About the Company
Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company is historically important in pre‑plastic tape recording, but it did not manufacture consumer reel‑to‑reel recorders in the later acetate/polyester‑tape era the way Akai, Revox, or TEAC did.
From Blattnerphone to Marconi‑Stille
In the early 1930s, Marconi purchased UK rights to Kurt Stille’s steel‑tape technology (the Blattnerphone) and, with BBC Research, developed the Marconi‑Stille steel‑tape recorder.
These massive machines used 3 mm wide steel tape running at about 1.5 m/s (roughly 60 ips), giving roughly half‑hour programme capacity on a reel weighing tens of kilograms.
Broadcast use and timeframe
The BBC brought Marconi‑Stille recorders into service around 1932–1935 for time‑shifting and programme recording, despite their noise, danger (razor‑sharp steel tape), and handling difficulties.
Variants of these machines remained in broadcast use (BBC, ABC in Australia, CBC in Canada) into the 1940s, until they were displaced by direct‑cut discs and then plastic‑tape Magnetophons and their descendants.
Technology characteristics
Marconi‑Stille recorders were single‑channel, steel‑tape machines with multiple motors and tape reservoirs to stabilize speed and allow fast start/rewind, a major operational improvement over earlier wire and steel‑tape systems.
Frequency response was limited (on the order of 100 Hz–6 kHz) and background hiss significant, but they nonetheless enabled reliable, replayable broadcast recordings for the first time in British radio.
No later plastic‑tape consumer line
Once plastic‑based oxide tape and machines like AEG’s Magnetophon defined the modern reel‑to‑reel format in the mid‑1930s and, post‑war, Ampex and others industrialized it, Marconi did not develop a recognizable line of quarter‑inch consumer or studio open‑reel decks.
Modern brand directories treat “Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company” mainly in the context of these 1930s steel‑tape broadcast machines, not as a post‑war reel‑to‑reel brand with model ladders and hi‑fi home decks.
Historical role in RTR history
Marconi Wireless is best viewed as a pioneering broadcast tape‑recorder developer (via the Marconi‑Stille steel‑tape machines) that helped bridge the gap between wire/steel systems and later oxide‑tape Magnetophons, rather than as a participant in the classic consumer reel‑to‑reel market.
Its legacy in magnetic recording history lies in engineering collaboration with the BBC and in operationalizing early tape recording for broadcasting, not in the kind of reel‑to‑reel product families familiar to today’s audio collectors.