History of Audio Formats Quiz #1

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1. What date did Phillips develop the audio cassette?
1963
CORRECT!
1973
1968
1983
The audio cassette declined over the 1980s. The mass production of “blank” (not yet recorded) Compact Cassettes began in Hanover, Germany – just one year after the date of its invention.
2. What 20th century celebrity played a part in the development of audio on magnetic tape in USA?
Dean Martin
Bing Crosby
In 1947, Crosby’s radio show was the first magnetic tape broadcast in America. He even financially backed the medium by investing in the US company AMPEX.
David Bowie
Hedy Lamarr
This actress & inventor actually invented the precursor to bluetooth with her idea of Frequency-hopping spread spectrum during WWII.
3. What country can claim to have invented a machine to record audio onto wire?
Denmark
Yes! Wire recording was the first magnetic recording technology. The first basic magnetic recorder was invented in 1898 by the Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen.
Germany
France
USA
Magnetic recording was conceived of as early as 1877 by the American engineer Oberlin Smith but he wasn’t the first to make a recorder
Whose voice is this?
4. Recorded on wax cylinder, who is this voice rumoured to belong to?
Greta Garbo
Rosa Luxemburg
Florence Nightingale
Queen Victoria
While we can’t know for sure there is circumstantial evidence that this probably is Queen Victoria’s voice! It is known that she was persuaded to record a cylinder of greeting on 8th August 1898 to send to Emperor Menelik of Ethiopia but insisted that it be destroyed after he had heard it. In return, the Emperor and his Queen recorded greetings to Victoria in 1899 and these have survived at the British Library: https://blogs.bl.uk/sound-and-vision/2019/05/bicentenary-of-queen-victoria-is-this-her-voice.html
5. What year did SONY stop making MiniDisc players?
2005
2007
2013
Yes! MiniDiscs RIP Sept 1992 – March 2013
2019

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