Cassette Tapes

Let's rewind about 21,940 days or about 60 years. Its the early 1960s and up until then, the most widespread way of listening to music was through vinyl, a very anti-on-the-go way of listening to music. That was the case until November of 1964 (in America) when a revolutionary piece of technology was released, the cassette tape. The solution to the issue of listening to music on the go as it allowed for a very easy and convenient method of taking your favorite jams with you.

This revolutionary device wasn't invented in America, nor was it first available there either. Before the release in America the cassette tape was invented two years prior in Belgium by the Phillips company, more specifically by a man named Lou Ottens and his team at the company. A year afterwards (August 30th, 1963) was the Philips company released this invention over in Europe to the Berlin Radio Show and then after that in November the next year it finally came to America. 

Why was the cassette tape a revolutionary device? Its because it not only gave people a more mobile way of listening to music, as it was about the size of a of cigarettes, but it also allowed for people to record audio tracks of themselves which revolutionized the album market when pre-recorded music cassettes started to be commercially available. Cassette tapes were coated with magnetic particles that were mixed with a binder and transformed onto wide rolls of  plastic film. The coating was dried and smoother which allowed for sound to be recorded and erased. They had a maximum playtime of 45 minutes per side with two reversable sides that could be erased and rerecorded over. Cassette tape technology, with its three key features, influenced culture, the features allowed young lovers to exchange mixtapes of songs, enabled musicians to record themselves without a record label, and enabled bootlegging, the recording of live concerts for the underground music market. Cassette tapes were so popular that audio cassette players became a standard dashboard features in cars in the 1970s and remained that way for the next 40 years as in 2010 was when the final car to have cassette player as a part of the dashboard was made, it was a Lexus. 

While the cassette tape was invented in 1962 and allowed for music and audio to be more portable with a smaller format, it wasn't until 1966 that the very first cassette player was made. The Norelco Carry-Corder 150 was made by the Philips company and then 13 years later the first Sony Walkman was released to the world. The Walkman was considered the first portable cassette tape player and it only furthered the popularity of cassette tapes. Eventually cassette tapes did die out because of their shortcomings. It could wear out, melt in hot weather and get mangled. 

I personally find cassette tapes to be really interesting, especially when taking a look through my future scope. While I can't go back in time to experience what it was like in the moment, I can take the past to me by purchasing cassette tapes and audio players to see how they work with my own eyes and use them as people would've back then. While I only own one cassette tape, "Trench" album released in 2018 by Twenty-One Pilots, I do borrow some from my relatives who own them and play them on my Sony Walkman. I don't know what version I own but watching the cassette player work and play the tape is always interesting to me, seeing how it works and listening to the audio that comes out.