Tapete, also known as Mark IV cassette, was an
audio cassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Otten ...
format designed for audiobooks developed for the
Royal National Institute for the Blind
The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is a UK charity offering information, support and advice to almost two million people in the UK with sight loss.
History
The RNIB was founded by Thomas Rhodes Armitage, a doctor who had eye ...
.
It was developed by the firm of Clarke & Smith Industries of
Wallington, Hampshire
Wallington is a village in Hampshire, part of the borough of Fareham. It is situated between Portsmouth and Southampton near where the River Wallington enters Portsmouth Harbour.
The name Wallington probably means 'settlement of the Welsh' (or ...
, and could store over twelve hours of speech yet was compact enough to be sent in the post.
It also featured a spoken index track, allowing for rewind and fast forward by section for blind users.
The Tapete was developed for the Mark IV playback system, which was a refined version of the earlier "Mark I" system introduced by the RNIB in 1959.
Prior to introduction of the Mark IV system, cassettes were mailed to 22,000 subscribers.
The format was in "large-scale use" by the RNIB by mid-1969. It was mainly used in Great Britain and a few other Commonwealth countries, with other markets such as the United States and most other European countries opting to maintain disc-based systems for audiobooks.
The only other Western European countries to adopt the system were Switzerland, Spain and Finland.
Clarke & Smith as a company became increasingly reliant on the RNIB contract by the mid-1970s. As early as the 1980s, the RNIB investigated newer, digital formats, and in the later part of the decade it commissioned another company to
reverse engineer
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...
the format. The RNIB began preparing its transition to the
Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) in the late 1990s, pulling its contract at the same time that Frank Clarke, the company's founder, unexpectedly died.
References
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Audio storage
Tape recording