Cassette tape

The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply cassette, is an recording format developed by a team led by at Royal in , Belgium. It was introduced in September 1963 for . It was also a popular data storage medium for early microcomputers. Compact Cassettes can be obtained with existing content as a pre-recorded cassette, or as a fully-recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms are reversible by the user.
==Specifications==
Compact Cassettes contain two miniature spools, between which the magnetically coated, -type plastic film (magnetic tape) is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell which is 4 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches (10 cm × 6.3 cm × 1.3 cm) at its largest dimensions. The tape itself is commonly referred to as "eighth-inch" tape, supposedly 1⁄8 inch (3.17 mm) wide, but it is slightly larger: 0.15 inches (3.81 mm). Two pairs of tracks (four total) or two audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second (pair) when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by flipping the cassette, or by the reversal of tape movement ("auto-reverse") when the mechanism detects that the tape has come to an end.
==History==
Compact cassette technology was originally designed for s, but improvements in led to it supplanting cartridges and tape recordings in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to . The first monaural cassette player designed for use in car dashboards was introduced in 1968. From the early 1970s to the mid-2000s, the cassette became one of the two most common formats for prerecorded music, first alongside the and later the (CD).
===Data recording===
In November 1975, held a symposium in to establish a standardized method of recording data from microcomputers onto readily available audiocassettes. Data was (like a modem) into an audio signal that could be transmitted to the tape recorder. This method became the , also called the Byte standard, which initially operated at 300 , with faster rates being implemented later.The Kansas City Standard by Mark VandeWettering, Brainwagon. 2011-07-22.
===Apple Computer===
The first products from the Apple Computer Company to utilize the cassette tape format were the Apple-1 Cassette Interface and Apple BASIC for the Apple-1 computer, all designed by co-founder Steve Wozniak in 1976.the Apple-1 Cassette Interface Card by SpeedyG, AppleII-box.de / Applefritter. 2013-04. The cassette interface transmitted data to and from the recorder at the rate of 1200 baud.Peripherals by Achim Baqué, Apple-1 Registry. 2018-03-18. Apple recommended or other premium tape recorders at or above the $40 price point for reliable data storage.Apple-1 Cassette Interface manual (PDF) by the Apple Computer Company, Bitsavers.org. 1976. The Panasonic model available at the time was the RQ-309DS.Peripherals by Achim Baqué, Apple-1 Registry. 2018-03-18.
The Apple II was released in June 1977 with built-in cassette inputs and outputs.Apple II Cassette Interface by Krest, 2005-08-17. Cassettes were a popular software delivery medium for Apple II series computers through 1982.Antoine's collection of Apple cassettes by Antoine Vignau, Brutal Deluxe Software. 2020-11-24. However, Wozniak's own development of the Disk II drive led to cassettes being replaced by floppy disks as Apple's primary data storage format. The Apple IIc was introduced in 1984 without a cassette interface.Apple IIc (//c), MCbx Old Computer Collection. Accessed 2021-03-13.
==References==
==External links==
*Apple cassettes tapes: Apple Computer, Inc. at Brutal Deluxe Software
*Apple cassettes by Paul Hagstrom at Yesterbits (2013-06-18)
*Project C-90 an ultimate audiotape guide
*Tapedeck.org analog audio tape cassette nostalgia
*Compact Cassette at Audiotools
*Compact Cassette at Wikimedia Commons
* at Wikipedia
Category:Drive formats