The IFA or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (International radio exhibition Berlin, a.k.a. 'Berlin Radio Show') is one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany. Between 1924 and 1939 it was an annual event, but from 1950 it was held every other year until 2005. Since then it has become an annual event again, held in September. Today it is one of world's leading trade shows for consumer electronics and home appliances.
Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipments intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications, and home-office activities. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers, to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these would be considered brown goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. In the 2010s, this distinction is not always present in large big box consumer electronics stores, such as Best Buy, which sell both entertainment, communication, and home office devices and kitchen appliances such as refrigerators.
Home appliances, also known as domestic appliances, are electrical machines which help in household functions, such as cooking, cleaning or food preservation.
It offers the opportunity to exhibitors to present their latest products and developments to the general public. As a result of daily reporting in almost all the German media, the radio exhibition achieves a large spreading of the information – and advertising messages and has also become international. In the course of its history, a large number of world innovations were first seen at the exhibition.[1]
As of 2015[update] IFA is “Europe’s biggest tech show”.[2] 245,000 visitors and 1,645 exhibitors attended IFA 2015.[3]
German physicist and inventor Manfred von Ardenne gave a public demonstration of a television system using a cathode ray tube for both transmission (using flying-spot image scans, not a camera) and reception, at the 1931 show.[4]
Manfred von Ardenne was a German researcher and applied physicist and inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology. From 1928 to 1945, he directed his private research laboratory Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik. For ten years after World War II, he worked in the Soviet Union on their atomic bomb project and was awarded a Stalin Prize. Upon his return to the then East Germany, he started another private laboratory, Forschungsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne.
In 1933 The Volksempfänger (VE 301 W),[5] a Nazi-sponsored radio receiver design, was introduced. Ordered by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, designed by Otto Griessing, sold by Gustav Seibt, it was presented at the tenth Berliner Funkausstellung on 18 August 1933,[6] its price fixed at 76 Reichsmark (RM). 100,000 units were sold during the exhibition.
The Volksempfänger was a range of radio receivers developed by engineer Otto Griessing at the request of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. He was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted associates, and was known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism, which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust.
Otto Griessing was a German electronics engineer. He became known following his design of the so-called Volksempfänger, one of the sets on display at the 10th German Radio Show in August 1933. He designed the receiver at the request of Joseph Goebbels, the German Propaganda Minister. More Volksempfängers were manufactured in Germany between 1933 and 1945 than any other model. The budget-priced Deutsche Kleinempfänger was also widely known as the Volksempfänger.
In 1938 the DKE 38 (Deutscher Kleinempfänger 38, i.e. German miniature receiver 1938) followed, the price fixed at 35 RM.
Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded as the Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität in 1883 in Berlin by Emil Rathenau. After World War II its headquarters was relocated to Frankfurt am Main.
Emil Moritz Rathenau was a German entrepreneur, industrialist, mechanical engineer. He was a leading figure in the early European electrical industry.
An audio tape recorder, tape deck, or tape machine is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present-day form, it records a fluctuating signal by moving the tape across a tape head that polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the audio signal. Tape-recording devices include the reel-to-reel tape deck and the cassette deck, which uses a cassette for storage.
In 1939 the exhibition was called Grosse Deutsche Funk- und Fernseh-Ausstellung (Great German Radio and Television Exhibition). The Einheits-Fernseh-Empfänger E1, a TV set designed to be affordable for everybody, was introduced. Plans for large-scale manufacture were thwarted by the outbreak of World War II. Color TV was also introduced (a prototype), based on an invention by Werner Flechsig (cf. shadow mask).
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders respectively. A device that stores computer data on magnetic tape is known as a tape drive.
The Compact Cassette, Compact Audio Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the cassette tape or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. It was developed by Philips in Hasselt, Belgium, and released in 1962. Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms are reversible by the user.
A cassette deck is a type of tape machine for playing and recording audio cassettes. The consumer electronics industry formerly used the term deck to distinguish them from a tape recorder, the "deck" being part of a stereo component system, while a "tape recorder" was more portable and usually had a self-contained power amplifier.
A boombox is a transistorized portable music player featuring one or two cassette tape recorder/players and AM/FM radio, generally with a carrying handle. Beginning in the mid 1980s, a CD player was often included. Sound is delivered through an amplifier and two or more integrated loudspeakers. A boombox is a device typically capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music. Many models are also capable of recording onto cassette tapes from radio and other sources. In the 1990s, some boomboxes were available with minidisc recorders and players. Designed for portability, boomboxes can be powered by batteries as well as by line current. The boombox was introduced to the American market during the late 1970s. The desire for louder and heavier bass led to bigger and heavier boxes; by the 1980s, some boomboxes had reached the size of a suitcase. Some larger boomboxes even contained vertically mounted record turntables. Most boomboxes were battery-operated, leading to extremely heavy, bulky boxes.
Video 2000 is a consumer videocassette system and analogue recording standard developed by Philips and Grundig to compete with JVC's VHS and Sony's Betamax video technologies. Designed for the PAL colour television standard, distribution of Video 2000 products began in 1979 exclusively in Europe, South Africa and Argentina and ended in 1988.
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording is the form of magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording medium is held on a reel that is not in a cassette. In use, the supply reel containing the tape is mounted on a spindle; the end of the tape is manually pulled out of the reel, threaded through mechanical guides and a tape head assembly, and attached by friction to the hub of the second, initially empty takeup reel.
A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material on magnetic tape. The early VTRs are open-reel devices which record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide tape. They were used in television studios, serving as a replacement for motion picture film stock and making recording for television applications cheaper and quicker. Beginning in 1963, videotape machines made instant replay during televised sporting events possible. Improved formats, in which the tape was contained inside a videocassette, were introduced around 1969; the machines which play them are called videocassette recorders. Agreement by Japanese manufacturers on a common standard recording format, so cassettes recorded on one manufacturer's machine would play on another's, made a consumer market possible, and the first consumer videocassette recorder was introduced by Sony in 1971.
Telefunken was a German radio and television apparatus company, founded in Berlin in 1903, as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG).
John Thomas "Jack" Mullin was an American pioneer in the field of magnetic tape sound recording and made significant contributions to many other related fields. From his days at Santa Clara University to his death, he displayed a deep appreciation for classical music and an aptitude for electronics and engineering. When he died in 1999, he was buried with a rosary and a reel of magnetic tape. A 2006 documentary movie, Sound Man: WWII to MP3, was made about his life and contributions to sound recording.
The history of sound recording - which has progressed in waves, driven by the invention and commercial introduction of new technologies — can be roughly divided into four main periods:
The Fernsehsender "Paul Nipkow" in Berlin, Germany, was the first public television station in the world. Carrying programming from Deutscher Fernseh-Rundfunk, it was on the air from March 22, 1935, until it was shut down in 1944. The station was named after Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, the inventor of the Nipkow disk.
Fritz Pfleumer was a German-Austrian engineer who invented magnetic tape for recording sound.
Magnetophon was the brand or model name of the pioneering reel-to-reel tape recorder developed by engineers of the German electronics company AEG in the 1930s, based on the magnetic tape invention by Fritz Pfleumer. AEG created the world's first practical tape recorder, the K1, first demonstrated in Germany in 1935 at the Berlin Radio Show.
The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG) was a national network of German regional public radio and television broadcasting companies active from 1925 until 1945. RRG's broadcasts were receivable in all parts of the country and were used extensively for Nazi propaganda after 1933.
The following timeline tables list the discoveries and inventions in the history of electrical and electronic engineering.
The single-hole cassette,, was a concept of a high fidelity suitable magnetic tape cartridge or cassette from Philips for analog recording of private end customers. Tape and tape speed were identical with the Compact Cassette which received the privilege.
DC-International is a tape cassette format developed by Grundig and marketed in 1965. DC is the abbreviation of "Double Cassette", as the cassette contained two reels; International was intended to indicate that, from the beginning, several companies around the world supported the format with suitable tape cassette tape recorders, recorded music cassettes and blank cassettes. Since DC-International did not compete effectively against the similar Compact Cassette, it was discontinued in 1967.
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