The technology for the first prototype audio magnetic tape recorders was developed in Germany in the 1930s, but due to the dislocation caused by the Second World War, it did not become fully viable both technically and commercially until the late 1940s.
Among the first ethnographic film-makers to use a portable audio tape recorder in the field was Roger Rosfelder, who recorded the sound for the films that he and Jean Rouch made in West Africa in 1951. The model that they used was the Acemaphone, developed in Paris by the Sgubbi company. It weighed around 30 kgs and had a clockwork spring motor which was wound up with handle in the front of the machine (visible pointing at Rosfelder’s chest in the image above).
In 1951, Stefan Kudelski (1929-2013), a Polish engineer whose family had taken refuge in Switzerland during the Second World War, patented the Nagra I, a portable tape recorder that was very much smaller and at 5 kgs, very much lighter than the Sgubbi. One of the first to use this model for ethnographic film purposes was Henri Brandt, who took one with him to Niger to shoot his film, Nomades du soleil in 1953-54.
Kudelski would develop this model considerably, eventually producing, in 1958, the Nagra III, the only slightly heavier battery-driven model used by Jean Rouch and his colleagues in the shooting of Chronicle of a Summer (1961), the first ethnographic film to make extensive use of a portable synchronous sound system.
You must be logged in to post a comment.