This section of the website is for long rambles on topics or technologies I find interesting! Some of what will be here will be electronics/audio equipment things that I want to but do not own, some may be lengthy rambles on historical events or engineering-y stuff I find interesting, so on and so forth! Some of the things I plan to document here (such as the BASF unisette cartridge format) seem to be nigh-undocumented on the English speaking web, so, enjoy! Click on any image to enlarge.
BASF Unisette cassette
The BASF Unisette was an ill-fated predecessor to the Elcaset - in fact, it appears to be what the Elcaset was based on. In the late 60s and early 70s, the compact cassette - originally designed for dictation - was beginning to prove itself as a true high fidelity medium for the masses, but its limitations were starting to be reached in the eyes of technicians, with the narrow tapewidth limiting signal to noise ratios and the tape being confined within the shell meaning that the cassette itself had an effect on mechanical performance. The Unisette proposed to solve this, by using a wider tape running at a higher tape speed in a larger cartridge, with a cartridge design that was allowed the machines it was inserted into to exert greater control of the tape. BASF had designed the format, and was in talks with Japanese companies to try and get a range of machines made - instead, they left the table and came back a few years later with Elcaset - a format that solved the problems of cassettes by using a larger cartridge with wider tape running at a higher speed. Hm. Full writeup to follow!
Grundig 1 inch videotape
A seemingly little-documented (at least in the English web) 1 inch helical scan tape recording format that was designed by Grundig (as far as I can tell), but appears to have been some variety of cooperative or open standard, as Philips and Siemens also released machines that conform to the same design and can use the same tapes. They came in tabletop and rackmount versions, appear to have a head drum about 10 inches across (gargantuan), and may have been used as instrumentation recorders in hospitals for medical devices, a la the Ampex FR-900 tape drives. There also appear to have been different, non-interchangeable versions capable of colour video recording later in the systems life span - like high and low band u-matic - and Grundig seem to have kept support going right the way through until the 1980s, which is fascinating. Full writeup to follow!