"Here we go again; another plane's come over!" yells radio correspondent George Hicks as antiaircraft fire roars in the background. "Right over our port side. Tracers are making an arc right over our bow now. . . . Looks like we're going to have a night tonight."
"Give it to them, boys!" he hollers.
It's D-Day, 1944, and Hicks is on a ship off the coast of Normandy as it comes under attack by Nazi aircraft. He's speaking into a primitive tape recorder that will soon be obsolete. But for more than 13 riveting minutes, he captures the raw sound of battle.
Wow.
Amazing.
ReplyDeleteI expected it to be a wire recorder, but it turned out to be something I've never heard of:
ReplyDelete"The Recordgraph system of recording was developed by Fredrick Hart & Co. of New York some time in the late 1930s. It uses uncoated 35mm Cellulose Acetate film, into which a laterally-modulated groove is embossed. Playback is by means of a stylus mounted in a gramophone-type pickup head."
http://www.poppyrecords.co.uk/other/recordgraph/recordgraph.htm