Magnetic storage spread in the 1930s
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And the first computers use the mag storage instead of punched cards, with quite a lot less of storage ...
You wouldn't get rid of punched cards completely. One of their primary uses was input, before modern keyboards and consoles came into use. They have distinct advantages over magnetic tape for this regard: the machinery for making them (essentially just an automated set of hole punches) was far simpler than a magnetic tape recorder. The operator could look at a punch card with his own eyes if he thought there was a mistake. I could also imagine the operator using a plain old hole punch and some masking tape to fix those mistakes quickly. This would have been much more difficult if he needed a special machine to read and edit the tape.
Not that magnetic tape wouldn't still be better for storing the data after it was processed by the computer.
Hendryk
Banned
So, the AT&T executives don't have a brain fart and realize that magnetic storage can make loads of money. What happens next? Can we have input from technologically savvy members?
By WW2 answering machines are becoming widespread in the US, but there are bound to be more far-reaching consequences.
By WW2 answering machines are becoming widespread in the US, but there are bound to be more far-reaching consequences.
Sure, answering machines in the '30s. So what? That's the only change I see, IF there's that much change.
Bell Labs didn't even invent mag tape for sound recording - that happened earlier
wiki said:
Note, too, that this "telephone answering machine" was a
so, we're talking about a machine as big as a refrigerator - at least.
If you read more of that article, the guy has a real axe to grind (although I'm not sure WHAT axe...), and the tone is very, very biased.
So. Basically, trivial change to OTL.
I'd dispute that a bit. The biggest change is likely to happen later--when the first computers are getting built. It's likely magnetic tape gets introduced at least a couple years earlier than IOTL to computing, which will have minor effects at any given time, but could lead to large cumulative effects by the present-day due to the exponential improvement in computers seen in the past.
That and answering machines. At least the top executives at major corporations (Coca-Cola, General Motors, AT&T (duh!), IBM, etc.) will be likely to have them, provided this is commercially successful (the first answering machine introduced into the US market IOTL wasn't, so chances aren't 100%). That should spur on efforts to improve them, which goes rather nicely with a slightly faster advancement of computer technology.
The ting is that it did not need to be a answering machine. They could have sold it as recording device to radio stations and later as it was made smaller maybe the size of a suitcase sell it to homes so they could record there favorite radio shows while they were out.
During WWII it would be used to record radio transmissions to be decoded and enemy phone calls. Imagine the WWII equivalent of the Zimmerman telegragh handing Stalin a recording of Hitler talking about invading the USSR or Tojo going over attacking Pearl Harbour play to Congress by FDR.
During WWII it would be used to record radio transmissions to be decoded and enemy phone calls. Imagine the WWII equivalent of the Zimmerman telegragh handing Stalin a recording of Hitler talking about invading the USSR or Tojo going over attacking Pearl Harbour play to Congress by FDR.
AT&T didn't invent mag tape, that was invented earlier. Nor did they invent computers. So why is mag tape used for answering machines going to speed up its use for computer storage? Again
Top executives at major corporations already had secretaries who took messages. Why on EARTH would they, of all people, want an answering machine?
And so could the people who actually invented mag tape.
All AT&T did, as far as I can tell from that article, was consider using it as an answering machine. Why would that make a difference here?
AT&T has more monetary and marketing muscle than practically anyone else on the planet? The point is that mag tape will be more recognized as a storage medium than IOTL, since AT&T--you know, one of the biggest corporations on the planet?--is pushing it, or at least selling it. It's pretty likely that at least some of the scientists working on the first computers would be from AT&T or know AT&T people.
Again
Top executives at major corporations already had secretaries who took messages. Why on EARTH would they, of all people, want an answering machine?
Prestige, cost, and security? Prestige--"I'm the ONLY ONE in the company who has one of these babies!" Cost--"I don't have to pay a secretary's salary!" Security--"These calls go to this machine, rather than to a secretary who might be bribed or 'persuaded' into giving up corporate secrets!"
Seems like they would rather have answering machines than secretaries, to me.
EDIT: Also, it's not strictly true that mag tape was invented prior to this. What we think of as "mag tape" was only invented in 1928--in Germany. Understandably, this was actually pretty secret until the end of the war, and American technology was behind. The other form of tape that they had was much less advanced and wouldn't have been useful for tape data storage (too heavy and too much was needed), but further AT&T investment might have lead to the development of oxide tape, which would have been much more useful.
Why? An Answering machine can't type up your letters and meeting notes, do your filing, schedule your doctors appointments, make you coffee, buy flowers for your wife, etc. etc.
Yup, there's no efficient tape recording systems outside of the Reich before the end of WWII. That's why there was no standard technology, with instead a cacophony of sound coming from wire recorders, blattnerphones and old-fashioned wax discs being used throughout the Western communications industries.
Not only is this the most obvious first use for magnetic tape (as opposed to data storage for computers yet to be built, or replacing office workers) but it leads directly to another truly revolutionary application IMO--early Television.
I think it's a certainty that some kind of video tape, somewhere in the range between OTL's VERA and Ampex's 2-inch tape, will be developed by the end of the Second World War. The request for playback machines utilising this miraculous, flexible magnetic tape is inevitable, what with cathode ray displays being used for radar from the very beginning of the war, and the USAAF actually employing TV cameras in their early 'smart bombs'. (Of course you can ask the question, "why would the WAllies create video tape for their radar and smart bomb tech when Germany didn't do that IOTL?" To which I can only respond, "Lendlease, Manhattan Project, no confusing Wanderwaffe administrative decision making, mo money, etc".)
Imagine if selected events from the last year or two of the war were captured on b&w tape in the same way the Kennedy/Nixon debates can be seen today. FDR making his last address to congress, Doenitz surrendering to Montgomey at Luneberg Heath, kamikazes attacking the US fleet carriers off Okinawa. The mind boggles at having bits of the war preserved that way, particularly if the signals corps or whoever ask to be able to use colour TV technology.
The postwar effect will be pretty enormous. Kinescope technology isn't even invented until 1947; having commercially available video recording before this happens will advance the business model of the US networks by several years. Of course Kinescope itself may be advanced by several years if the WAllied military are using CCTV for many more different purposes than they did in our timeline.
IMO this is all before we even get to the institutions who were operating the early computers realising, "Hey, we can create an electronic library full of every single little calculation we ever want to run through our machine!"
Actually "wire recorders" which as the name suggests were actually steel wire that was written and read by magnetic heads much like magnetic tape.
Additionally Churchill's speeches were often read by an actor (for the reason above) and the "pre-recorded" speeches that you can now hear were actually recorded after the war for archival purposes.
The big advantage that tape had to start with was consistency of the base media (i.e., tape is smoother than wire) and the ability to splice tape to edit.
I don't think this would have much effect on the TL, wire-recording was used for recording dictation and telephone/telegraph recording during the 30's and 40's, I guess the way to get the effect the OP wants is to change when wire-recording was discovered (or rather perfected). It was discovered in the 1890's but if you move the general use from the 30's back into the late teens early 20's then maybe (just maybe) you would get tape recording or something like it being widespread in the 30's.
The Nazi civil service made full use of the most advanced of IBM's punch card sorters to catalogue and process the Jewish population of Europe. Not something that IBM likes to boast about, but hardly their fault. If magnetic recordings could be sorted by machine it would have to be a computer. Until a computer is invented to do this punched card is the way to go.
Bell Labs were a hugely important player. Them embracing magnetic tape in '30es would change a lot. It would be rather mature technology by time WWII was in full swing. If developed enough tape is vastly superior to recording wire.
So sound and TV recording. It would find its way to first computers.
So sound and TV recording. It would find its way to first computers.