Birthday Compact Cassette

At the end of August, a funny holiday is celebrated - the birthday of the compact cassette This medium of sound information has replaced vinyl records and films on reels Cassette recorders became an alternative to bulky gramophones and players that could not be taken on the road The first cassette tape released by Philips was presented in 1963 at an industrial exhibition in Berlin The audio carrier was distinguished by its affordable price and ease of use The presentation date of the new product, August 30, is considered the birthday of the compact cassette For ease of use compared to huge reels, music lovers paid for a decrease in sound quality The rotation speed of the cassette is 476 cm per minute, which is 2 times slower than that of the reel The width of the magnetic and later chrome dioxide tape was 38 mm For the reel, this parameter was 635 mm The wider the tape and the higher the rotation speed, the better the sound transmission According to these characteristics, the compact cassette was inferior to its “bigger brother” However, the strict standard of the product (tape speed and number of tracks) guaranteed playback of the recording on tape recorders of any company Some models had a REC button marked with a red circle Such tape recorders gave the user the opportunity to make an audio recording onto a magnetic cassette tape themselves The emergence of a clear carrier of sound information provoked a boom in the market for the production of tape recorders There were 3 types of devices for playing cassettes - stationary, portable and audio players A real breakthrough in the industry was the appearance in July 1979 of the Walkman TPS-L2 stereo player from SONY The new product was distinguished by high quality music playback, had a built-in microphone and an output for two pairs of headphones The largest manufacturers of compact cassettes, which competed fiercely with each other, were Philips and SONY BASF, Agfa, Maxell-Hitachi and TDK did not lag behind them in terms of sales volumes The duration of most audio cassettes was an hour and a half, much less often - 100, 110 and 120 minutes This was due to the fact that the length of music albums in the 70s averaged 40 minutes Later, 2-hour media will appear on the market In the USSR, domestically produced compact cassettes appeared in 1967 They were produced by the Kharkov Radio Plant under the Proton brand The first foreign cassettes became available to ordinary Soviet citizens after the 1980 Olympics Domestic and foreign products were often used to record performances of bards and rock bands, which were held illegally in apartment buildings The cassettes were used to play recordings of the speeches of Iran's political leaders on the eve of the 1979 revolution, and the sermons of the missionaries who served in India In the early 90s of the twentieth century, the first compact discs appeared They have become an inexpensive, convenient and functional alternative to cassettes Music lovers were able to download music from the Internet and listen to them on MP3 players This provoked a decline in sales and the ruin of some audio cassette manufacturers However, the memory of them is still alive, despite the popularity of digital technologies Therefore, on August 30, music lovers of the old school celebrate the birthday of the compact cassette