Who invented cassette tape technology?
2566447#9
It is a widely accepted fact by now that the invention of the recordable cassette by the Philips Corporation and the commercial cassette distribution network in the Tel Aviv train station had a large impact on the popularity of Mediterranean Israeli music. Cassettes allowed the Mizrahi population create and distribute their own music within their communities. They also allowed for more musical integration. One could have Umm Kulthum and a neighbor who is an emerging singer.
Cassette tapes were a predominant factor in the growth of Mediterranean Israeli music in the 1970s. After first being a favorite at community celebrations, such as weddings and birthdays, the recording of one particular wedding party became a desired commodity in the Mizrahi ma'abarot ("transit camp"). These cassettes are what caused ethnomusicologist Amy Horowitz to start researching this blossoming new music style.
Mizrahi music
65880#64
The Compact Cassette originally was intended for use in dictation machines. In this capacity, some later-model cassette-based dictation machines could also run the tape at half speed (⁄ in/s) as playback quality was not critical. The cassette soon became a popular medium for distributing prerecorded music—initially through The Philips Record Company (and subsidiary labels Mercury and Philips in the U.S.). As of 2009, one still finds cassettes used for a variety of purposes, such as journalism, oral history, meeting and interview transcripts, audio-books, and so on. Police are still big buyers of cassette tapes, as some lawyers "don't trust digital technology for interviews". However, they are starting to give way to Compact Discs and more "compact" digital storage media. Prerecorded cassettes were also employed as a way of providing chemotherapy information to recently diagnosed cancer patients as studies found anxiety and fear often gets in the way of the information processing.
Cassette tape
33809#2
Magnetic cassette technology was developed in 1963 by the Dutch electronics firm Philips. In the late 1960s, the introduction of prerecorded cassette tapes made it possible to listen to tapes of music on car stereos, though vinyl remained the most popular format for home listening.
Walkman
65880#3
In 1935, decades before the introduction of the Compact Cassette, AEG released the first reel-to-reel tape recorder (in German: "Tonbandgerät"), with the commercial name "Magnetophon". It was based on the invention of the magnetic tape (1928) by Fritz Pfleumer, which used similar technology but with open reels (for which the tape was manufactured by BASF). These instruments were very expensive and relatively difficult to use and were therefore used mostly by professionals in radio stations and recording studios.
Cassette tape
18934994#2
Homemade mix tapes became common in the 1980s. Although the compact audio cassette by Philips appeared at the 1963 Berlin Radio Show, the sound quality of cassettes was not good enough to be seriously considered for music recording until further advances in tape formulations, including the advent of chrome and metal tape. Before the introduction of the audio cassette, the creation of a pop music compilation required specialized or cumbersome equipment, such as a reel-to-reel or 8 track recorder, that was often inaccessible to the casual music fan. As cassette tapes and recorders grew in popularity and portability, these technological hurdles were lowered to the point where the only resources required to create a mix were a handful of cassettes and a cassette recorder connected to a source of pre-recorded music, such as a radio or LP player. The 8-track tape cartridge was more popular for music recording during much of the 1960s, as the cassette was originally only mono and intended for vocal recordings only, such as in office dictation machines. But improvements in fidelity finally allowed the cassette to become a major player. The ready availability of the cassette and higher quality home recording decks to serve the casual home user allowed the cassette to become the dominant tape format, to the point that the 8 track tape nearly disappeared shortly after the turn of the 1980s. The growth of the mixtape was also encouraged by improved quality and increased popularity of audio cassette players in car entertainment systems, and by the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979.
Mixtape
28748742#9
The result was a slew of commercial and fundamental results, including the cassette tape in 1962, Plumbicon camera tube and the Video Long Play disc, which was the technological basis for the 1980 compact disc. Results were also achieved in the area of integrated circuitry: Else Kooi invented the LOCOS technology and Kees Hart and Arie Slob developed the I²L (Integrated Injection Logic) in the early 1970s.
Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium
1437235#9
Though spoken recordings were popular in 33⅓ vinyl record format for schools and libraries into the early 1970s, the beginning of the modern retail market for audiobooks can be traced to the wide adoption of cassette tapes during the 1970s. Cassette tapes were invented in 1963 and a few libraries, such as the Library of Congress, began distributing books on cassette by 1969. However, during the 1970s, a number of technological innovations allowed the cassette tape wider usage in libraries and also spawned the creation of new commercial audiobook market. These innovations included the introduction of small and cheap portable players such as the Walkman, and the widespread use of cassette decks in cars, particularly imported Japanese models which flooded the market during the multiple energy crises of the decade.
Audiobook
65880#1
The compact cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. The first cassette player (although mono) designed for use in car dashboards was introduced in 1968. Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s, the cassette was one of the two most common formats for prerecorded music, first alongside the LP record and later the compact disc (CD).
Cassette tape
4556078#6
The third wave of development in audio recording began in 1945, when the allied nations gained access to a new German invention - magnetic tape recording. The technology was invented in the 1930s, but remained restricted to Germany (where it was widely used in broadcasting) until the end of World War II. Magnetic tape provided another dramatic leap in audio fidelity — indeed, Allied observers first became aware of the existence of the new technology because they noticed that the audio quality of obviously pre-recorded programs was practically indistinguishable from live broadcasts. From 1950 onwards, magnetic tape quickly became the standard medium of audio master recording in the radio and music industries, and led to the development of the first hi-fi stereo recordings for the domestic market, the development of multi-track tape recording for music, and the demise of the disc as the primary mastering medium for sound. Magnetic tape also brought about a radical reshaping of the recording process — it made possible recordings of far longer duration and much higher fidelity than ever before, and it offered recording engineers the same exceptional plasticity that film gave to cinema editors — sounds captured on tape could now easily be manipulated sonically, edited, and combined in ways that were simply impossible with disc recordings. These experiments reached an early peak in the 1950s with the recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford, who pioneered the use of tape editing and "multi-tracking" to create large 'virtual' ensembles of voices and instruments, constructed entirely from multiple taped recordings of their own voices and instruments. Magnetic tape fueled a rapid and radical expansion in the sophistication of popular music and other genres, allowing composers, producers, engineers and performers to realize previously unattainable levels of complexity. Other concurrent advances in audio technology led to the introduction of a range of new consumer audio formats and devices, on both disc and tape, including the development full-frequency-range disc reproduction, the change from shellac to polyvinyl plastic for disc manufacture, the invention of the 33rpm, 12-inch long-playing (LP) disc and the 45rpm 7-inch "single", the introduction of domestic and professional portable tape recorders (which enabled high-fidelity recordings of live performances), the popular 4-track cartridge and compact cassette formats, and even the world's first "sampling keyboards" - the pioneering tape-based keyboard instrument the Chamberlin, and its more famous successor, the Mellotron.
History of sound recording
18559508#1
Stelzer grew up on Long Island, NY and moved to Boca Raton, FL when he was 12 years old. He began making music using cassette tapes and metal percussion while he was a teenager in high school. After attempting unsuccessfully to learn how to play convention instruments, he decided instead to focus almost exclusively on cassette tapes as the source of his music: Over the years Stelzer put a glut of instruments (tuba, trombone, trumpet, bass guitar, drums) in the backseat, opting for tapes in the deck. "I think tapes are simply the language that I speak. When I think about music ideas, I only and always think of them in terms of how they’d be articulated via cassette tapes.” – 2016 interview with Tabs Out Podcast Stelzer's first widely-available album, "Stone Blind", was a CD on his own Intransitive Recordings label in 1997. The album consisted of three related pieces, each roughly 20 minutes long and made out of crudely spliced cassette tapes assembled with a two-cassette stereo component. Each track was recorded in a single take to one side of a 40-minute tape; a piece ended when the tape ran out.
Howard Stelzer