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The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is a magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Compact cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a pre-recorded cassette, or as fully recordable "blank" cassette. It was designed originally for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s, the cassette was one of the two most common formats for prerecorded music, first alongside the LP record and later the compact disc (CD). Compact Cassettes contain two miniature spools, between which a magnetically coated, polyester-type plastic film is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural analog audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second pair when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette, or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement and head respectively ("auto-reverse"). ==History== In 1935, decades before the introduction of the Compact Cassette, AEG released the first reel-to-reel tape recorder (in German: ''Tonbandgerät''), with the commercial name "Magnetophon", based on the invention of the magnetic tape (1928) by Fritz Pfleumer, which used similar technology but with open reels (for which the tape was manufactured by BASF). These instruments were still very expensive and relatively difficult to use and were therefore used mostly by professionals in radio stations and recording studios. For private use the (reel-to-reel) tape recorder was not very common and only slowly took off from about the 1950s; with prices between 700 and 1,500 DM (which would now be about € to or $1736.56 to 3690.19 USD)〔This figure was—starting in the year 1955—calculated in respect to template:Inflation, and was rounded up to full 100 € and refers to the last Month of January〕 such machines were still far too expensive for the mass market and their vacuum tube construction made them very bulky. In the early 1960s, however, the weights and the prices dropped when vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors. Reel-to-reel tape recorders then became more common in household use, though they remained in only a small fraction of homes with long playing record players. In 1958, following four years of development, RCA Victor introduced the stereo, quarter-inch, reversible, reel-to-reel RCA tape cartridge. However, it was a large cassette (5" × 7"), and offered few pre-recorded tapes. Despite the multiple versions, it failed. In 1962, Philips invented the Compact Cassette medium for audio storage, introducing it in Europe on 30 August 1963 (at the Berlin Radio Show),〔p.102-4.〕〔David Morton, ''Sound recording: the life story of a technology''. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p.161.〕〔John Shepherd, ''Continuum encyclopedia of popular music of the world''. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003, p.506〕〔Jan Drees, Christian Vorbau, ''Kassettendeck: Soundtrack einer Generation''. Klappenbroschur, 2011〕〔 and in the United States (under the ''Norelco'' brand) in November 1964, with the trademark name ''Compact Cassette''. The team at Philips was led by Lou Ottens in Hasselt, Belgium.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://nos.nl/artikel/546117-gouden-jubileum-muziekcassette.html )〕 "Philips was competing with Telefunken and Grundig in a race to establish its cassette tape as the worldwide standard, and it wanted support from Japanese electronics manufactureres." However, the Philips' Compact Cassette became the dominant as a result of Philips' decision in the face of pressure from Sony to license the format free of charge. Philips also released the Norelco ''Carry-Corder 150'' recorder/player in the U.S. in November 1964. By 1966 over 250,000 recorders had been sold in the US alone and Japan soon became the major source of recorders. By 1968, 85 manufacturers had sold over 2.4 million players.〔〔Hans-Joachim Braun, ''Music and technology in the twentieth century''. JHU Press, 2002, p.161.〕 By the end of the 1960s the cassette business was worth an estimated 150 million dollars.〔 In the early years, sound quality was mediocre, but it improved dramatically by the early 1970s when it caught up with the quality of 8-track tape and kept improving.〔 The Compact Cassette went on to become a popular (and re-recordable) alternative to the 12-inch vinyl LP during the late 1970s.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Compact Cassette」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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