Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of

plastic film Plastic film is a thin continuous polymeric material. Thicker plastic material is often called a "sheet". These thin plastic membranes are used to separate areas or volumes, to hold items, to act as barriers, or as printable surfaces. Plas ...

. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier

magnetic wire recording Wire recording or magnetic wire recording was the first magnetic recording technology, an analog type of audio storage in which a magnetic recording is made on a thin steel wire. The first crude magnetic recorder was invented in 1898 by Va ...

from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic tape could with relative ease record and playback audio, visual, and binary computer data. Magnetic tape revolutionized sound recording and reproduction and

broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

. It allowed radio, which had always been broadcast live, to be recorded for later or repeated airing. Since the early 1950s, magnetic tape has been used with computers to store large quantities of data and is still used for backup purposes. Magnetic tape begins to degrade after 10–20 years and therefore is not an ideal medium for long-term archival storage.

Durability

While good for short-term use, magnetic tape is highly prone to disintegration. Depending on the environment, this process may begin after 10–20 years. Over time, magnetic tape made in the 1970s and 1980s can suffer from a type of deterioration called sticky-shed syndrome. It is caused by

hydrolysis Hydrolysis (; ) is any chemical reaction in which a molecule of water breaks one or more chemical bonds. The term is used broadly for substitution, elimination, and solvation reactions in which water is the nucleophile. Biological hydrolysi ...

of the binder in the tape and can render the tape unusable.

Successors

Since the introduction of magnetic tape, other technologies have been developed that can perform the same functions, and therefore, replace it. Despite this, technological innovation continues. Sony and IBM continue to advance tape capacity.

Uses

Audio

Magnetic tape was invented for recording sound by Fritz Pfleumer in 1928 in Germany. Because of escalating political tensions and the outbreak of World War II, these developments in Germany were largely kept secret. Although the Allies knew from their monitoring of Nazi radio broadcasts that the Germans had some new form of recording technology, its nature was not discovered until the Allies acquired German recording equipment as they invaded Europe at the end of the war. It was only after the war that Americans, particularly Jack Mullin, John Herbert Orr, and Richard H. Ranger, were able to bring this technology out of Germany and develop it into commercially viable formats.

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

, an early adopter of the technology, made a large investment in the tape hardware manufacturer

Ampex Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...

. A wide variety of audiotape recorders and formats have been developed since. Some magnetic tape-based formats include: *

Reel-to-reel Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is plac ...

Fidelipac The Fidelipac, commonly known as a "NAB cartridge" or simply "cart", is a magnetic tape sound recording format, used for radio broadcasting for playback of material over the air such as radio commercials, jingles, station identifications, and ...

Stereo-Pak The Muntz Stereo-Pak, commonly known as the 4- track cartridge, is a magnetic tape sound recording cartridge technology. The Stereo-Pak cartridge was inspired by the Fidelipac 3-track tape cartridge system invented by George Eash in 1954 and ...

* Perforated (sprocketed) film audio magnetic tape (sepmag, perfotape, sound follower tape, magnetic film) *

8-track tape The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, whi ...

* Compact Cassette * Elcaset * RCA tape cartridge *

Mini-Cassette The Mini-Cassette, often written minicassette, is a magnetic tape audio cassette format introduced by Philips in 1967. It is used primarily in dictation machines and was also employed as a data storage for the Philips P2000 home computer. As o ...

Microcassette The Microcassette (often written generically as microcassette) is an audio storage medium, introduced by Olympus in 1969. It has the same width of magnetic tape as the Compact Cassette but in a cassette roughly one quarter the size. By using t ...

Picocassette Picocassette is an audio storage medium introduced by Dictaphone in collaboration with JVC in 1985. The Picocassette was introduced to compete with the Microcassette, introduced by Olympus, and the Mini-Cassette, by Philips. Size It is appr ...

NT (cassette) NT is a digital memo recording system introduced by Sony in 1992, sometimes marketed under the name Scoopman. The NT system was introduced to compete with the Microcassette, introduced by Olympus, and the Mini-Cassette, by Philips Koni ...

* ProDigi * Digital Audio Stationary Head * Digital Audio Tape *

Digital Compact Cassette The Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) is a magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita Electric in late and marketed as the successor to the standard analog Compact Cassette. It was also a direct competitor to Sony' ...

Video

Some magnetic tape-based formats include: *

Quadruplex videotape 2-inch quadruplex videotape (also called 2″ quad video tape or quadraplex) was the first practical and commercially successful analog recording video tape format. It was developed and released for the broadcast television industry in 1956 by ...

* Ampex 2 inch helical VTR * Type A videotape * IVC videotape format *

Type B videotape 1–inch type B VTR (designated Type B by SMPTE) is a reel-to-reel analog recording video tape format developed by the Bosch Fernseh division of Bosch in Germany in 1976. The magnetic tape format became the broadcasting standard in contine ...

* Type C videotape * EIAJ-1 *

U-matic U-matic is an analogue recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as op ...

** UniHi * Video Cassette Recording * Cartrivision * VHS ** VHS-C **

S-VHS , the common initialism for Super VHS, is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer-level video recording. Victor Company of Japan introduced S-VHS in Japan in April 1987, with their JVC-branded HR-S7000 VCR, and in certain oversea ...

*** Digital S *** W-VHS ***

D-VHS D-VHS is a digital video recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for "Data", but JVC renamed the format as "Digital VHS". Released in 1998, it uses the same ...

* Video 2000 * V-Cord * VX (videocassette format) *

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, ...

* Compact Video Cassette *

Betacam Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. Al ...

** Betacam SP ** Digital Betacam ** Betacam SX *** MPEG IMX ** HDCAM *** HDCAM SR *

M (videocassette format) M is the name of a professional analog videocassette format created around 1982 by Matsushita and RCA. Developed as a competitor to Sony's Betacam format, M used the same videocassette (and the same oxide-formulated magnetic tape stock) as V ...

MII (videocassette format) MII is a professional analog recording videocassette format developed by Panasonic in 1986 in competition with Sony's Betacam SP format. It was technically similar to Betacam SP, using metal-formulated tape loaded in the cassette, and util ...

* D-1 (Sony) * DCT (videocassette format) * D-2 (video) *

D-3 (video) D-3 is an uncompressed composite digital video videocassette format invented at NHK and introduced commercially by Panasonic. It was launched in 1991 to compete with Ampex's D-2. D-3 uses half-inch metal particle tape at 83.88 mm/s ( ...

* D5 HD * D6 HDTV VTR *

Video8 The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats. These are the original Video8 (analog recording) format and its improved successor Hi8 ( analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), as well ...

Hi8 The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats. These are the original Video8 ( analog recording) format and its improved successor Hi8 ( analog video and analog audio but with provision for digital audio), as wel ...

* Digital8 * DV **

MiniDV DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...

** DVCAM *** DVCPRO *** DVCPRO50 *** DVCPRO Progressive ***

DVCPRO HD DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...

** HDV * MicroMV

Computer data

Magnetic tape was first used to record computer data in 1951 on the Eckert-Mauchly UNIVAC I. The system's UNISERVO I tape drive used a thin strip of one-half-inch (12.65 mm) wide metal, consisting of nickel-plated bronze (called Vicalloy). The recording density was 100 characters per inch (39.37 characters/cm) on eight tracks. In 2002, Imation received a

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

11.9 million grant from the U.S.

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sc ...

for research into increasing the data capacity of magnetic tape. In 2014, Sony and IBM announced that they had been able to record 148 gigabits per square inch with magnetic tape media developed using a new vacuum thin-film forming technology able to form extremely fine crystal particles, allowing true tape capacity of 185 TB.

Notes

References

External links

History of Tape Recording Technology

The Museum of Obsolete Media
{{Authority control Audiovisual introductions in 1928 Audio storage Computer storage tape media Magnetic devices Sound recording Tape recording German inventions 1928 in Germany 1928 in science