 |
| Nagra III + Sela mixer |
Stefan Kudelski the creator of professional portable audio recorders NAGRA was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1929. Both of his parents had engineering background. His father’s field of work was in the chemical industry and mother was an anthropologist. In 1939 the family fled Poland to escape German Nazi invasion. They travelled through Romania and Hungary to settle in South France where Stefan continued his education and his father took an active part in French Resistance as an officer. The resistance network fell in 1943 and the Kudelski family escaped to Switzerland. For the contributions and their activities during this period both parents were honoured with French Croix de Guerre.
In Switzerland Stefan Kudelski enrolled in studies at the Ecole Florimont in Geneva and quickly become interested in technology and electronics. He built a small laboratory at home and experimented with high frequency oscillators generating extra high tension. Later invented an instrument for measuring the accuracy of watches. Although no commercial interest was made, he took out several patents of his ideas. From 1948 he studied physics and engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique de I’Universite de Lausanne and at the same time started experimenting with magnetic recording. In 1950 he made the first prototype of a tape recorder with spring motor and miniature tubes and called it NAGRA. The word ‘NAGRA’ comes from Stefan Kudelski’s mother tongue (Polish) and stands for "will record".
 |
| Nagra III |
A year later Kudelski’s NAGRA participated in The First International amateur Recording Contest in Lausanne and won the first price. The sound quality was good enough for the radio studios, but quite poor compared with modern standards. The recorder was constantly perfected and in 1953 ‘NAGRA II’, an improved version with incorporated mechanical filters was released. The movie industry become interested and ‘NAGRA II’ was used during a shooting to the first full length feature film called ‘Black Orpheus’. In 1957 a transistorised version of ‘NAGRA III’, which allowed synchronized recording (camera + tape) was launched and became a technological revelation.
The ‘NAGRA’ recorders continued with the series IV-L, 4.2, IV-S, T-Audio, SN, SNN, SNS, SNST, SNST-R, IV STC, D, V all with the reputation for extreme ruggedness and reliability. NAGRA become the standard sound recording systems used by reporters, radio and film studios from the early sixties until the nineties.
 |
| Nagra recorders series |
Stefan Kudelski received many awards during his career: Academy Awards (Oscars) in 1965, 1977, 1978 and 1990, two entertainment industry awards an ‘Emmy’, Gold Medals from L. Warner, AES (Audio Engineering Society), Lyra and Eurotechnica. In 2008 during the ‘Polish Film Festival in America' (PFFA) Stefan Kudelski received ‘Wings Award’ for his achievements.
‘Wings Award’ – the award to the artists and film professionals of Polish descent for their outstanding contribution to the art of film beyond Poland.
Sources: http://www.filmsoundsweden.se/backspegel/kudelski.html, http://tripatlas.com/Nagra, http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kudelski
photo sources: http://www.nagraaudio.com/pro/pages/informationHistory.php, http://p.g.elec.pagespro-orange.fr/Le%20magnetophone.htm, http://www.adhocsound.be/?page_id=8
No comments:
Post a Comment