NAGRA 4.2 is a legendary professional field recorder that became an icon of the film, television, and radio industries. It was produced by the Swiss company Kudelski SA, founded in 1951 by Polish emigrant Stefan Kudelski. The name "Nagra" comes from the Polish word “nagrać” – meaning “to record.”
Its reliability and popularity are confirmed by countless uses even in extreme conditions. For example, during a polar expedition in the 1970s, the NAGRA 4.2 was used to record the sounds of glaciers… and it reportedly worked even at temperatures below -30 °C. The sound of cracking ice was later featured in several BBC documentaries.
NASA also used NAGRA devices (including the 4.2) to record communications during Apollo mission simulations. One unit was reportedly lost during transport and surfaced ten years later at an auction as an “unidentified military recording device.”