The fascinating invention story of audio cassettes
If you are a millennial or even a Gen Z, chances are, you have listened to audio cassettes played on those vintage tape recorders. Then came the age of DVDs and CDs, but that too is long gone now as we prefer to enjoy music on various music streaming platforms like YouTube, Music or Spotify. But does that mean we would simply ignore the good old audio cassettes? Certainly not! Let us trace back the story of their inception.
Before the birth of audio cassettes
The cassettes that you grew up hearing were in the analogue magnetic tape-recording format used for playback and audio recording. They were also known by several other nicknames such as Compact Cassette, Musicassette (MC), tape cassette, cassette tape and most popularly cassette. But how did they come into the picture?
Well, it turns out that in 1935, AEG, a German electronics manufacturer, came up with a reel-to-reel tape recorder called Magnetophon. It was influenced by the 1928 magnetic tape invention by German engineer Fritz Pfleumer. Since these machines were very expensive and often difficult to operate, only professionals in radio stations or recording studios used them. Nevertheless, the magnetic tape-recording technology soon spread worldwide and commercial production of tape recorders became a phenomenon with the later soon entering homes, schools and offices. But the cartridges used inside the tape recorders didn’t last for long. For instance, the reel-to-reel RCA tape cartridge with pre-recorded tapes and stereo, quarter-inch and reversible features, came out in multiple versions. However, it failed to impress as it was too complicated for common people.
Philips launches the world’s first audio cassette
By the early 1960s, tape recorders evolved into playback machines and transistors. Yet the companies failed to create easy-to-use and cost-effective tape cartridges. Seeing this as an opportunity, the owner of Dutch electronics giant Philips named Philips Eindhoven commissioned two teams to design a tape cartridge. The goal was simple: To develop and thinner and narrower tape with easy mechanisms. After two years of trial and error and infinite research, the company’s Vienna team came up with a single hole tape cartridge and called it a cassette, a derivation of the German surname Einloch-Kassette, the lead contributor to the project. Meanwhile, the Belgian team too developed a two-spool (spool is a film made of plastic and polyster with magnetic properties) cartridge, a smaller version of RCA’s previous design.
Guess what Mr. Philips did? He realised both the versions had potential and asked the teams to collaborate. He wanted a double hole, two-spool cartridge in the shape of a cassette. Under the leadership of Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, a year later, the original compact cassette was born. It was launched at the Berlin Radio Show in August 1964 and in the USA in November the same year. Along with the compact cassettes, Philips also sold a machine to record and play the cassettes, called Philips Typ EL 3300, the market’s most upgraded tape recorder model. Within a year, the sales worldwide skyrocketed, and the rest as they say, is history. The audio cassette with its easy to record and handy technology and a lifespan of 30 years, with 60-minute continuous running time, ruled until its close relative DVDs and CDs were born in the late 20th century and its best version was the 8-track tape with re-recordable ability. It also came out in both pre-recorded Musicassette and fully recordable blank cassettes.
Experts suggest that Philips was greatly interested to pioneer the cassettes industry as he wanted to help his dyslexic son learn better at school. In fact, the first ever cassette is believed to have helped slow learners take dictations. Later, the cassette made a market of its own when the idea of mixtapes (recording a list of songs for a loved one) became a global trend in the 1970s and 80s.