Ferry Model 1

Description

Immediately
after World War II, Adelaide-born John (Jack to his friends) Ferry put
his wartime experience in radar and electronics to good use by designing
radio sets for Peerless Radio. By the late 1940s, Jack had started his
own small factory in Clapham, an Adelaide suburb, making pick-ups, turntables
and hi-fi amplifiers. Turntable motors were built locally and soon Ferry
was building disk and wire recorders.
In 1950 he produced his first magnetic tape recorder, a full-track mono,
single speed (7½ ips) machine with DC biasing and no fast forward.
The recorder was housed in an aluminium cast housing and as spools were
hard to come by Jack had a die made to mould his own.
The Ferry Model One had a single motor with a figure-eight belt drive
to two clutches for take-up and rewind.
Off-the-shelf record/playback heads were not readily available so the
heads for the model one were hand made from strips of old transformer
“Stalloy” metal with sticky tape for insulation, and 40G enamel
copper wire windings with thin slivers of mica to form the gap between
the pole pieces. The entire head assembly was pressed into an aluminium
casting that was machined with a ¼” groove to guide the tape
past the gap.
Thanks to ex-Ferry employee Neville A. Ellison for the above information