techmoan
patreon
Early Access - RCA Sound Tape
🕑 Added 2016-09-21 22:04:17 +0000 UTC Making this video has been a marathon. It started back when I bought a RCA Cartridge well over a year ago. I then finally sourced a player for the tape.... but that got lost in the post. I got hold of some used cartridges and finally managed to buy another machine that was broken. Hopefully you'll think it's worth the effort in the end.There's one thing I didn't mention in the video because it didn't fit anywhere...but it's been going around my head all the time. I find it interesting how the word Cartridge is now understood to be something that contains games while cassettes are something that have tape in them.
So there's video cassette and compact cassette which are now usually just called tapes... or K7 in some countries (one of my favourite nicknames for a product - if you don't understand why, pronounce it in French). Then on the other side there are all the game system cartridges from Nintendo, Atari, Sega etc.
The RCA sound tape looks like a giant cassette but it was called a cart, just like the 8-track.
Earl Muntz used to capitalise the spelling of his 4-track system as 'CARtridges' and magazines used this way of writing the word for a while when talking about all cartridge systems.
When Philips introduced their compact cassette they chose not to use the term compact cartridge - perhaps it's a Europe thing preferring to use a term that refers to a small box rather than something you put in a gun. Japan were big supporters of the cassette - and when JVC came out with VHS and Sony introduced Betamax they were both referred to as video cassettes rather than video cartridges.
I find it interesting to see how the use and understanding of the meaning of a word can change so much in such a short time. A cartridge is now a solid state device whereas a cassette contains tape.
One other thing that I was wondering about was how much of an impact the lack of licensing fees for using cassettes had in the widespread adoption of the Philips tech. Sony pretty much forced Philips to drop any licensing fees in return for them supporting the format.
Since anyone and everyone could make a cassette machine (and tapes) without having to pay fees, this must have been a big incentive for all these unconnected companies to work at making the tech succeed. Effectively it was a massive open-source collaborative project between many the best electronic companies in the world. So what started off as a dictation system in the early 1960s was developed into an impressively high quality music format by the 1990s.
I just wonder how much Philips made out of it all?
Comments
Carl Pullman
Looks as if you have another absolutely brilliant episode. Unfortunately work has stepped up its Web filter to include sketchy videos. It won't be easy to out wit so until then I'll look forward to starbucks wifi. Cheers and thank you for these high quality episodes Matt!
Alex
Growing up as a shy British schoolboy in the 1970s, I spent two months of the year across the pond in the U.S. with my aunt. I spent much of my time in her basement watching cartoons on TV all morning or playing on my cousins' Atari 2600 console. Along with all those cartoons came my first exposure to informercials, and the unique sound of U.S. advertising speech which probably lasted from the early '50s to the very early '80s. Listening to the voices on that demo tape took me stright back to 1979 New Jersey, and all the weird memories that come with it like worn baseball gloves, screen doors, that cool basement, grape-flavour bubble-gum, crickets chirping at night, and the smell of the ham and pastrami that my uncle would bring home from the deli in his gigantic Mercury fitted with an 8-track cartridge player. And ever since then, I've had a massive soft spot for anything that comes in a cartridge!
RetroGamesAndMore
You rock, thanks for all the hard work you put into your videos
Michael Archambault
Excellent! Love seeing long videos. Thanks!
Thomas Petersen
Great video. Thanks!
Brian Wine Guy
However much everyone sponsors you it's not enough for the time and care you put into these.
Techmoan
I think we all know one of those guys (unfortunately),
David Simmons
There's a chap a work that reminds me of that muppet (boom)... blown away....
Techmoan
Yes it's a shame. I think the same thing goes for Telefunken. Between them and Philips they seemed to invent a lot of the future.
stuart taylor
The worlds first light weight... only 18lbs.... And as you know, tape never wears out.... Marketing lies from the 1960s. Awesome!
Erwin Bierhof
In the Netherlands Philips is (or rather was) pretty famous for being at the forefront of tech, without being able to capitalize on its IP nearly as well as its competitors.
Peter Austin
Terrific. Thank you.
Kadah
"Blown away", this was a good one.
