We all remember singing along to our first 8-track or cassette tape, and many of us carried around our very own plastic cassette recorders as kids. Now, they are used mainly for voice recording or dictating, but cassettes were the dominant form of music recording and playing in the 1970s and 1980s; and today, they have been eclipsed by CDs and MP3s. In little over a century, magnetic tape recording technology was developed and then declined.
Early Recording Technology
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first sound recorder and reproducer, which operated by converting the vibrations made by sound waves into a permanent physical pattern in the form of indentations on tin foil that could be used to regenerate the original waves. He called this the cylinder player or phonograph, and this invention gave rise to all sound recording systems, according to Bryan Dewalt of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Ten years later, Emile Berliner adapted Edison's design to record onto shellac records, an invention known as the gramophone, and twenty years later, Valdemar Poulsen developed the telegraphone, which recorded electrical audio signals from a telephone transmitter as variations in magnetic flux on a length of steel piano wire.
Magnetic Recording
Dewalt writes that the first commercially successful wire recorders were developed in the late 1920s, and they were used as dictators and telephone recorders, while records were most popular for music recording and playing. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, recording on solid steel media such as wire or tape became the dominant form of magnetic recording.
Improvements in Magnetic Tape
In 1933, the Blatterphone was developed in Germany. This large machine recorded on steel tape 3mm wide and was mostly used for radio broadcasting. Later in this decade, German researchers developed a method of coating thin celluloid tape with iron oxide particles, material that is much lighter and more compact than steel. Also, the particles used were more easily magnetized. This invention was called the Magnetophon, and was used in homes, radio stations, and record companies. Dewalt writes that this new development was capable of very high fidelity and low noise performance, and it could record long passages without interruption. Therefore, errors could be corrected and programs assembled through splicing, or joining together different pieces of tape to make one recording.
Improvements in the Recording Industry
In the 1950s, according to Dewalt, recording engineers discovered that by overdubbing and recording multiple tracks, they could assemble the ideal performance without recording an entire ensemble in a single, flawless take. This was a revolution in the music industry that changed album-recording procedures and created a myriad of new possibilities for music, all due to magnetic tape recording technology.
Hardware Improvements
In the same decade, light, compact recorders were developed for mobile news and film crews, but consumer acceptance of the commercially available open-reel recorders and players was limited because they were fairly bulky and complex to operate. Soon, the transistor was developed, which used solid steel components instead of heavy vacuum tubes, making the machine lighter and smaller. Also around this time, manufacturers developed various cassettes and cartridges to simplify tape operation.
Cassette Recorders and Players
The first of these cassettes was the 8-track, which was very popular from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. In 1963, Phillips introduced the "compact cassette," a smaller tape designed for office dictating machines. By 1970, the compact cassette recorder was used widely in private homes and offices, and by recording professionals. Two other developments improved cassette recording and playing in the 1970s: higher quality cassettes that were acceptable for music listening and cassette decks as part of stereo components. In 1980, Sony made the cassette player even smaller, with its portable Walkman, and stereos soon shrank to a portable size with "boom boxes."
Digital Technology and Computers
The first digital tape recorder, which recorded binary bits on tape, was invented in Japan in 1967, according to Dewalt, and digital technology advanced a great deal with the advent of computers in the 1970s. This led to the invention of CDs in 1982, which largely replaced cassettes by the 1990s. In 1999, the first MP3 player was developed, which played music recorded digitally on a computer, and cassettes were relegated to voice recording and dictating only, while digital technology took over the music recording and playing industry.
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