The single-hole cassette, (from German Einloch-Kassette),(German) Sebastian M. Krämer
''Ohrfutter aus der Jackentasche – 50 Jahre Kompaktkassette''
''

Südwestrundfunk Südwestrundfunk (SWR; ''Southwest Broadcasting'') is a regional public broadcasting corporation serving the southwest of Germany , specifically the federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The corporation has main offices ...

2'' – ''Wissen''. Dossier to the audio broadcast of 9 December 2013 was a concept of a high fidelity suitable magnetic tape cartridge or cassette from

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

for

analog recording Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of analog signals which, among many possibilities, allows analog audio for later playback. Analog audio recording began with mechanical systems such as the phonautograph and phonograph. L ...

s. Tape and tape speed were identical to the Compact Cassette.

History

Since 1961, the Dutch company Philips had been working on the development of a hi-fi–compatible cassette in its

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tape recorder factory WIRAG. The Viennese factory had experience with the development and production of

dictation machine A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorder. The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark of the company of the same n ...

s with single-hole cassettes. Based on this, the new cassette was to be created as a high quality tape system for home use. Apart from Philips itself both the

Grundig Grundig (; ) is a German consumer electronics manufacturer owned by the Turkish Arçelik A.Ş., the white goods (major appliance) manufacturer of Turkish conglomerate Koç Holding. The company made domestic appliances and personal-care prod ...

as well as Philips affiliated record companies, the Philips Phonographische Industrie and the

Deutsche Grammophon Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...

(German Gramophone company) were involved in its development. At the same time, a Belgian Philips team developed a two-hole cassette under the name ''Pocket Recorder'' in Eindhoven. The Philips management chose this product and put it on the market as Compact Cassette. Philips informed its partner Grundig late about this decision and in return offered Grundig to participate in the Pocket Recorder. Grundig was not happy about it and left the competitive system. Based on design drawings of the compact cassette Grundig developed the DC-International which was released in 1965. It was taken off the market only two years later. In 1948 the development of the Protona Minifon had started, which also contained both tape rolls inside the cassette.

Technology

The single-hole cassette used the tape of compact cassette 3.81 mm (= 0.15 inch) wide only at a tape speed 1⅞ inch = 4.7625 cm per second, rounded: 4.75 cm/s. To wind the tape back into the cassette, the single-hole cassette got onto its built-in tape reel ring gear with 8-teeth for traction, which represents the single hole. The second winding roll is part of the tape device, whereby the cassette can not be removed until it has been completely rewound. The second tape reel accommodated in the device increases the space required there, but makes the cassette more compact. The drive is a more elaborate design because the first tape end has to be feed from the inserted cassette on the take-up roll in the drive. For the

data backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", ...

these properties were no disadvantages. With a 3⅓ × wide band,

digital recording In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storag ...

and modified traction, the concept of the single-hole cassette has seen yet another renaissance in more than 35 years '' Linear Tape-Open (LTO)''.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Techmoan Matthew "Mat" Taylor, better known by his channel's name Techmoan, is a YouTuber and blogger active since May 2009, featuring consumer tech reviews and retrotech documentaries about technology of historical interest. Apart from reviews and te ...

''DC International & the forgotten audio cassette format war (DC International und der vergessene Krieg der Kassettenformate)''
YouTube, 19 March 2019 (In the credits with the two puppets this episode aims Article 13 of the

Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, formally the Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96 ...

) * (German
Innen und Außenansicht der Einloch-Kassette
von Uwe H. Sültz,

Lünen Lünen is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located north of Dortmund, on both banks of the River Lippe. It is the largest town of the Unna district and part of the Ruhr Area. In 2009 a biogas plant was built to provide elect ...

8 July 2013, retrieved 8 September 2016
(YouTube)
Consumer electronics Philips Pages with unreviewed translations Audio storage Tape recording Austrian inventions Prototypes Discontinued media formats