1989 TDK D 90 Audio Cassette

This is the 1989 version of the TDK D audio cassette (a 90 minute variant in this instance), which I’ve posted for comparison with other TDK Ds I’ve photographed for the blog. You can find all the versions in the alphabetical index to blank cassettes.

1995 TDK D 60 Audio Cassette

One of many incarnations of the famous TDK D normal bias Type I audio cassette – in this case a 1995 version. This lightbox view of the tape takes advantage of the transparent casing to show both sides of the product, but more importantly, the innards. You get a good sense from this image of how simple compact cassettes really were/are. Other than the two reels and the length of tape travelling from one to the other, it’s just a set of guides, and a soft pad (bottom centre) which gently pushes the tape against the record and play heads in the tape machine.

If you look between the ‘spokes’ in the reels, you can even see where the ends of the magnetic tape have been pinched into the plastic to hold them in place. Quite a primitive system, but it’s remained essentially unchanged throughout the historical lifespan of the compact audio cassette. A tribute to a brilliant design which was pretty much right first time as a basic concept.

1998 TDK SA 90 Audio Cassette

It’s hard now to imagine how life would be without fast PCs and intuitive operating systems. Even though it was made in the Internet era, this tape predates the release of Windows 98 (imagine that). So we’re back in the territory of Windows 95, and a climate in which most consumers were only just learning what USB was. The computers on many people’s desktops still didn’t feature CD burners, and so there was still a big market for blank audio cassettes.