Tefifon KC1

Object Biography

Dear visitor, I am the Tefifon KC1, I suppose you have not heard from me and even if you have, I hope to give you a better understanding of who I am and who I was as these two things are very different from one another. Depending on your age I may represent to you an object evoking the concept of Nostalgia, or if you are younger, you may see me as an ancient artefact already. To begin with, I will give you my backstory and the person which I can thank for my existence. Dr. Karl Daniel, a German entrepreneur who was born in 1905 in Rheinland-Pfalz and died in 1977 in Cologne, was the person who invented me. I made my first public appearance in 1950 on the “Düsseldorfer Funkaustellung” where I was presented to the world by Dr. Karl Daniel, my inventor. The main reason for my invention, was for me to become a concurrence for the predominant Long-player phonograph record, which was an analog sound storage medium which dominated the market in the time of my invention. My main selling point, was the fact that I could store and play sounds for much longer than a Long-player, as at the time an LP could typically play 9 minutes of sound, whereas my new method allowed me to play sounds for an hour with my general cartridges, or up to 4 hours on the longer version of my cartridges. If you ask yourself what cartridges I am talking about, well my audio playback format functioned by using cartridges with an endlessly looped reel of plastic tape. Those cartridges existed in three different variations, short, medium and long. A short cartridge typically allowed me to play up to 18 minutes of audio, the medium cartridges up to an hour and the long cartridge lasted up to 4 hours. If I am to believe my contemporaries, the sound quality I produced was also better than 78 rpm records but unfortunately not as good as the quality produced by Long playing vinyl records. These cartridges I just talked about, which I needed for my audio playback, were called “Tefi” and they were named after the production company which invented me and belonged to Dr. Karl Daniel. I was finally released in 1956, which I didn’t mention yet, and I was invented in the same city where my inventor died, Cologne, Germany. In the context of audio playback formats, I can be viewed as a combination between a tape recorder and a phonograph record. Therefore, I find myself in the middle between the analog era of sound recording and the magnetic era of sound recording. However, I unfortunately was not able to reproduce sound, you had to buy pre-recorded tapes and use me to play the recorded audio. Before continuing with my story, I can take away the suspense and tell you, that my invention was not successful at the end, and I never achieved my real breakthrough. The reason for that, was the emergence of the 12-inch vinyl which was capable of playing audio for much longer than the previous 78 rpm records, and the fact that most musical artist were signed to a record company, which all evidently used vinyl records. There was also no interest from these record companies to reproduce the music for the concurrence of the phonograph record, which put me in a very difficult situation to overcome from the beginning. Even though, my invention was not as successful as it could have been, I still have a lot more to tell you, and maybe the obscure nature of me is exactly that which makes you intrigued to know more about me. The fact that I was not widely available for sale is also maybe a reason why I am so obscure and why I was not successful. I was not sold by television and radio dealers in Germany. But I was rather sold by special sales outlets affiliated with my production company “Tefi”. Maybe that is the reason why I am rather unknown outside of West-Germany, and also never really made my way into Luxembourg (Except for radio collectors such as Mr. Albert Wolter), until now when I arrived at the “Maison du Son”. The other museums where you can find me, are all situated in Germany as for one exception. Here is a list where you could also talk to me outside of Luxembourg if you ever get the chance to visit me again: Historisches Uhren- und Musikgerätemuseum zu Putbus (D) Elektro Museum E.ON Hanse (D) Terra Technica (CZ) Museum Nortorf mit TELDEC und Museums-Apotheke (D) Rundfunkmuseum der Stadt Fürth (D) Deutsches Phonomuseum (D) I am happy to be able to visit Luxembourg, as you can see, Czech Republic is the only country I was allowed to visit until now.

Even if you are currently looking at me, I will give you my dimensional specifics. My height is 15cm, with a width of 34,5cm and a depth of 36,5cm. As you can see, I also look like a briefcase, which makes it very easy for me to be transported to another place without complicated circumstances. Except, if you cannot lift 8,4kg of weight, then I am as transportable as a mixing desk in a recording studio. Here you can see that at my release, my transportation ability was also one of the selling points when it comes to me. In this visualization you can see a couple going for a picnic, with me being right next to them to serve as a music player. These times seem far gone in today’s digital age, but you can see there was a time in history where I was useful as an easily transportable music player. I was also not very expensive at the first glance with my price being 298 DM, which amounts to around 152 Euros today. However, when adjusted to inflation, in 1956, the year of my release, 100 Euro was as much as 564 Euros today, so maybe in retrospect I was not as affordable as I thought to be. .As my intended use for which I was invented did not take off and did not last for long, as I was discontinued in 1965 , maybe my use in today’s world can compensate for my previous unsuccessful lifespan. If you happen to be an older visitor, I can function as a tool for Nostalgia for you. Maybe as a kid, you had me in your household, saw your parents use me, or maybe you had a romantic picnic date with an old flame, where you took me with you just like in the advert above. I am happy to be able to evoke positive emotions and a feeling of Nosetalgia for some visitors, even if the number of people I reach is very low. However, for younger visitors, I may represent an object of antiquity, which they cannot even imagine using nowadays, in this digital day and age. Maybe for those visitors I can evoke a sense of intrigue and by reading this personal biography of mine you may get a better understanding of a past moment in time, which you didn’t get to live as you was born too late. I can imagine that in today’s world of constant flow of information and with accessibility being as high as it never was before, you may wonder what use I could have had in the past. Now, people have access to audio playback in their pockets at any time of the day. You can access every piece of media through a few clicks, and you can even easily find videos of me and find out how I look and sound like. However, I want to offer you the possibility to experience me in my original intended use as well as that which I represent. With me being here in the “Maison du Son” you as a visitor can actually use me, insert the cartridges yourself and listen to the audio production and quality, exactly how it was for the people who lived in the 1950’s and for whom I may have been the only audio playback format available in their everyday use. This experience cannot be replicated by a Youtube video, however here you can have a glimpse of what I sound like if you happen to read this without having me infront of you: In this video you can also see how I function, you se how the endless red tape is being looped, as first, a Tefifon cartridge would be inserted into the machine, with the reader tape around the turning knob. The machine would then be started. The tape would be read with a stylus, which moved across the grooves, in a manner similar to a phonograph record. However, the tape would be stored in a cartridge, like later magnetic tape systems. While there was no way of moving to a specific track, the stylus could be moved to a variety of positions on the tape. As I told you before, there were cartridges that allowed me to produce audio for up to 4 hours, which at the time was a very staggering playing time. As I already expressed my jealousy towards today’s digital age, I also have to give it credit where it is due. Here you can listen to such a 4-hour cartridge from back in the day, as it can be found in a digital archive. This exemplar is called “Die grosse Tefi-Schlager-Revue” which includes 85 musical pieces from solo performers, orchestras and ensembles. You can skim through this digitized 4-Hour cartridge right here, even if it does not replicate the exact sounds as you would hear them from me, I think it is still very good to be able to do that so easily through the digital medium: As we are on the topic of audiovisual demonstrations, I can also show you how I compare to my so-called rival from my time in the 1950’s the vinyl Long-Player. A fine gentleman uploaded a Youtube video comparing the same song played on a device like me the Tefifon KC1 and played it on a vinyl as well. I was very proud to see that I compared very favorably to my old rival, as there are also differences in playback speed (where I am faster than the LP) and differences in pitch as the pitch was lower in the Long-Player vinyl than in the Tefifon KC1 exemplar shown in the video. Here is said video, if you want to see the comparison in more detail: I think overall you now know a lot more about me than when you first saw me. I might have struck you as an obscure radio-like device and that is exactly what I am. The curiosity surrounding me in the realm of audio engineering and audio playback formats remains to this day, for those invested in the subject. Therefore, there is still a lot of versions of me you can find, either when visiting one of the museum’s I mentioned above, or else you would surely find me in the shelves of radio-collectors. In the end, my invention might not have been successful, however I still remain in the collective memory as a very curious piece of audio playback, which was invented in order to try out something very different to the norm, even if it did not turn out as intended. There is still the minor problem of finding cartridges for me to play, as these were not produced anymore after my production was stalled , so most of them are not in the very best condition, but there is still enough of them out there, in order to try out my audio playback format in real-time and hear what I actually sound like. Therefore, I am happy to have finally made my way into Luxembourg, where you the visitor can try me out in the “Maison du Son” in Lamadelaine. I wanted to tell you everything about me, where I came from, where I am today, what I was used for and what my use transformed into through time, as well as interesting details about my function and my backstory. I didn’t want to talk too much about the schematics and details inside of me, as I think that story would not be as interesting as the story, I told you. However, if interested you can find more details about those things in the following Bibliography and list of sources, I will attach hereafter. I am the Tefifon KC1 and I hope you have learned some things about me today.

Bibliography

BEARDSLEY, Roger, LEECH-WILKINSON, Daniel, A brief History of recording to ca. 1950, London, 2009

JÛTTEMANN, Herbert, Das Tefifon, Herten, 1995

KNIBBS, Kate, ‘A look at the Tefifon, Germany’s doomed 1950’s Music Player’ in: Gizmodo, April 7th , 2015 ; URL: https://gizmodo.com/a-look-at-the-tefifon-germanys-doomed-1950s-music-play-1696294961

WALZ, Rüdiger, „Von ‚Zwerg‘ bis wuchtig und schwer.“ In: Funkgeschichte 246, August/September 2019

WENZ, John, ‘This was Germany’s Half-Tape Half-Vinyl Music format that never took off’ in: Popular Mechanics, April 8th ,2015; URL: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/a14977/tefifon-germany-audio-format/

Sources

Alles über Tefifon; URL: https://radiostube-varel.jimdofree.com/tefifon/

Das Tefifon Schallbandgerät KC1; URL: https://www.bandmaschinenseite.de/weitere-interessante-ger%C3%A4te/tefifon/

Heimatmuseum Westminster: Rundfunktechnik von gestern und heute; URL: http://www.heimatmuseum-wemmetsweiler.de/Rundfunktechnik_von_gestern_und_heute.pdf

Radiofunkgrube; URL: http://www.radiofundgrube.de/details_geraete_tefifon_kc1ra.php

Stromlaufplan vom Verstärker für KC1 mit Rundfunkteil: URL: https://www.nvhr.nl/gfgf/schema.asp?Merk=Tefi&Zoeken=exact&isSubmitted=yes

Tefifon in: Museum of Obsolete Media; URL: https://obsoletemedia.org/tefifon/

Tefifon Picnic Werbung; URL: https://www.hupse.eu/radio/images/tefifrau.jpg

Audiovisual files

Comparing the Tefifon and the LP, URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOkd87mvnmo

Tefi 4 Stunden Band, URL: https://archive.org/details/tks_2237-die_grosse_tefi_schlager_revue_wir_tanzen_bis_zum_morgen?webamp=default

Tefifon KC1 mit Kurzband, URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoCymJHQkh4

Vintage Electronics: The Tefifon, URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBNTAmLRmUg