The Perfectone Tape Recorder - Text 1
The Perfectone tape recorder was one of the new tools developed in the 1950s used by sound engineers. Like the other Swiss manufacturer, Nagra, Perfectone was one of the first to offer high quality equipment which made it possible to record sound onto magnetic tape no matter where one was. Its case was extremely compact, making it easy to transport. The Type EP 6A model, which began to be marketed in 1959, took the form of a small briefcase measuring 36 cm long by 31 cm wide by 12 cm tall. It weighed 6.2 kg without batteries and 7.2 kg with batteries. It could operate from eight to twelve hours without electricity. As its user’s manual indicated very clearly, this tape recorder could be considered a “sound truck in a suitcase.”[1]
Sound trucks had made it possible to record sound (on film) outside studios for newsreels since 1927. They were used in particular for Fox Movietone News in May 1927 to record sound on film footage of Charles Lindbergh’s take-off for his solo crossing of the Atlantic by airplane. From that moment, synchronized sound recordings outdoors became possible, although they remained complicated. One of the first entirely sound films was John Ford’s short film Napoleon’s Barber. Released in November 1928, this thirty-two-minute comedy produced by Fox was shot outdoors with a Fox newsreel sound truck.[2] In France, some filmmakers used sound trucks regularly, for example Marcel Pagnol. In 1934, Pagnol was able to shoot Angèle out of doors in the remote countryside outside of Marseille with an RCA sound truck (using the Photophone system, of higher quality than Movietone). Pagnol lent this same sound truck to Jean Renoir for the shooting of Toni that same summer.
