Portable Tape Recorder With the widespread use of tape, sound recording was improving in fidelity and ease of use. The tape recording devices were, as the phonographs that preceded them, fixed device. They were typically setup in a room or studio and people would approach them, and their attached microphons to create a recording. and . This prevented a lot of everyday experience from being recorded, most occurrences outside of planned studio events escaped discs and tape. One man would change the physically fixed nature of sound recording and challenge existing practices. Tony Schwartz invented the portable tape recorder in 1945. He built it himself, from found and purchased items. He started with a standard tape recorder, remounting the VU meter to the top of the case. Next he attached a battery and mounted a fly-ywheel taken from an apartment firehose mount. The firehose flywheel was used to maintain a constant tape speed. With a microphone in his hand, or sometimes attached to his wrist, Schwartz would record the sounds of everyday life on the street. Moving the art of sound recording outside of the cramped quarters of a studio or sound lab. Ironically Schwartz suffers from a condition that prevents him from leaving the immediate vicinity of his house. Despite this set back, he became perhaps the greatest ethnomusicologist of the 21st century and amassed a library of sound recordings now under the auspices of the Library of Congress of the United States.