My first experience with multitrack recording was during my high school years. Our family had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and we all had a lot of fun with it.
I believe I was the only one to use the multitrack function. There was not a lot to it, but I could record one track, then press "PLAY" and "RECORD" simultaneously to overdub a second track. I would use it to record two backup tracks and then play the lead part live. It was great for developing my first unsophisticated compositions.
Years later I bought a four-track tape-based system. At the request of our mother, my siblings and I wrote and recorded a tribute in honor of our father's retirement. The featured cut on the resulting album involved twenty different musicians.
With bounce (a.k.a. ping-pong) recording, multiple tracks could be combined onto a separate track and then freed up. For example, I could record drums, bass, and guitar onto tracks 1, 2, & 3, then mix them down to track 4. Next, I could record piano and flute onto tracks 1 & 2 and bounce them to track 3. Then I could still add two tracks containing vocals.
Nowadays of course everything is digital. My first digital multitracker was purchased from a "garage sale" of a major music dealer. It was a $1300 machine, but since it was a display model, they only wanted $800 for it. I asked to see the user manual, but since they couldn't find one, they knocked the price down to $300. I snatched it up and found the manual on-line for $30.
My next system was fairly minimal, but it had eight tracks, a click track (metronome) function, simulation of various microphones and guitar amps, and mutiple reverb effects.
Utilizing the eight tracks consisted of recording directly onto tracks 1-4, then mixing them onto 5 & 6, followed by recording onto 1-4 again, and finally mixing 1-6 to a stereo image on tracks 7 & 8, because the final master could only be made from those two.
When that machine bit the dirt after many years of faithful service, I replaced it with this model. Eight tracks again, but now I can record directly onto any of them. Then any of them can bounced onto any one (or two), and the destination track can even be one of the source tracks. So if my calculations are correct, I can record (8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1=) 36 separate parts. So I am in the process of writing my first symphony. Working title: Mr. Russler's Opus.
The problem with the new technology is it still does not give me any musical talent. Too bad.
A self-taught guitarist named Lester William Polsfuss had an early career in country music but was heavily influenced by jazz. He became quite innovative in his playing style and had success as a composer and performer. He also helped develop a new concept: solid-body electric guitars.
More pertinent to the current topic, he experimented extensively with multitrack recording, so much so that some mistakenly say that he "invented" multitracking. In any case, the countless hours he spent in his homemade studio contributed much to the art and science of multitrack recording.
By the way, for his stage name, he used only the initial syllables of his first and last names. So you know him as Les Paul.