Tape recorder


I got a kick out of Hammer's tape recorder/answering machine. Something like that I guess existed in 1955 but it would have been really, really rare. Answering machines didn't emerge until sometime in the mid to late 70's if memory serves. Before then, people had an answering service. Hammer didn't strike me as a cutting edge guy and not particularly wealthy either. I guess the point was to stress that confidentiality was paramount to Hammer given his sleazy business.

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I loved it too.

I felt the same way about early car phones, which technically they had in the late 40s! Bogart had one in a movie. They were not cell phone or "wireless" phones. They were mobile phones with mobile operators.

In about 1967, my dad had a sales rep working for him that had a red one installed in his red-interiored 1965 Buick Riviera. Talk about cool!

I believe the transceiver (or equivalent) took up a good chunk of the trunk!

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Voice recording with magnetic tape is usually done at slow speed. I wondered why Hammer's recorder appeared to be running at about 30 inches per second, like a high-fidelity tape recorder would in a music recording studio. Also, the machine had about eight knobs. Why would it require so much adjustment?

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I don't know.

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I think it was a set designer's imagined way an answering machine could work.

The tape speed, and how it searches look more like an IBM mainframe's tape drive than a simple voicemail. Plus, the prominent place on the wall appears to show it off, which an installer wouldn't be likely to do.

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