The Secret Life Of Machines - The Video Recorder (1991)

The Secret Life Of Machines was a TV series made for Channel 4 (UK) and subsequently shown on the Discovery Channel. The series was written by Tim Hunkin, and presented by Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod. Eighteen programmes were made in total.

The series developed from a cartoon strip, called 'The Rudiments Of Wisdom' which Tim researched and drew for the Observer newspaper for 14 years.

Seriers 2, Episode 6 (of 6): The Video Recorder (1991).

Check out some of the links below:

http://www.timhunkin.com/41_slom1.htm
http://www.youtube.com/user/thinkins
http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com

Title theme is a version of Dave Brubeck's 'Take 5' by Val Bennett re-titled 'The Russians Are Coming'.

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Closed Caption:

yeah
yeah
yeah
something bizarre like this set with Rex
and I were working on last year is
obviously an illusion but in fact me and
almost everything else on television is
really just as much an illusion
while you're sitting at home watching
this program i'll probably be sitting at
home watching it too
what you're actually looking at is an
elaborate illusion created by a real of
videotape the video recorder like the
other machines in this series has become
quite indispensable yet very few people
have any idea how this thing works in
this program Rex and I are going to try
and demystify it a bit inside it does
look quite baffling
one half is full of the massive
electronics and circuit boards and the
other half with a cassette goes in is
full of equally baffling mechanisms
gears and pulleys and things but despite
all this complexity the basic principles
of magnetic recording a really very
simple
they were first developed nearly a
hundred years ago for recording sound a
Danish telephone engineer called
valdemar poulsen convinced that there
was a need for a permanent record of
business transactions conducted by
telephone started experimenting with
magnetic recording in 1896 full Senate
found he could
magnetize a bit of steel
and then see exactly where he'd
magnetized it by dipping it in some iron
filings
he can magnetize the steel in just the
same way with an electro magnet
this is just a coil of wire wrapped
around a lump of Steel but he could also
use the electromagnet like the iron
filings to see where it magnetized it
I've connected this electromagnet to a
meter here and if i bring a permanent
magnet anywhere near it
thank you can see the meter move it's
actually creating some electricity so if
I now pass the electromagnet along the
strip of steel
you can see it moves
we're at the point where I magnetize it
earlier this may seem surprising but the
properties of electricity and magnetism
are intimately connected
well now i can use the endless loop of
steel my bandsaw
to make the band so into a primitive
tape recorder
first I got to connect the whole thing
out to a battery and a switch
well now i can magnetize a few places of
the on the steel strip or in other words
record a few magnetic pulses
and now I can see where I've magnetized
it on the strip simply by continuing to
run or in other words i'm playing the
signal back
this is the basic principle of magnetic
recording and it's just the same on the
most sophisticated modern video recorder
the heart of the machine is this
spinning drum underneath if I undo this
screw
this is the actual tape head and you can
see it's tiny coil of wire it's an
electromagnet is doing exactly the same
thing as the electromagnet on the band
soul
well without all this sophistication
pilsen had enormous difficulty recording
the tiny electrical signals he was
picking up from the telephone
however he applied for patents all over
the world and found eager backers in
America
no dude where the Science and invention
is food proof or you need to do is you
make lots of money
oh great yeah he'll thank you very much
okay ladies and gentlemen this is your
kids now - bye-bye and make them for
general lifetime yes I'm talking about
money
the Packers were more interested in
trading the stocks and shares and making
two microphones at seven years later
available machine finally did appear
advertiser's a dictation system
no option except to foreclose on this
you're sincerely hiring to you wash
bucket I'll take this up right away
okay hereís it's possible no I can't
oh go back to doing things
way cases or 24th January
this is one of the science museum and
wonderful stores and this is one of the
few surviving to allegra phones anyway
it's quite like a modern tape recorder
with its two reels and the tape head in
the middle
this contains the tiny electromagnets
and actually records on this fine steel
wire
the trouble was though that the sounded
to reproduce it was really just too
faint to be of any practical use at all
Rex and I had to go making a working
model of one of these we couldn't hear
anything through it at all but the idea
wasn't totally forgotten and as fouls
and electronic amplifiers improved the
idea became progressively more practical
also a German doctor steelers spent most
of the nineteen twenties methodically
analyzing the theoretical principles of
magnetic recording and eventually in
conjunction with Marconi started
producing massive machines like this
this particular machine was brought by
the BBC in 1933 the tape heads are up at
the top here and it uses this very fine
razor-sharp steel tape
it's all incredibly large because it
against a good enough sound quality
it has to run very very fast so uses up
a lot of tape is high speed has some
disadvantages
you have to keep the tape oil there's an
Euler over here and is also quite
dangerous
you have to keep well out of the way
because if the tape broke this razor
sharp steel would fly all over the room
recording on steel still has one
specialist use where heat resistance is
important in black box flight recorders
the boxes are actually orange not black
and they're extremely strong and well
insulated inside you can see the bright
stainless steel wire being replayed
recorder is connected to a computer and
it prints out positions of the rudder
elevators and other controls on the
modern jumbo jet over 60 items are
recorded
experiments with plastic tape was
started by the German magnet the phone
company in the nineteen thirties tapes
coated with a magnetic powder that
actually record the signal
this powder is a a sort of iron oxide or
rust which is why the tapes always brown
or we can make a primitive sort of
recording tape and using sticky tape and
sprinkling some rust powder on it
little bit more
you have to replicate into the sticky
side
get off all the excess
right
right
now we record some sick we put in an
order audio recorder you are thinking in
the right place
ok yep this is recorded on sticky tape
and rust
this is recorded on sticky tape and rust
right
and now we have to do is to play back
again the right way around
what you did in right
ok
ok
this is recorded started it was very
good
try again and why the why did the
quality go down do you think that it
probably fell for Captain there
well it proves the principal anyway the
ring-shaped recording head with a gap
that's been used ever since was also
perfected by the magneto phone company
here X has made a giant model of one if
he covers it up and sprinkles on some
iron filings
you can see how the gap concentrates the
magnetic field
now when he pushes a model of the tape
past the gap you can see how it's
magnetized
the smaller the gap
the smaller the magnets created on the
tape and the more information that can
be recorded on it
that's why I video heads are so small
the gap on the heads on a domestic video
machine have to be exact same three
thousand of a millimeter across their
the most accurately made thing in the
home
it's amazing that something so tiny can
record anything at all but there really
is something quite magical about the
properties of magnetism
usually my work is making models and
special effects for the film television
advertising industries and i use
magnetic effects an awful lot
simple ones for countries and
illusionists and party tricks is to get
something which is obviously
non-magnetic like an ordinary match
you actually make them dance
for simple magnetic trick like this you
need to obvious things you need to drill
the middle of the match and put an iron
pin inside of course you also need him
underneath the table with a magnet all
right on their team
there's a magnet which we did the trick
with but of course sometimes you need
much more sophisticated applications of
magnets and I did one years ago with a
friend of mine and we had to make a
magnetic meant making here at rattles
and with a magnet under the table again
you can control it beautifully
I can go backwards and make it turn you
can swing it around again
so you got full control over magnetic
recording of sound is relatively simple
recording moving pictures is much more
difficult in one second
a video recorder has to record 25
complete separate pictures even on a
domestic video recorder each picture is
split up into over half a million
elements and the color and brightness of
each has to be recorded
in one second an audio recorder only has
to record about three words the average
speaking speed
hundreds of times more space on the tape
is needed to record pictures instead of
just sound good evening
I want your first of all look at this
clock and to remember the time that it
says just after nine sixteen
now the reason for asking you to do this
right at the beginning of panorama
tonight has all to do with Vera the
vision electronic recording operators
the new machine which is in program
service tonight for the first time at
the BBC's research department at
Nightingale square in South London
there she is Richard Dimbleby
demonstrated the BBC's first attempt at
video recording in 1956 to record enough
information there had to move the tape
past the head at about 20 miles an hour
just often the results are shown by
replaying the start of the program do
this right at the beginning of panorama
tonight has all to do with Vera the
vision electronic recording operators it
got the nickname of wobbly televisions
and was very short-lived
well there you are that's where we came
in a way that was the beginning of
panorama tonight
just about five minutes after i first
did it this is not me again
really today all video recorders work
with slow-moving tape to make enough
space
the heads have to record a series of
diagonal stripes across the tape these
stripes are created by spinning the
heads around on the drum while the tape
moves slowly past here we've replaced
the heads with the pens and if I thread
up a bit of paper with Rex and I think
that's in all right now
ok you should be able to see a strike
bring created
it's the tilt of the drum that makes the
stripe diagonal and by the time that one
stripes reach the top the tape will have
moved on just far enough so the next
strike doesn't overlap
of course in the real machine the
stripes are much closer together
this machine is all still connected up
and if Rex and I lace-up bit of tape to
be tricky to get it right
ok
you can see that when the tape
stationary the heads are spinning heads
and reading one stripe over and over
again
this produces the still picture moving
the tape / backwards and forwards on the
movie bit of the moment
yeah moving the tape backwards and
forwards changes the picture is not a
very good picture because my fingers are
creating quite a lot of interference and
of course if you move it at 25 stripes a
second
it replaces the tape exactly as it was
recorded spinning the heads is a much
more practical way of recording pictures
and speeding up the tape the idea comes
from this german military machine the
tones schreiber based on the magnetic
phone of the nineteen thirties
this machine was used throughout the
Second World War for broadcasting
propaganda speeches and martial music it
sound quality was much better than
anything the Allies had it's a bit
difficult to get it to run the right
speed and not fair you make not a bar
nothing will change
not one
yeah
after the war many of these machines
were captured and two found their way to
a Russian engineer living in California
called I am pony tov here at a small
firm producing electric curling tongs
called ampex a MP after his initials
plus X for excellence Kanye it off
wanted to develop the machine but like
the capital
fortunately found an enthusiastic
investor keen to develop new ways to
immortalize his stage performances being
Crosby with beings money and pecks audio
recording soon became the industry
standard
unlike other companies
ampex started its work on video by
experimenting with spinning heads
there were formidable electronic
problems to be overcome to squeeze the
video signal onto the tape but by 1956
they perfected a broadcast quality
machine
this is their earliest surviving
recording
this is one of their first color
recordings unfortunately the sound has
been lost the quality of the pictures on
these ampex machines became very good
this machine in the BBC video library
was built in the late sixties and picks
it up dated the spying but it's still
working basically the same way
however the heads gradually where the
oxide off the tapes they can only be
played about 30 times and the loose
oxide has to be regularly swept up
this is the next generation of ampex
machine
the tape is half the width and the
machine doesn't wear the oxide of these
machines provided the basis for the
first domestic video recorders and I've
also remained a broadcast standard ever
since machines like this could be made
much much smaller but by nineteen
seventy the audio cassettes and become
established and it was obvious that a
cassette video system will be more
suitable for domestic machine
particularly because it would protect
the fragile heads
Philip to introduce that the first
machine like this the end 1500 in 1972
this one is actually a bit later but it
uses the same square cassettes with one
reel of tape on top of the other
this was followed by the another Philip
system of the 2,000 the sony better max
that's funny video 8 and of course VHS
the cassette system does add greatly to
the mechanical complexity of the Machine
bringing the cassette in and wrapping it
around the drum needs two completely
separate mechanisms
it's all wonderful ingenious but it does
look a bit out of place in this age of
solid-state technology
the electronics are just as ingenious
though it's not quite so obvious
the domestic machine only record half as
much information about each picture is a
broadcast quality one but the difference
is hardly noticeable
it's only when you record from one type
to another a few times that the
electronics have problems than the
infection start to show up
this is an original recording
the quality is really very good but
unlike broadcast machines the quality of
the second and subsequent generations
quickly deteriorates
yeah
first the picture gets less sharp
yeah
then the color stop spitting the picture
and the vertical lines get more rugged
than the sound quality deteriorates and
the color which is recorded separately
disappears
finally the picture and the sound break
up completely video recorders have now
been around for over 10 years and in
that time their design has changed quite
considerably
some things are definitely improved the
early machines used to have lots of belt
drives basically rubber bands and these
things used to stretch and perish
Rex and I had this problem with these
beavers we made 12 for a publisher to go
in shop windows and they had belt-driven
motors in the base
none of them work for more than a week
and I've been very wary of belt drives
ever since
today the rubber bands in video
recorders have been replaced by gears
and other mechanisms that are much more
reliable the old machines are twice the
size and weight of the new ones without
modern microprocessor chips
the old machines had three times as many
components this miniaturization does
have some drawbacks though when it comes
to repairs
these little black dots on here actually
this component in miniature and it's bad
enough replacing one of these tiny
things that trying to replace one of
these little tiny modern resisted
so you need a remarkable eyesight to be
able to do it I'll of course problems we
do have his children see mommy and daddy
putting videos in here so they have a
nasty habit of putting things in there
as well I can be anything sticky jam
sandwiches and toast
toys and all sorts of things because
that doesn't do the tape transport
making as many good either
ok
so just put it on your the other problem
with video recorders
is it they're not getting any easier to
use wrong realize this is very night
no isn't 2200 hours or a well can I see
all 43
maybe we need a thing maybe the remote
thing on just numbers you know it means
nothing
it's all it's all one in the back there
no the
wow it is great over
it's not going hi Cressida let me do it
dad it's really easy for video recorders
may not be perfect but i still think
it's a miracle they work at all
the illusion of reality they create is
so convincing it's very hard to believe
that what you've been watching for the
last half hour is really just the load
of rust