
The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made widely available after World War II in the late 1940s. A later quadraphonic version of the format was known as Quad 8 or Q8. It followed the similar Stereo-Pak 4-track cartridge. Stereo 8 was created by a consortium led by Bill Lear in 1964 of the Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford, Motorola, and RCA Records. Stereo 8, commonly known as the 8-track cartridge, is a magnetic tape technology for audio storage, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement ("auto-reverse"). Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural 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.

These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. The word cassette is a French word meaning "little box."Ĭompact Cassettes consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetic tape is passed and wound. Between the 1960s and early 2000s, the cassette was one of the three most common formats for prerecorded music, alongside the LP and later the Compact Disc.
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Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. Although it was originally intended as a medium for dictation, improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. LPs, 45s, and 16s are usually made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and hence may be referred to as vinyl records or simply vinyl. Except for the LP and EP (which are acronyms of Long Play and Extended Play respectively), these type designations refer to their rotational speeds in revolutions per minute (RPM). The terms LP record (LP, 33, or 33-1/3 rpm record), EP, 16-2/3 rpm record (16), 45 rpm record (45), and 78 rpm record (78) each refer to specific types of gramophone records. They replaced the phonograph cylinder as the most popular recording medium in the 1900s, and although they were supplanted in popularity in the late 1980s by digital media, they continue to be manufactured and sold as of 2007 Gramophone records were the primary medium used for commercial music reproduction for most of the 20th century. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying soundĪ gramophone record (also phonograph record, or simply record) is an analogue sound recording medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove starting near the periphery and ending near the center of the disc. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer.


Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world. The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the alternative term talking machine was sometimes used. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls. His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokes onto paper tape. Fenby an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the “Electro-Magnetic Phonograph". The original author of the word phonograph was F.B.
