Audiocassette

Audiocassette

In 1963 the Philips Company introduced the audiocassette, a device that used magnetic tape to record and replay sound. This convenient form of recording was developed to offer a simple, cost effective alternative to its forerunner, audiotape. Magnetic recording was originally introduced in the form of audiotape in 1929 by Fritz Pfleumer, a German engineer. Prior to the use of audiotape, sound was recorded and stored on records made of wax or vinyl, which proved to be a cumbersome and damage-prone system.

In 1935, a German electronics firm, AEG, began widely marketing a record/playback device that used audiotape. Although the electronics industry refined the clarity and range of AEG's machine, its open-reel format proved to be inconvenient and complicated, since the user had to thread the tape through the machine and onto a take-up reel to record or play back. The technology was invaluable for business use, but because of the complexities of the system, it failed to spread into extensive personal use until the introduction of the audiocassette.

The audiocassette solved many of the problems presented by the reel-to-reel system. For example, instead of threading the tape, the user simply inserted a cassette into the tape player and pressed a button to record or produce the sound. The new format also reduced the time and effort needed to mount, search, advance, and rewind a tape. In addition, the cassette could be stopped and ejected from the machine at any point in its cycle and its hard plastic shell protected the tape from damage.

The introduction of the audiocassette was part of a series of interrelated developments within the field of sound recording. Technological innovations created highly dynamic sound reproduction capabilities, as well as an increase in the storage capacity of the magnetic tape itself. Through a significant reduction in width and running time, and the ability to record on both sides of the tape, the recording capacity of the cassettes more than doubled that of audiotape. The popularity of the cassette format was such that within only a few years of its debut, more than sixty companies were manufacturing tapes based on the original Philips design.

In 1966, three years after monophonic cassettes were made available, Philips began marketing stereo cassettes. Perhaps the most significant factor in popularizing the use of the medium was that the convenience and compact size of cassettes allowed the development of smaller, more portable tape players and recorders. With the eventual development of personal cassette players such as the Sony Walkman, anyone could listen to anything they chose anywhere they chose.

Continual improvements in recording technology have provided serious competition for the audiocassette. Digital technologies have made it possible to record, store, and play back sound with greater clarity and integrity. Digital audio tape (DAT) and its recorders, which became widely available in the United States in 1990, and digital compact cassettes (DCC), introduced for consumer use in 1992, provide the amateur audiophile with the ability to make a tape copy that is an exact reproduction of original sounds rather than just an approximation. Using a code of binary numbers (a series of 0s and 1s) rather than the wave pattern used in standard tape technology, digital technology virtually eliminates the deterioration of subsequent copies that is present in the standard analog method.

Despite these digital developments, however, the audiocassette is dying a much slower death than the LP records did in the face of compact discs. In 1992, the Dolby S-type noise reduction audiocassette was introduced. With the right taping equipment, the sound of this type of audiocassette is comparable to digital tape or compact discs. And though sales of music compact discs surpassed those of audiocassettes in 1992, as of 1997, audiocassette players are far more prevalent than compact disc players in cars. It is predicted that while audiocassettes will continue to lose their market share in the music medium, there will be place for them for at least several more years in books on tape. Beginning in 1990, books on tape, an audio recording of a book, usually abridged, were pushed for non-blind consumer use and quickly caught on. Books on tapes remain popular in the late 1990s, and are often used in automobile cassette players and portable cassette players. However, this segment of the market for audiocassettes is also threatened by new technologies including books recorded on compact discs as well as CD-ROM and CD-ROM games. CD-ROM games can feature a level of interactiveness with the text that audiocassettes cannot match.