About the Company
Mohawk Business Machines Corp. (later Mohawk Electronics Corp.) was an American electronics company based in Brooklyn, New York, active in the 1950s and early 1960s. The company developed and manufactured portable magnetic tape recorders, most famously the Mohawk Midgetape series.
Country: United States 🇺🇸
Primary era of activity: Late 1940s–early 1960s
Main products: Portable tape recorders — especially the Midgetape series
Mohawk advertised itself at the time as one of the first companies to produce battery-powered portable recorders, though that claim was arguably dubious given earlier products by other makers.
Production History & Timeline
Late 1940s — Company Origins
Mohawk began in the late 1940s as Mohawk Business Machines Corp., originally producing electronics such as telephone answering machines and related equipment before focusing on tape.
1955 — First Portable Tape Recorder
1955: Mohawk released the Midgetape 44 (also called BR-1) — a small valve-based magnetic tape recorder that used a cartridge tape format rather than traditional open reels.
It recorded on a 6.35 mm (¼″) tape cartridge at about 4.76 cm/s (≈1⅞ ips).
Designed originally for dictation, but also adopted in covert recording contexts due to its compact size.
These machines are often considered portable tape recorders rather than classic open-reel decks, but they are undeniably part of magnetic tape recording history.
1957–1959 — The Midgetape Series Evolves
Mohawk followed up the original 44 with a series of iterations:
Midgetape 300 (c. 1957) — Early transistorized model replacing the valve design.
Midgetape Chief 400 (c. 1958) — Another solid-state portable recorder, similar format and size.
Midgetape 500 Professional (c. 1959–1961) — A professional-oriented version in the same compact family, with six transistors and support for headphone or amplifier output.
These models maintained the Midgetape cartridge format rather than conventional spooled open reels, making them distinctive in the era’s portable recorder market.
Technology & Market Position
Format & Recording
Cartridge-style magnetic tape rather than 7″ open reels.
Early models were vacuum-tube based (Midgetape 44), later models were solid-state transistor designs.
Tape speed and quality were adequate for dictation, meetings, and portable recording, but not intended to compete with full-sized consumer or professional reel-to-reel machines.
Portability
Compact size and battery operation were key selling points – Mohawk emphasized portable audio at a time when most reel-to-reel recorders were bulky.
Uses
Office, dictation, field recording.
Some units (especially early models) were used for covert or surveillance recordings due to their small size, including reported use by intelligence services.
Market Context
Mohawk’s products sat in the portable recorder niche rather than the mainstream hi-fi reel-to-reel market dominated by larger companies.
Their formats never displaced open-reel systems in audio fidelity or broad consumer adoption.
Decline & Legacy
Mohawk’s tape recorder business was short-lived.
Facing rapid evolution of portable audio technology and intense competition, the company only produced its tape products into the early 1960s.
Afterward, Mohawk went bankrupt by the mid-1960s in ongoing technology and market shifts.
Today, Midgetape recorders are collectible curiosities, interesting more for their early portable tape recorder role than as mainstream reel-to-reel decks.