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Notable firsts in vintage technology are a
dustygizmos speciality and this little Teltape Portable Tape Recorder is assured a place
on the website as the leading contender for the title, ‘World’s First Transistor
Tape Recorder’. It is not the sort of thing that’s authenticated by official
bodies and there may well be other claims but until someone can come up with a
commercially produced transistor tape recorder made prior to1958, the honour
belongs to Teltape. You might be forgiven for thinking that it came from one of
the handful of countries that pioneered transistor technology, i.e. the USA,
Japan and the UK, but you would be mistaken. It’s origins are not too
surprising, however, and it hails from the county where the modern magnetic
tape recorder was invented, Germany in the 1930s, or rather Western Germany, as
it was known when the Teltape appeared. 
As well as being the first of its kind it’s
possible it was the inspiration for the hundreds, if not thousands of miniature
tape recorders that were to follow over the next ten years, mainly from Japan.
The distinctive feature is the single motor tape transport system, better known
as a ‘rim-drive mechanism’. Put simply the motor has two elongated spindles – one
a teach end -- mounted on a pivot so that one spindle or the other comes into
contact with a rubber ring on the underside of the tape platters. The right
hand spindle drives the take up reel for Play and Record modes and the other
one, fitted with a brass bush, drives the feed reel. The larger diameter of the
bush means the left hand platter spins faster, in the opposite direction to the
take up reel, for the rewind function. 
It works well enough for lo-fi recording
applications but the two basic flaws are that there is no fast forward function
and the speed at which the tape passes the head changes, as one reel empties
and the other fills up. It’s hardly noticeable when replaying recordings made
on the same machine but tapes made on other recorders can sound a bit odd.
Teltape’s solution was to fit a manual speed control. Small variations in tape
speed are smoothed out by the heavy metal platters and a high quality motor,
which has a speed governor. 
Another feature, later borrowed by Japanese makers of
small cheap tape recorders, is a permanent magnet erase system. Magnetic tape
needs to be erased before a new recording can be made. It’s a standard features
on all tape recorders and more sophisticated machines typically have an extra
tape head, driven by a high frequency oscillator that both erases the previous
recording and ‘biases’ the magnetic particles in the tape in preparation for
the new recording. However, a similar, though much less precise effect can be
achieved by pressing a small permanent magnet against the tape, and flipping it
into position is the job of the small red-topped lever close to the feed reel. 
The rest of the controls are dotted around the
top panel. From left to right they the on/off push-button power switch. In the
middle there’s a two-position toggle switch for selecting record or playback
mode; above that is the lever for tilting the motor (three positions:
Play/Record, Stop and Rewind). And on the far right there’s a rotary control
for adjusting tape speed. There’s also a second ‘fine-tune’ speed adjuster
accessible through a small hole on the underside. In the middle of the top
panel there’s a red indicator lamp that glows and acts as a sort of crude
battery level indicator when the machine is running. 
