The wire recorder reminded me of Norman Corwin - the radio playwright - talk about your new media - and his One World Tour. He was given a wire recorder, a small staff and sent on an around the world peace tour in 1946, while the world was cleaning up the rubble of World War II. Needless to say, the glitches and problems with the wire recorder dominated the earlier parts of the story. It was a huge, heavy, awkward, blaky beast, but for someone used to live radio it was magic.
If you ever want to experience some of that old, new media magic, grab a volume of his plays e.g. 13 by Corwin. I got a copy in the 1960s and was inspired to make my own “plays” and “shows” with a cheap Panasonic recorder. When you only have sound to work with, you really think about sound. I’m surprised no one has made a radio app that makes it easy to use things like sound “perspective”, if only to narrate video better. (Of course, on cell phones the audio is worse than the video.)
