Unseen by most, mesmerising to watch
NOTE - NEW VERSION with added information replaced the original vid
Something a bit different this week. Few of us will recognise this machine and yet most of us (in the U.K.) will have used one. When it comes to the joy of watching things in motion, the unintentional Kinetic Art on display here is up there with a Lava Lamp.
If after watching this you feel like you’d like to just see this machine working away for a longer period…it just so happens that my friend Skip Intro thought the exact same thing… he borrowed a one hour uninterrupted clip and used it to put together a 3hr 21 minute video backed by some rather ‘functional music’. Here’s the link to that video on his channel. He tells me that this is just something he did for the Patrons - so that's nice. https://youtu.be/4hJJCOyJe2w
Take care and best wishes.
UPDATE: Added in a section that starts at 09:54 - Unfortunately my voice was giving out, but hopefully the extra bits help to clear up a few common questions.
Comments (79)
Hi Matt, daft question i know, but you did try the volume pots fully clockwise *and* counter-clockwise - I've seen pro gear with pots marked "attenuation" where fully-clockwise is off! Also, some of your older patrons may remember 1/2" multi-track computer tape drives which would spool a length of tape off one of the reels into a "box" reminiscent of the tape chamber on this announcement device. They could then shuttle this (relatively) short section of tape back & forward at high speed to access different parts of that section for read & write without having to spool the whole tape back & forward. This, of course, was before the advent of disk or RAM caching..
Yes I spend hours and hours with this stuff - I try all the basics and more besides - no one wants to watch a video where nothing at all happens though - so not everything is included. What you end up seeing are days condensed into seconds. Here’s what happened next https://youtu.be/qvzH7DSsD3g
Great hearing your voice on the announcer 9A. The guy is great, but fortunately his videos are short as I have to lie down and rest after each one.
I mentioned he was energetic - either that or I’m extremely sluggish. Probably a bit of both.
So I just watched Look Mum No Computer's video featuring your voice now on this tape loop, hooked into his phone exchange! I love the crossover, and the fact this machine is living on, doing what it was built to do!
He's certainly quick off the mark. He only got the machine last Sunday and I think he got home really late from picking it up.
I only just noticed that the sound effect at the very end of the video was actually playing twice. Editing mistake there?
Yes - definitely.
Must stop refreshing... Nothing new to watch and ended up falling asleep last night to all the dashcam videos lol
Hard to tell, but I'm curious... Is that standard 1/4" 2-track tape that was made on a R2R machine, or some weird size/track layout?
It’s standard 1/4” tape that can be used on a reel to reel. I know this as Neil told me he bought a reel to reel machine after seeing how much tape was thrown away - just so he could use the binned tape to record on. I have no idea if the tracks line up with a two track machine though - but it’s likely.
If you look carefully just where the tape enters the head area there are two vertical standoffs with wires. I assume this is where the machine detects the join on the tape like on an 8 track cartridge player changes tracks. The motor could stop at the join if there is no demand for playback. You can see the join at 9 mins 11-13 seconds on the re-edit. Best wishes.
No there’s no foil splice on here. I double checked with Neil when I picked it up - he said there’s nothing clever going on….it’s a loop of tape with the announcement repeated a few times taped together at the end. It starts when you connect and stops when you disconnect - that’s it, that’s all it does. I suppose it depends on your age whether or not you remember calling up announcements that started at a random place and then looped over and over - I definitely do, it was normal at the time. It’s only in the digital recording age that we started hearing phone announcements that always started at the beginning.
"When you think about it, don't we all live locally?" that's Deep mate
The number change about the same time in the Netherlands, called operation Decibel. We got 7 digit phone numbers (10 with area code) and most numbers had 1 or more numbers added to them.
Fascinating video and thank you for the additional detail regarding the tape movement. I was not aware that this would be a robust system. My first reaction was that humidity would affect the tape and cause issue for movement.
Humidity is never much of a factor for anything here in the U.K.
I think the outputs (working) are dependent upon a connection to either a phone switch or some other telephony circuit. POTS carried it’s own voltage (48v DC?) and the E & M signaling could of been used to trigger the message(s)?
Love the added FAQ section! And indeed, seeing the tape moving on top is a fascinating sight.
From the message I'm guessing that's around about the time they got rid of the local short codes at the exchange it was being used at (mid 80s sounds about right for when the started happening, iirc?)
Since you already found a way to hear what's on the tape this is just a side note: Those blue Philips Capacitors from the early 80s are famous for going bad and I would bet those are the reason you didn't hear anything from the outputs.
I doubt it. Not a crackle, or a pop or hiss or any sound whatsoever however quiet. I’d put money on those outputs being deactivated.
How did it determine which track the caller would hear? Was there a switch I missed? Or was it something concerning the telephone connection?
It would depend on what number your rang. Think of it as two separate announcement machines that share one box.
In the US the same terse female voice would tell us about changed numbers and disconnection. As a matter of fact, I still occasionally hear her voice to this day! We'd get a three note tone followed by the message, followed by the tones. It would repeat three times before being disconnected. Like numbers stations, there's chilling eerieness to these types of audio signals. The pure utility of the message combined with perhaps a slight echo or some intermittent crackle along the lines (with all apologies to Glen Campbell) generated a feeling of intimacy between the caller and the machine. The voice simulators that a lot of lazy youtubers use for narration doesn't have this effect. It is just annoyingly distracting!
Pat Fleet did most of the US recordings. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Fleet
That sounds like an interesting machine!
He's talking about a Tape Delay Brad, that would be used to create audio echo effects. Wonderful video btw Mat - thanks so much.
Ah ta. I ask, as the 24-hour heart monitor I had on a couple of times as a kid used standard Compact Cassettes at an incredibly slow speed.
Wonder if this was the sort of thing the old Dial-A-Disc, and certain other, shall we say "special interest" phone services would have used? Echo machine? Do you mean echocardiogram (of which I've had dozens) or something entirely different?
in Los Angeles in the 1970s we had "Uncle Bill's Joke Line" wherein you'd call in and hear a new joke everyday. It was free as long as you were in the same area code. They Might Be Giants also had a call-in line... sometimes music, sometimes random musings. Today, there is a phone number you can call and hear one of five Hall and Oats songs! I'm glad to see that there is still some whimsy in this world!
Interesting. My great uncle worked for Ma Bell and he once took me to work with him when I was little. This video brought me back to that moment, we called my mom from one of the signal boxes with a lineman’s handset. Your little piece of gear is just the tip of so many amazingly durable, functional, often nameless and faceless equipment that made entire infrastructure systems work reliably (or if they weren’t why). Cool stuff.
I'm very much enjoying the Functional Music - pass along my thanks to Skip
I'll let him know.
I work as a technician for a telephone provider. At a rough estimate, we have some 30-40 distinct announcements to play to the caller. These announcements are simple audio files nowadays, of course. I guess, the more easy and cheap handling of these announcements possibly led to an inflational increase of announcements for every tiny mistake one could make when calling someone. Ans now I'm trying to imagine the incredible stack of devices we would need to play all these announcements 😱
My guess before watching was that it was related to the speaking clock. Sortof in the right area I suppose, but not really. A time-lapse of the tape movement would be superb...
Hi Mat. Great video. You remember you used to be able to phone up and listen to a song was thinking maybe they used this system. Is the tape itself standard tape or reel to reel tape? What an interesting blast from the past
From what I understand it's normal 1/4" tape. Neil told me that in his job they binned so much tape from each reel that he bought a Reel to Reel so he could make use of it rather than see it thrown away.
I wonder how many other similar devices like this are out there in the world having been rescued from oblivion b they thoughtful actions of technicians like Neil? Is it possible that we have all just listened to the last tape recorded telephone message on Earth? I can envision a day, thousands of years from now when someone not unlike Charlton Heston rides a horse along an empty beach and spots one of these machines partially buried in the sand and cries out, "God damn you all to hell!" Okay, maybe I carried that too far;)
It looked like a Tape Echo Machine to me ( probably because I have restored one in a video last month )
It’s pretty much the same design, just a bit more tape.
Very neat.
STD code? 1 for Chlamydia, 2 for Gonorrhea etc? ;)
Since we have had that joke twice already https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscriber_trunk_dialling VD was probably a more common term for what you were thinking of.
Dont know if is my eyesight but that tape looked to me to be a little bit thicker than ordinary consumer tape, which would sort of make sense given the ammunt of use and therefore reliability required. Did any company ever even make a thicker magnetic tape ?
I have to admit my first guess was "tape delay" not "announcer".
Making my guess before watching... Is it the old tech for automated call messages or welcomes, like when you call a company?
That's as close as you're likely to guess.
That was an interesting thing. I think using a microphone input would have worked better. The muffled sound comes from the way phono inputs equalize the signal. Treble down, bass up. Something like that.
I would quite happily have that tape mechanism mounted on a wall as a 'kinetic art' piece, if it could run in a vertical orientation. I suppose it would if the transport was at the top.
I knew such machines existed, never saw one before, thank you! Funny to see that in the UK around the same time as in the Netherlands, the numbers changed, I think it was 1996 in the Netherlands...
Probably around the time that everyone was switching to electronic telephone exchanges. Around that time they actually held an open day at my local telephone exchange to show off their new installation. Numerous racks of Strowger equipment had been replaced by an electronic exchange about 1/10th of the size.
My first thought was some kind of cardio medical device. Way off huh
It actually looks very similar to a Watkins Copicat tape echo, beloved by pop groups like The Shadows.
The muffled tone would be due to the RIAA eq applied by the phono pre-amp. If you had used a sensitive mic pre-amp it would have been different, but on reflection , possibly no better because I think they used some sort of (different) pre-emphasis on tape recording as well.
I thought this was a really interesting video...seeing what's on the other end "of the line" is something most people never get to experience. The message may seem "mundane" but it's still a kind of historical artifact in a way, and that's always interesting (at least to me)
I don't think that's the Phoneday announcement. At one time, there was such a thing as a local dialling code. For example, to dial Grantham from a neighbouring town, you could prefix the local number with 9 rather than the full STD code of (then) 0476. BT issued a dialling code booklet for your own exchange area as well as a telephone directory for a wider area. Each exchange would need its own booklet because the local codes were short and therefore duplicated between areas. I'm not sure of the reason for the local codes but they were convenient in the days of dial phones. I wonder if there was a time when you'd have been charged more if dialling the full national code to make a call to a nearby exchange. Certainly it made no difference by the 1980s, local codes were phased out and all area codes could be published in the main telephone directory. Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that I think the announcement is what you'd have heard of you'd attempted to use a local prefix after it had been phased out.
I recall when my parents phone number went from four digits to six, due to the addition of 39 to the front. That was in a village. Their previous Bristol phone number had always been six digits. You are right about convenience with dial phones. Imagine having to dial 11 digits on one to ring your neighbour. I wonder if shorter numbers also simplified the arrangements in exchanges. Most phone calls were probably to the next village, like when I would ring a friend to check he was in before walking there. Although only a mile away he was in a different village with a different telephone exchange. Regarding being charged more, definitely. I also recall that in the 1960s when my parents wanted to call from Bristol to my Grandmother in Sheffield on Christmas Day they would actually have to book a call through the operator due to the limited availability of "trunk lines" back then.
It continues to amaze me how we got by in the analogue era. We've all probably heard "We're sorry, but the number you have dialled is no longer in service." not knowing that it was a digital voice recording. Anyone here remember phoning a number to listen to a recording about the next movie times at your local cinema?
I remember doing that!!!
Absolutely thought this was a tape delay/echo machine based on the thumbnail! Love watching those in action for the same reason as this. One day, Roland Space Echo. One day you will be mine.
Me: What's this rubbish he's uploaded. Me 20 minutes later: Christ, I can't switch it off, it's too beautiful. Good work sir.
Great video. Given that one track was blank I wonder if maybe only one of the amplifiers has failed. Did you try swapping the head cables to the opposite amplifier?
Yes - that was one of the things I purposely mentioned towards the end…I knew people would ask if I didn’t.
Interesting device. You'd think the tape would get knotted up. The two transformers appear to be audio transformers, likely creating a 'balanced' audio output that is fed out of the PO jacks at the front that you were trying to get going. It being balanced audio on tip and ring, you'd need a bodge lead to work with 'unbalanced' consumer kit. You could try moving the middle black wire solder connection to the outer connection nearest the side of the case.
I moved every wire to every point possible - zero sound. Not even a crackle.
Seeing the mass of tape moving around under the plastic cover certainly is something new to me. Wonder why they didn't use some kind of reel like an 8-track? Maybe those are super-hard to wind up by hand?
You could swap the tape in this in under a minute. 8-tracks and cassettes etc would mean another manufacturing/assembly step in the chain. This was reliable, quick and easy. All other options were more complicated and less reliable until digital audio came along.
I was trying to remember when STD stood for Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Nice bit of history. You could take the tape out and record something more amusing Mat ?
I had a feeling good ol’ Skip might make an upload soon. Hope he’s doing well!
I bought 40 used Minidisc the other day. Half of them have relaxation and healing massage music on them. Not my thing, but one is Reiki Whale Song and it's quite nice to listen to. That would make a good track for Skip's video. Back to the player, I had always assumed they were playing a standard compact cassette tape with repeating audio. Wonder why they didn't just do a compact cassette loop.
A compact cassette would have either had the same arrangement in a much smaller case, or an arrangement like an 8-track tape cartridge in which the tape supply is pulled out from the center of the reel. My initial thought is that the cartridgeless concept employed here is both less likely to bind and easier to customize the length of. That, and this type of machine may have already existed for other uses. I've seen tape loop machines similar to this one used for musical performances, but I don't know for sure which industry was using them first.
Love the shirt!
What a thoroughly bloody nice bloke that Skip Intro is
Thanks Mat. I remember seeing one in our village exchange in the 1980s. I knew the village phone engineer well.
I'd imagine that was a cool place to see - with all the switches and relays etc. The digital ones will be a non-event.
Yeah that's probably true though i would not mind seeing it
I'll watch this later have you seen vwestlife video about a digital cassette player for the impared seems really interesting
I saw the thumbnail, but haven't watched the video. I bought one of those machines a few years ago to show in my ongoing series about different kinds of talking books and accessibility devices. The only problem now is that if I go on to show it - everyone will just say I copied his idea.