![]() ![]() Extrapolated around the world, that’s a whole lot of obsolete plastic, indeed. No one seems to know exactly how many VHS tapes were made during the medium’s heyday, but in 2003 the Danish environmental protection agency estimated annual sales of about 12 million tapes per year, in that tiny country alone. Even thrift stores will usually turn down donations: VHS tapes just don’t have market value anymore. But if you thought you could unload them on eBay or Craigslist, you’re going to be disappointed: VHS tapes, like so much outmoded technology, are too ubiquitous to be valuable, and not nearly old enough to be interesting. Shilpa Sarkar, ’11, from Stanford, Calif.Ĭongratulations! You’ve overcome nostalgia and you’re ready to get rid of some VHS tapes. If I want to get rid of old VHS tapes in my house without trashing them, what can I do? Is it really that bad to throw them away in the first place? No other Kate Bush releases on 8-track cartridges are known to exist.Editor's Note: The linked resources in this story were updated in 2020. In Italy, a compilation album called 'Superpop' was released on an 8-track cartridge in 1979, including the track Hammer Horror. Meanwhile, Kate Bush's first two albums The Kick Inside and Lionheart were released on 8-track cartridges by Capitol in the USA. In some Latin American countries as well as European, the format was abandoned in the mid-1970s in favor of the smaller cassette tape which was one-third the size. ![]() The compact cassette arrived in 1962, and by the late 1970s the eight-track cartridges had greatly diminished in popularity. The eight-track format became by far the most popular and offered the largest music library of all the tape systems.Įight-track players became less common in homes and vehicles in the late 1970s. Within a year, prerecorded releases on the eight-track tape format began to arrive within a month of the vinyl release. With the availability of cartridge systems for the home, consumers started thinking of eight-tracks as a viable alternative to 33 rpm album style vinyl records, not only as a convenience for the car. automakers, the eight-track format quickly won out over the four-track format, with Muntz abandoning it completely by late 1970. Most of the initial factory installations were separate players from the radio, but dashboard mounted 8-track units were offered in combination with an AM radio, as well as with AM/FM receivers. In September 1965, the Ford Motor Company introduced factory-installed and dealer-installed eight-track tape players as an option on three of its 1966 models (the sporty Mustang, Thunderbird, and the luxurious high-end Lincoln), and RCA Victor introduced 175 Stereo-8 Cartridges from its RCA Victor and RCA Camden labels of recording artists catalogs. The popularity of both four-track and eight-track cartridges grew from the booming automobile industry. Prerecorded stereophonic music cartridges were available, and blank cartridges could be used to make recordings at home, but the format failed to gain popularity. The first tape cartridge designed for general consumer use, including music reproduction, was the Sound Tape or Magazine Loading Tape Cartridge (RCA tape cartridge), introduced in 1958 by RCA. Most were intended only for low-fidelity voice recording in dictation machines. To eliminate the nuisance of tape-threading, various manufacturers introduced cartridges that held the tape inside a metal or plastic housing to eliminate handling. The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was the reel-to-reel tape recorder, first available in the United States in the late 1940s, but too expensive and bulky to be practical for amateur home use until well into the 1950s. The format is regarded as an obsolete technology, and was relatively unknown outside the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, West Germany and Japan. ![]() The 8-track cartridge, also known as 8-track tape or 8-track, is a magnetic tape sound-recording technology that was popular in the United States from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the Compact Cassette format took over.
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