" tape and would have to be moved by truck. Wow.
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