Cassette Tapes

       Cassette tapes have been a staple in both personal and professional recordings. For more than two decades, the cassette tape was the primary form of music storage and listening, and became a pillar in the technological progression of audio recording and playback. 

       Before we had cassette tapes as we know them today, reel-to-tape recorders were invented in the year 1935. Like modern cassettes, these used magnetic tape to record audio onto large reels. Unlike the small tape reels we think of in cassettes, these were large and open. These reel-to-tape recorders were relatively effective, and groundbreaking for the time. However, there were a number of downsides to these recorders. Firstly, they were quite large and not at all portable. This meant that all recordings had to be done from a studio or a single location. The primary downside, though, was the fact that they were very expensive. This meant that they were only used by professionals, mostly in the government, military, recording, music, or entertainment industry. For these reasons, tape recorders would not become easily accessible to the public for about three more decades. 

       In 1962, the company Phillips introduced Compact Cassette Tape. This was a cassette we know them today and revolutionized the music recording and relistening industry. These tapes were compact, cheap, and portable. They replaced the vinyl record as the standard recording means for music in the 1970s and dominated the scene until the mid-1990s when they were surpassed by the compact disk or CD. 

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