Today on the bench, the beautiful IBM Executary dictaphone, which is from a previous video.
And we have it out, because a viewer sent me a recording, and her name is Jennifer.
And she thinks she has her voice, when she was four years old, recorded on this one,
and asked me if I could try to read it.
So we're going to do that.
And here is Jennifer with her dad in 1965, the year she recalls recording this tape at
her dad’s office in Montreal.
She was all of 4 years old.
She think that the tape she sent me may have her voice, and that of her late dad, on it.
Her dad had purchased a large IBM computer for his business, and that’s probably how
he got the Executary recorder, as a gift of sorts.
Jennifer still lives in Canada, and got referred to me by the official IBM archives, which
apparently watches the channel.
Who would have thought?
And before that, I might want to change a few things here, because I restored it a while
ago, and it was a little wobbly, if I remember.
(wobbly recording) Hello, hello, how are things today?
Yeah.
Because I put a rubber band in there in place of the broken band.
And I have new bands.
I don't know that they are that good actually, but I'm going to try if that works any better.
So, open wide, this way.
All right and then...
So you can peek at the inside.
It has a big flat band.
And I remember well, to open up...
Yes, you do this.
Here we go.
It's a rather simple mechanism, with the flat band and an amplifier.
And there should be a way to slide this out.
And yeah, here's my temporary repair with a rubber band.
See if we can get a little bit of a stiffer band in there.
I should look back at the video, but I think it's just those two screws here.
And then, I remember there's a spring.
But now I'm better equipped: I have a spring hook.
And we have to somehow remove it.
We have to somehow remove it with a camera in the way.
Okay, let's see if we can make space for both of us.
I have access to the spring and you can see.
Oh, I see why.
It is that direction.
All right.
Springy!
Alright.
So there, it's good.
Oh, then you adjust the tension with that one, okay, that makes sense.
This little guy.
Now it's down there.
I'll fish it out later.
And...
Oh man, that's not coming through either.
Oh man.
There you go, we got it.
There, we have it.
And, yeah, there is a little tension.
Okay I just need to change this.
This is going to be very miserable, to get a new one in.
Okay.
Right size, but...
These are sold as tape repair things, I haven't found them great.
It's royal pain to get them to go underneath.
Yeah, I remember this not being fun at all.
Okay, so this is near impossible.
Okay, I ended up removing the motor and I'm going to try to put two bands, although I
don't know if that's going to be stable.
And also, I noticed there is an adjustment screw all the way at the bottom, for the pressure
that this wheel applies on the mechanism.
And maybe my problem is back down there, I need to adjust that.
Okay, this was a bit of a battle, but I got one band to work.
Two bands is too much.
a little bit as expected.
And I think it's a little bit better.
Plus I moved that out, to get access to the adjustment screw.
So I might have all I need.
(less wobbly recording) Hello, hello, how are things today?
Okay, I don't know if it's better or not.
How can I test this without remounting everything?
Because I need that also to put it in the record position.
I have to go...
I can do that.
Here, record.
Hello, this is a test to see if it got any better.
Is it any better, or is it still very wobbly?
I don't know.
And like this.
You go like that.
(good sounding recording) Hello, this is a test to see if it got any better.
Is it any better or is it still very wobbly?
I don't know.
Oh it's much better!
Okay, all right, so we'll take that as a win, and we'll remount everything.
Okay, it's all back together, so we're going to try to load Jennifer's tape.
And first, you have to remove this one, which requires a little bit of dexterity.
And here we go, so that's the tape.
By the way, if you guys have another one like this, I'd like to hear about it!
And that's Jennifer's tape.
And unfortunately, you see it has many many folds on it.
And worse, way worse, it has been folded flat.
So, I have this horrible crease over here.
That is not going to be a good thing.
So I have to flatten it somehow.
So these are meant to be like this, right, so they roll correctly.
So that's a problem.
See if I can massage it a little bit.
This is not going to work very well.
I could try to heat it up too, but then I am afraid to go above the Curie point of this,
and then losing the data.
So let's try it like this, and see if it rolls.
Okay, so far so good.
And then, here we go.
Here we have it, Okay, not sure what's gonna happen.
Let's try it.
[Little girl singing beautifully]
Guys, I think that's it for now.
Man, I had goosebumps recovering this!
And I guess this is from the 60s.
How nice.
So, I'm going to see if there is some more, maybe try to record it directly from the device.
There is a headphone jack.
And it worked quite well, the only problems were the periodic dropouts due to the crease.
But except from that, hopefully, that will make Jennifer happy.
I'm happy for her!
So, this is the setup I ended up using.
This is my Focusrite interface, that's the one I use to record the voiceovers for my
videos.
And I connected it to the headphones, which is very weak output, I had to turn the gain
to maximum everywhere.
And then I am using Audacity on the computer to get the stuff out.
And I am just monitoring it.
So to give you an idea, it goes like this.
I'm at the beginning of the tape, we've to wait a little bit.
[Recording] Here our dear Jennifer and papa, singing to the pretty songs...
[Little girl singing]
Alright, so, you get the idea.
I'll put the recorded stuff over the video, so you you get the sound (out) of the recorder.
But man, that's sure a good use of a good old IBM Executary machine.
I hope Jennifer likes it.
Okay, see you in the next episode.
So, I’ll end the video with the rest of the recovered soundtrack, along with some
pictures of Jeniffer and her Dad that she allowed me to share.
And Merry Christmas Jennifer and to all the children out there!
[Playback of the recording]