Audio cassette facts for kids

An audio cassette is a small plastic case that holds a special magnetic tape. This tape can store music, voices, and other sounds. To listen to what's on a cassette, you need a cassette player or a cassette recorder. Inside the cassette, the tape is wound around two small wheels called reels.

How Cassettes Started

The standard audio cassette was invented in 1962 by a company called Philips. They gave it the name "Compact Cassette". When they first came out, the sound quality of cassettes and their players wasn't very good. But over time, the sound got much better.

During the 1970s, cassettes became a very popular way to listen to music and other sounds. People loved them because they were small and easy to carry around. Their popularity grew even more in the 1980s.

Why Cassettes Became Less Popular

As compact discs (CDs) became more popular, people started using cassettes less and less. CDs offered clearer sound and were easier to skip tracks on. In 2011, the Oxford English Dictionary even thought about removing the phrase "cassette tape" from a smaller version of its book, showing how much their use had declined.

Images for kids

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  A standard audio cassette

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  The Sony Walkman

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  Burmese music cassette tapes for sale, Yangon, Myanmar

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  A picture showing the magnetic field on a stereo cassette.

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  Notches on the top of a cassette show its type. The top one is Type I (iron oxide). The next is Type II (chrome and cobalt). The bottom two are Type IV (metal).

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  Maxell compact cassettes, C60 (60 minutes) and C90 (90 minutes)

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  A compact cassette with its write-protect tab removed and then put back.

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  Maxell four-function leader tape.

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  Tape Guide via Security Mechanism (SM)

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  Machines called Tapematic 2002 loading magnetic tape into empty cassette shells.

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  A typical portable desktop cassette recorder from RadioShack.

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  A Nakamichi RX-505 cassette deck. It can flip the cassette automatically.

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  Radio–cassette players, also known as "boomboxes".

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  A head cleaning cassette.

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  A dual cassette-based Panasonic answering machine.

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  A Magnavox dual deck recorder.

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  A C2N Datassette recorder for Commodore computers.

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  German cassettes made for storing computer data in the mid-1980s.

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  A streamer cassette for data storage, based on the audio Compact Cassette.

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  Comparing the size of an Elcaset (left) with a standard Compact Cassette.

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  A Compact Cassette and a Microcassette.

See also

In Spanish: Casete para niños