The First Mix Tape

Hitler.

Plato

No, seriously. Tape was invented to stop him getting bombed whilst making speeches, so the first mixtape was probably a compilation of his evil tracts.

That's what I love about tape - the two people we have to thank for it are Hitler and Bing Crosby.

Also (semi-seriously), Plato was responsible for assembling the lectures of his teacher Socrates into the forms that we have them in now, and one can assume that he fooled with the order, organized them according to theme, made sure to include things that he really wanted to turn others on to, and sequenced them in a way that would grab attention -- in short, things that you do in a good mix tape.

so having cleared up hitler and plato's involvement,what part did bing crosby play?

He served in Europe in WW2, and heard about the medium. When he was gaining popularity in the US later on he wanted a format that he could sell at his shows and basically popularised the cassette.

In around 1946 and 1947, Bing was recording his show onto 16-inch records and editing them by copying from two players to a lathe, much like today's DJs mix their records live. Sometimes they wanted edits so close together that it just wasn't possible to cue the discs quickly enough, so they ended up with multiple generations of copying, further degrading the sound quality with each generation.

For the 1947-48 season of The Crosby Show, Crosby's staff compared the new tape recorder (brought back from Germany in WWII) with their disc systems. They found that the flexibility of being able to edit tape by cut-and-splice techniques far better than editing on disc. The original German Magnetophon machines were copied and improved upon by Ampex, and the era of analog tape recording truly began.

Bing introduced the
tape machine to Les Paul and
overdubs were born

Guitars you plug in
was his other precious gift
to the ones who rock

To the Plato lover above, have you entertained the speculation that Plato was in fact creating a Socrates and using his dialogue to put forth philosophy he could then discuss and comment on as Plato. There is a popular theory that there was no Socrates beyond the character Plato created ... and I wish I knew who made tape relevent ... I'm sure it had a doldrum application before it was the harbinger of beauty.

A different but related question: what about the first mixtape YOU made

a) For yourself - how old were you, what was its theme, what did you call it?

b) For someone else - who were they, what was it, why'd you make it (was there some special reason to, or did you just want to share some good tunes), and do you still talk to them now?

(Having asked all this, I have to admit I tried to answer the questions myself and can't remember! At least, not without scrounging around in some dusty boxes.)