Recording data to a strand of wire? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

13 Jan 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(a)northernway.net  | when there's no nutritional value within?