1985's BASF LH-EI 90 Cassette Tape Paper Model - by Papermau

[Revell-Fan]

Hi fans,

@mauther has gone retro and developed a paper model of - a BASF music cassette! Just check this out:

http://papermau.blogspot.de/2016/07/1985s-basf-lh-ei-90-cassette-tape-paper.html

This is such a cool gimmick that I have to post it here. Moreover, with this model mauther has made my todo list shorter: When I was digitzing my old VHS cassettes I scanned one of them to launch a retro / vintage collection myself. This is a first glimpse at the result:



This is a WIP, several things have to be edited so it does not look as good as it will when finished. The final model will be released soon. And yes, it will be in 1:1 scale!

Thank you, mauther! rinks:

Have fun and enjoy!

 

[zathros]

That is cool. I have so many still working cassettes, that to build a model would be ludicrous. It's amazing how much abuse cassettes could take, as long as you didn't let them overheat in a car, or get near a magnetic field.

Cassettes tapes were invented a German. He used a wire recorder, which was modified. Excerpt below from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape ):

"Magnetic tape was invented for recording sound by Fritz Pfleumer in 1928 in Germany, based on the invention of magnetic wire recording by Oberlin Smith in 1888 and Valdemar Poulsen in 1898. Pfleumer's invention used a ferric oxide (Fe2O3) powder coating on a long strip of paper. This invention was further developed by the German electronics company AEG, which manufactured the recording machines and BASF, which manufactured the tape. In 1933, working for AEG, Eduard Schuller developed the ring-shaped tape head. Previous head designs were needle-shaped and tended to shred the tape. An important discovery made in this period was the technique of AC biasing, which improved the fidelity of the recorded audio signal by increasing the effective linearity of the recording medium.

Due to the escalating political tensions, and the outbreak of World War II, these developments were largely kept secret. Although the Allies knew from their monitoring of Nazi radio broadcasts that the Germans had some new form of recording technology, the nature was not discovered until the Allies acquired captured German recording equipment as they invaded Europe in the closing of the war. It was only after the war that Americans, particularly Jack Mullin, John Herbert Orr, and Richard H. Ranger, were able to bring this technology out of Germany and develop it into commercially viable formats."

A wide variety of recorders and formats have developed since, most significantly reel-to-reel and Compact Cassette.

Much more information can be found here. Magnetic Tapes were the basis of computer storage for many years, and magnetic tape recorders are still being developed and designed. In May 2014 Fujifilm followed Sony and made an announcement that it will develop a 154 TB tape cartridge by the end of 2015, which will have the areal data density of storing 85.9 Gbit/in² (13.3 Gbit/cm²) on linear magnetic particulate tape. Not an obsolete format, some of these tapes can hold data for 30 years!!

Magnetophon from a German radio station in World War II..

 

[Revell-Fan]

That magnetophon already looks like a paper model..!

 

[zathros]

Yeah, I was thinking that would be a Fantastic model, documenting history, my bright fellow!!