These cassettes needed no internal space for the tape head slider because they accessed the tape from outside the cartridge.īased on these new cassettes, George Eash developed the Fidelipac cartridge in 1954. Once traction of the tape by capstan was added, it allowed users the convenience of just pushing the cartridge into the recorder without having to thread the tape. Later cartridge types had the magnetic layer aligned to the `outside' of the cartridge, which required a specially designed recorder to play it. In this generation, the magnetic coating of the tape was wound on the `inside' of the reel. This cartridge was marketed by John Herbert Orr as Orrtronic Tapette. Later, Cousino developed a plastic case that could be hung up on some existing tape recorders. Initially, this mechanism was to be implemented in a reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. The tape is passed through an inner ring of loose tape reel, where the recording is stored, and looped back through the outer ring of the reel.

His inspiration came from one of the first products that used the Endless tape cartridge technology which was the Audio Vendor from a year earlier, an invention of Bernard Cousino. which would later be used in not only the Muntz Stereo-Pak but also in various monaural background music systems from the late '60s to the early '90s. Inventor George Eash invented a design in 1953, called the Fidelipac cartridge, also called the NAB cartridge. History Development A blank compatible Stereo-Quadraphonic 8-track cartridge Blank cartridges could be used to make recordings at home. After completing a program, the head mechanically switches to another set of two tracks, creating a characteristic clicking noise. The player's head reads two of these tracks at a time, for stereo sound. The magnetic tape is played at 3–3/4 inches per second (twice the speed of a cassette), is wound around a single spool, is about 0.25 inches (0.64 cm) wide and contains 8 parallel tracks. The cartridge's dimensions are approximately 5.25 by 4 by 0.8 inches (13.3 cm × 10.2 cm × 2.0 cm). Little Lost Girl Media from Oregon is currently still making 8-tracks and runs a mostly 8-track rock-n-roll record label.

Cheap Trick's The Latest in 2009 was issued on 8-track, as was Dolly Parton's A Holly Dolly Christmas in 2020, the latter with an exclusive bonus track. The 8-track tape format is now considered obsolete, although there are collectors that refurbish these tapes and players as well as some bands that issue these tapes as a novelty. The Stereo 8 Cartridge was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear, of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Motorola, and RCA Victor Records ( RCA - Radio Corporation of America).

The only options the consumer has are play, fast forward, record, and program (track) change. After about 80 minutes of playing time, the tape would start again at the beginning. One advantage of the 8-track tape cartridge was that it could play continuously in an endless loop, and did not have to be 'flipped over' to play the entire tape. The format was commonly used in cars and was most popular in the United States and Canada and, to a lesser extent, in the United Kingdom. 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, which pre-dated the 8-track system, surpassed it in popularity for pre-recorded music. The black rubber pinch roller is at upper right.

Beatles 8 track tape