Nostalgia with an Antique Vintage Webster Wire Recorder

I had saved a vintage Webster Wire Recorder Model 80 that was built around 1947 that was once my father’s recorder.

He gave it to me and I never wanted to sell it. I just stuffed it away in a closet and once every few years I'd take it out, plug it in, and check to be sure it still works. It still does!

Okay, so you’re wondering what the heck a wire recorder is. Well, we all know about tape recorders. Well maybe not all of us. I guess some very young kids would only know about iPods or MP3 players. A little older and they might know about CD’s. Going back further, and I still feel it was only yesterday, we had cassette tape.

During my own childhood I recorded my music on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The technology definitely progressed a lot since reel-to-reel. Imagine how far we've come. 45 rpm records, LP vinyl records, 8-track tapes, cassettes, CD's, flash memory chips, multicellular neural recorder, microfluidic recording device, bioelectrochemical recording... oh I think I'm getting ahead of myself!

Getting back to my father's days, he bought a recorder before any of this other technology was created. It was the Webster Model 180-1, and it was a wire recorder. Yes, it records on wire, reels of wire. It definitely became an antique.

My father loved to record classical music from the radio. Now I have dozens and dozens of wire reels with interesting and nostalgic broadcasts from the mid 1900’s. A few of the wire reels also contained some private family recordings of my parents playing with my sister and me when I was only a few months old. I could hear myself as an infant making baby sounds. Those recordings are precious!

It’s interesting to hear my father’s voice and my mother’s foreign accent. My memory only goes back to about the age of four and she lost that accent by then. So hearing their voices recorded from that time is a little strange.

Preserving Vintage Electronics

Old electronic circuits tend to die after so many decades. The old capacitors dry out. The coating on wires becomes brittle and falls off, exposing the wires until shorts develop and kill the whole thing.

But I am lucky to have my Webster still functioning. One reason is probably that I took care of the way I stored it. I made sure I didn’t leave it in the damp basement or in the cold attic. I kept it where the temperature and humidity were controlled.

Another thing that I am sure helped was that I powered it up every once in a while, even if 10 years passed between plugging it in and playing it for a while. That helped. It keeps the electronics from drying out. It helps the capacitors continue to function.

When you plug in an old electronic device after decades it is possible that you have a capacitor explode. I guess I had powered it up often enough to avoid this. Today all our electronic gadgets are solid state. Or maybe we don’t even use THAT term any more. It’s all IC’s now, Integrated Circuits. Yep, technology is changing. And things become vintage items over time. It’s nice to preserve these treasures when we can. So we can experience the nostalgia and enjoy the memories.

Copyright © 2011 Glenn Stok

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