Talk:Cassette tape

Patent

I was trying to find the original, or some of the original, patents for the Philips cassette. Especially with the note above that Otten is the inventor, I thought that would help, but so far didn't. It would be both a useful reference for the article, and interesting related to the above discussion. Gah4 (talk) 07:31, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

@Gah4: Take a look at US 3394899. Filed Oct 1964 with a priority to 1963; it is about the right time and it looks like the CC but it has Schoenmakers and not Otten as the inventor. See also EP0120518B1 also by Schoenmakers. Elsewhere is says, " Lou Ottens, was the team leader in Belgium. Involved in the team were J.J.M. Schoenmakers and Peter van der Sluis (the cassette PHILIPS EL 1903, the mechanism, the Recorder EL 3300)." At this point if we consider the "inventor" to be the person named on a patent. I think we have to remove Otten as the inventor and go with Schoenmakers. Or if we can find an RS (I'm not sure about Bookshop.org) for the team then we can go with the team, the patent and Schoenmakers as the "inventor." Tom94022 (talk) 02:47, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Reminds me of all the discussions about the invention of the transistor, and especially Shockley. When it is not a lone inventor, it is harder to figure out who to name. But Ottens does have some patents, which was part of what confused me. Gah4 (talk) 21:17, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Same discussion exists as to the inventors of the disk drive and there was quite a lawsuit over the invention of the computer. However, when there is a patent, legally all the inventors must be named in the disclosure and then they are listed on the patent when issued. Even then there can be an issue because the the object may consist of a number of innovations, not all of which are patented inventions. So one usually looks for a reliable source, sometimes a court of law, to figure who really invented the object. To me, at first glance, claims 2 and 3 of US 3394899 appear to claim the CC. I haven't looked at the Ottens patents to see whether what they claim is all or part of the CC, but even if I did this might be OR. I think the best approach is to try and find an RS along the lines of but better than Bookshop.org. If I have some time I will poke around. Tom94022 (talk) 06:11, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Here is another source that has Ottens as the leader of the team that came up with the CC but not necessarily its inventor:

Philips R&D leader, Lou Ottens, was inspired by the success and wanted to make an even smaller version. His motivation eventually sparked the release of the world’s first audio cassette.
The makers consisted of a Philips team of about 40 designers and engineers lead by Ottens.

WHO INVENTED THE AUDIO CASSETTE

Tom94022 (talk) 21:10, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

There are zero relevant patents by Ottens assigned to Philips with a priority date prior to 1965 which makes it hard to call him the inventor. It looks like all of his recent obituaries confused his management position with the invention. Tom94022 (talk) 21:20, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Just to be sure, since I made the mistake of calling him Ottens instead of Otten, and that seems to have been repeated. Gah4 (talk) 11:39, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Apparently this is a common mistake, so I went back to Google patent and find zero patents by Otten of Philips in the relevant time period. Makes it hard to call him the inventor. Tom94022 (talk) 23:01, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I suppose, but the one you found is from Philips Netherlands. I suspect I don't know patent law all that well, but in the case of a corporation, where the invention is by a research group, or even more, the collective work of more than one group, it is less obvious who gets there name on it. As well as I remember from last week, he does have some patents later. But again, is it the person who sits at the bench, or the manager that gets the group to do what they do? (and don't forget Shockley.) Gah4 (talk) 07:04, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

As Tom94022 says above, anyone in the group who contributed to the invention is legally required to be listed as an inventor on the patent. Otten still may have contributed to critical aspects of the cassette that were not patented and so could still be considered an inventor if that is the case. ~Kvng (talk) 13:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

For some definition of anyone and contributed. Otherwise in many cases it would be the whole company. As you note, there are critical aspects and presumably non-critical ones. But the patent seems to belong to Philips Netherlands, even though we (supposedly) know it came from Belgium. Gah4 (talk) 20:16, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I believe Gah4 started this thread looking for one or more Otten patents to go along with Otten's purported "invention" of the Compact Cassette. Yes sometimes it is difficult to distinguish the inventors of a patented innovation from those who helped reduce it to practice, but it is the legal requirement in US patents that all inventors be named. Clearly there are no such patents by Otten and clearly Otten lead the team that developed the Compact Cassette. Schoenmakers, a member of Otten's team is the named inventor on one patent that has claims which at first glance appear to cover the Compact Cassette. There may be other patents; if we had a copy of Philips' license agreement we would know all the patents that Philips asserted claiming some aspect of the Compact Cassette. Where the patents were issued is irrelevant; Schoenmakers is in at least two jurisdictions. So in the end we are left with "Otten led the team that developed the Compact Cassette with a member, Schoenmakers, patenting one aspect thereof. Tom94022 (talk) 21:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Another wiki is not a RS, but here is what it says:

Lou Ottens sees himself as a team player: "I always worked with other people when developing new products."[2]Drew for the construction of the original cassette and the drive Jan Schoenmakers responsible. He also had the idea of ​​locking the cassette in the drive by inserting the tape head and the erase head. The cassettes could not be removed from the drive during playback. It was precisely to this detail that the later compact cassette patent registered under the number 1191978 on January 31, 1964 at German Patent and Trademark Office in Munich has been registered.[3] Peter van der Sluis developed the corresponding recorder. The magnetic head specialist Herman Cornelius Lalesse had the idea of ​​dividing the 1.5 mm wide mono track on a playback side into two tracks for stereo.

BNM Wiki - Compact cassette - KompaktkassetteEncyclopedia

This supports Schoenmakers as the inventor of the CC in that the primary innovation was using the recording mechanism to lock the CC to the recorder. Whether this is enough to put it in the article is another question. Tom94022 (talk) 23:54, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. My first thought is that the head locking the cassette is the least important part. I might have thought the tape width or speed, both of which allow for the small cassette, were the important ones. But then again, are those patentable? Probably not. I don't know patent law all that well, but I suspect that shrinking something but otherwise the same isn't enough. So, ok, the head lock system is the patent. I thought stereo came some years later, at least it was a lot later when I knew about it. We had a Sony (mono) reel-to-reel recorder when I was young, mostly to send tapes to/from my grandparents. I knew early that stereo tapes were not compatible because of the track arrangement. The in high school years, I got a stereo reel-to-reel (as above, with 1.875, 3.75, 7.5 in/s), and about then knew that cassettes used a different track system, because Philips required. Reminds me that I also knew that Philips required CD (and CD-ROM) players to only run 1x. The others only came after the patent expired. In any case, the article credits the two-hole cassette to Belgium and Ottens. Gah4 (talk) 08:48, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

The head locking the cassette is one known invention - the may be other patents we haven't found and/or everything else could be known public art or licensed prior art. The parent allows for other known two hole cassettes known in the art that didn't lock. The question now is what changes if any do we make to the article. For example, do we add the two patents? Tom94022 (talk) 21:10, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

in the "mixtape" doc, there is a scene with ottens & three members of his team; I would recommend finding this on a platform of your choice & hearing the story from the man himself.

duncanrmi (talk) 11:40, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Orange, Torah Tape

If this sequnce of edits is successful, the article's Orange Hat/Hatenote (i.e. to not scare away readers).will be resolved, and it will also house a bit about the topic Torah Tape. Nuts240 (talk) 13:41, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Orange, Torah Tape

If this sequnce of edits is successful, the article's Orange Hat/Hatenote (i.e. to not scare away readers).will be resolved, and it will also house a bit about the topic Torah Tape. Nuts240 (talk) 19:44, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

The added material is clearly inappropriate for this article which does not have a single instance of any other type of recording content. If Torah Tape is worthy of its own article, that should be discussed but not here. Accordingly, I am deleting the section. Tom94022 (talk) 05:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Adding more headings for readability

Hello,

Over the next few weeks I plan to restructure some of the sections in this article. Particularly in the "Cassette types" section, I would like to add some subheadings to differentiate between each type to allow for better user readability. Feel free to leave any suggestions or questions here. ZacZig (talk) 18:13, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Longevity

In the flaws section, a longevity of up to 30 years is cited, based on old research. Recent data suggests it to be closer to 100 years: https://www.clir.org/2022/08/study-reveals-new-findings-on-longevity-of-legacy-magnetic-audio-tape/ Mind Booster Noori (talk) 03:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

As the study notes, its conclusions about open real audio tape may not be applicable to other later formats like Cassette tape and certainly not to later non-iron oxide formulations. Tom94022 (talk) 07:37, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Speed, wow, fluter but the basics are missing.

This article should take care to explain how casette players / recorders keep constant linear tape speed? Since the diameter of providing (unpowered) and receiving (powered) spools change constantly and their diameters are unknown, due to existence of 15 to 120 and even 180 minute casettes, the process seems far from trivial. Logically, the middle line of the tape which separates left and right sides, should be free of metal oxide and be just transparent plastic carrier, onto which a stroboscopic pattern would be printed at factory - allowing decks to control linear speed exactly via optical sensor. However that's not the case, probably due to cost reasons, so what's the solution? 94.21.229.15 (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

What makes you think cassette tape recorders bothered to keep constant linear speed? The ultra compact pocket dictation machines just dragged the tape through willy-nilly, relying on playback on a similar machine to keep the voice recording intelligible. But you are right, we should describe somewhere how a capstan drive works - the pinch roller system drags tape off the reel at a constant speed, and the drive and takeup spools just provide enough tension to take up the slack...must find a good simple description because I don't understand it well enough to write an article section on it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Hurray! Someone has already written tape transport which explains all this in detail. See-also reference in a minute or two. --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:44, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Constant linear speed is not specific to Compact Cassette transports, but to all tape recorders. It is true that the lowest-end reel-to-reel machines did without it, but anything better had to have linear speed. Enter the capstan and pressure roller combo, as early as the first Magnetophones. Retired electrician (talk) 06:34, 12 April 2024 (UTC)