Fritz Pfleumer (20 March 1881 – 29 August 1945) was a German

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...

who invented

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnet ...

for recording sound.

Biography

Fritz was born as the son of Robert and Minna, née Hünich. His father Robert (1848–1934) was born in Greiz, and his mother Minna (1846–1932) was born in Freiberg. Fritz had five siblings – Mimi, Hans, Hermann, Otto, and Mizi. Hans emigrated to the US. Pfleumer developed a process for putting metal stripes on cigarette papers and reasoned that he could similarly coat a magnetic stripe to be used as an alternative to wire recording. In 1927, after experimenting with various materials, Pfleumer used very thin paper that he coated with iron oxide powder using lacquer as glue. He received a patent in 1928. On 1 December 1932 Pfleumer granted

AEG Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the Second World War, ...

the right to use his invention when building the world's first practical

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

, called

Magnetophon Magnetophone, or simply Magnetophon, was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer. AEG ...

K1. It was first demonstrated at the

IFA IFA or Ifa may refer to: Organisations Economics * Independent financial adviser, a type of financial services professional in the UK * Index Fund Advisors * Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, representing actuaries in the UK * Institute of Ac ...

in 1935.

References

External links

videopreservation.conservation-us.org
– Museum of Historic Video Equipment – Beginnings of Magnetic Recording – Audio, 1920–30s

by Wayne Carlson,

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

The History of Magnetic Recording by Steven Schoenherr, University of San Diego 2002
Retrieved 2011-12-17
Fritz Pfleumer
– German biography of Pfleumer from a local (Dresden) point of view 1881 births 1945 deaths 20th-century German inventors {{Germany-engineer-stub