185 TB Tape

The headlines read something like "Sony unveils cassette tape that can hold 64,750,000 songs."  The image is a bit comical. Solid state memory has eliminated the need for spinning reels or disks of any kind. In 2012 Linus Torvalds infamously compared Hard drives to Satan, and remarked "Rotating storage is going the way of the dodo."  But just last year Sony unveiled the densest tape storage ever.  More here.

The tape was unveiled at the International Magnetics Conference in Dresden. It holds about 74 times the amount of data of a standard magnetic tape. Modern data tapes hold up to 29.5GB per square inch. This new Sony tape will hold 148GB per square inch. A whole tape will hold 185 TB. For comparison remember that is equal to 3,700 dual-layer Blu-ray discs at 50GB ea. This is clearly designed for long-term, industrial-sized data backups, not Walkmans.. this will be pricey. More here and here.

Prior to this the densest standard data tape is LTO-6. The acronym stands for Linear Tape-Open. The technology originally developed in the late 1990s as more open standards alternative to the existing proprietary magnetic tape formats of that era. HP, IBM and Seagate founded the LTO Consortium to manage and license the not-quite-open LTO standard. First licensed in 2012 you can now buy one for $35. the LTO consortium continues to urge improvements in the standard, but future projects like the LTO-10 standard are only predicted to hold 48TB. I'll just quote the sony press release.

"This newly developed magnetic tape technology uses sputter deposition, a type of vacuum thin film forming technology, to generate multiple layers of crystals with a uniform orientation on a polymer film with thickness of less than 5 micrometers. Until now, when the sputter method was used to deposit a thin film of fine magnetic particles on a polymer film, roughness on the surface of the soft magnetic underlayer caused the orientation of the crystals in the underlayer above it to become non-uniform. This in turn caused non-uniform crystalline orientation and variations in the size of the magnetic particles (grain) in the nano-grained magnetic layer directly above the underlayer, and prevented increases in recording densities. By optimizing sputter conditions and independently developing a soft magnetic underlayer with a smooth interface, Sony has made it possible to minimize disparities in crystalline length and growth. This enabled Sony to create a nano-grained magnetic layer composed of fine magnetic particles with an average size of 7.7 nm."

It's amazing that magnetic tape was invented 87 years ago in Germany by Fritz Pfleumer. This process started with paper tape coated with ferric oxide (Fe2O3.) If that's a stretch, remember that magnetic tape was first used to record computer data in 1951 on the UNIVAC I. That's chronologically closer to Pfleumer than it is to us. Anyway, it's been a full year since the Sony announcement and they have yet to manufacture the tapes.

Copycode

 We have become accustomed to a digital age when all data is forever, and can produce an infinite number of identical copies without loss and without the need for physical media (except the hard drive). In actuality this is very new. For the first century of recorded sound, every copy experienced generational loss. Actually for the first part of that century copies weren't even possible, each individual recording was an original, and it was decades before consumers could make dub audio at all.

As you know the record industry went through a phase trying to prevent the digital age, and has since compromised on futile attempts to just obstruct. I've written before on their attempts to do so with magnetic tape in the 1970s and early 1980s. Some of those efforts revolved around taxation. They made a related  attempt in 1987 by the RIAA to murder DAT tapes. You probably don't even remember DATs.

So the RIAA and related organizations but their weight behind a system created by CBS Labs. They would add an IC chip to the DAT recorder which scans the input signal. It's purpose is to  detect an "anticopy code" and respond by shutting off the record function for 30 seconds. The code consisted of a narrow frequency notch centered at 3840Hz. CBS called this "totally inaudible." The human range of hearing bottoms out around 20 Hz so this was a complete and total lie. 

On February 5, 1987 Senators Al Gore [D] and Pete Wilson [R] went for the gusto. They introduced the DAT bill which would have but that IC chip in every DAT recorder sold in the USA. The bill failed. Even President Regan opposed it. A second bill was proposed and it too failed. As the Clinton campaign ramped up in the Fall of 1991, Gore suddenly lost interest in the unpopular legislation. Over the following decade the DAT was simply replaced with wholly digital recording media. In 2005, Sony announced that its remaining DAT machine models would be discontinued. An era was over. 

Audio Tax!

 This was a big hoopla back in 1986. It all started when the judiciary subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks adopted a plan called S.1739 the Home Audio Recording Act. It was to impose a 5% royalty tax on tape recorders and a 25% royalty tax on dual bay tape recorders. They money was to go to the record industry. It was introduced by Senator Charles Mathias [R] of Baltimore, MD. You can see immediately who that bill is directed at: bootleggers, tape dubbers, and commercial duplication services. It also would impose a $1 tax on each individual blank tape cassette. (That last provision was struck down but the RIAA wanted it back. Aggrieved parties immediately included OTR collectors, retailers, audio technicians, radio groups, and manufacturers.

It was opposed by the ARRC (Audio Recording Rights Coalition) [now HRRC] among many others including then President Regan. It's members included 3M, Tandy, Maxell, GE, Sony and many other companies that either made tape or tape decks. Nobody wants to see a tax levied on their goods. Back then the record industry was claiming that they were losing 1.5 Billion per year to illegal taping. That's over 2 billion in today's dollars. But as we know the record biz has a penchant for dramatic overstatement. In more recent times they claimed losses around12.5 billion dollars. It was a number produced by math that usually elicits bursts of laughter when explained in a court of law. While their math is ludicrous, the notion that some loss occurs is inarguable then as it is now. In the book Bootleg! by Clinton Heylin, the author details the three primary debunking arguments the ARRC put forth. More here.

1. The majority of home tapers go on to purchase the album
2. 65% do so to program their own selections (mixtapes)
3. 51% of hoem recordings are made from albums the taper already owns.

Try to remember that this bill was drafted 5 years before the DAT was created and a decade before the CD-R. That this spat was over simple, noisy clunky, consumer-grade cassettes.In 1984 the sale of cassettes out paced that of the LP. Add to that thought that the Supreme Court had only ruled in 1984 that home taping was fair-use. The short version was that the RIAA was smarting from that loss was was trying to get what they wanted via a handout from the government.They didn't get it then, but later on in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 they got some of what they wanted anyway.

Webcor Tape Recorder

This is the user manual for a Webcor Tape Recorder. It covers the use for models 2891, 2892, 2811, and 2812. Models 2891 and 2892 had an AM radio built in. To hear it you have to set the Record-Playback control to Stop. Then switch the monitor on, turn the radio on, then tune the station. It's interesting to note that the instructions actually say "Allow a few seconds for the radio to warm up."  It's been a long time since any manufacturer felt the need to note that capacitors need time to charge.

I've scanned  all 20 pages and made them into a 9MB pdf. 

You can download it

HERE

Oberlin Smith

I wanted to get back to Oberlin Smith. In 1888, Oberlin Smith published an article discussing the possibility of magnetically recorded sound and suggested, as a medium, cotton or silk thread, in which steel dust was suspended. This is an eerily accurate description of later German wire recorders, so his tale bears consideration.

His Electrical World magazine article favored silk or cotton thread over steel wire because he didn't think it would be possible "that it would divide itself up properly into a number of short magnets."  What he probably meant by that that in being contiguous and ferrous, it couldn't magnetize it in small enough physical increments to make for practical playback. he thought that the tiny currents would cancel each other out. He was wrong, but his idea of coating metal powder on a flexible base is how audio tapes, video tapes, and floppy discs are all made. (Sort of odd we still make all of them isn't it?)

Smith did have the sense to patent the idea in September, 1878, but he never built a prototype. So his article only discussed a theory.  While he never made a working model, sources claim he did fabricate a bit of his preferred recording media. He produced a cotton thread which he embedded with steel dust or possibly short clippings of fine wire. It is highly likely he at least attempted to record and playback something prior to publishing but it's impossible to be certain. The IEE raises a similar question in their Smith biography here.
noting that most of his records were later accidentally destroyed.

Smith was born in Cincinnati in 1840, and ran a machine shop in Bridgeton New Jersey with his partner J. B. Webb. Some sources list it's start in 1863, others in 1877. Smith and Webb specialized in making large sheet metal presses to be used by factories to stamp out small objects. But he tinkered too. He patented looms, locks, an automatic garage door opener, an automatic record changers, and other doodads. It was only after his 1880 visit to Thomas Edison’s New Jersey laboratory he began thinking about audio. Edison had recently invented both the phonograph and the microphone.When Smith returned to his shop he began his magnetic experiments.

In the 1898 Valdemar Poulsen proved that Oberlin Smith was right about magnetic recording but wrong about steel wire. Poulsen  gave a public demonstration at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Smith became the President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1899. Fritz Pfleumer followed that up with the first magnetic tape recorder in 1928 fulfilling an Smith's idea, 2 years after his death. More here.

Fundamentals of Magnetic Recording

This pamphlet was printed over 70 years ago by Audio Devices inc; the makers of Audiotape and Audio disc blanks. It covered NARTB standards and the even foibles of wire recording which was even then fading out. Much of the introduction reads like anti-wire recording propaganda strongly hyping the advantages of the magnetic recording tape which they of course manufacture. They're not wrong of course. The 6 decades of tape dominance in recording wasn't a fluke.

The information is of course wildly out of date, and reads comically beside modern knowledge of digital recording. But it does serve an interesting counterpoint to the surprisingly terrible audio quality of much modern digital recording that had every chance to be pristine and in the end is often over-compressed, and even distorted. I have scanned all 50 pages into a pdf for your reading pleasure.

You can download all 19.2 MB
HERE