Nagra is part of the Swiss-owned Kudelsky Group, which started with the design and manufacture of precision audio players/recorders, and today is mainly dedicated to security software. It has been producing high quality products since 1951. It was founded by Stefan Kudelski, a Pole who emigrated to Switzerland during WWII.

Nagra’s meticulous attention to audio quality made it a standard in the professional audio industry, prestigious news media and Hollywood. In fact, Nagra products even made it to the moon aboard the NASA Apollo expeditions. The brand’s reputation was so impressive that in 1961, the Kennedy administration and Whitehouse enlisted Nagra’s help to design a small portable recorder with extended recording range. The resulting mini portable recorder, the Nagra SN (also known as the “série noire” or black series), was a revolutionary product for its time, and its high quality made it a highly coveted object among Soviet spies, particularly secret agents of the East German Ministry of State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit), also known as the “Stasi”. The Stasi even managed to get hold of several units that were stolen from the CIA.

The Nagra SN was designed to record only in monaural because it was intended primarily for voice recordings. To enhance its performance, the SN came with several small peripherals, including portable speakers and small microphones. The recorder also featured a unique and stylish watch with a built-in hidden microphone, which allowed the user to get close to the person recording without being noticed. Although very little information is known about this watch, it is believed that it was also manufactured in Switzerland.

Today, the Nagra SN is highly sought after by hi-fi audio enthusiasts due to its remarkable past, unique features and design. In the early 1970s, it even went on sale in the mainstream market as part of the NS ST (Stereo) series. The Nagra SN also appeared in the 2018 movie “Mission Impossible: Fallout” In the opening moments of the movie, it appears the Nagra NS transforms into a sophisticated video projector that features biometric identification with blood and is camouflaged inside a book from Homer’s Odyssey. When the message finishes playing, the Nagra self-destructs in seconds, paying homage to the spy culture of the Cold War era.

Download this 3d proyect here: https://bit.ly/NagraNS