Recent dubious statements about the legality of mp3s got me thinking about other recording media. A few years ago, I was surprised to find that a mini-cassette recorder played not the tiny tapes found in some answer machines and tape recorders (micro-cassettes), but the normal audio tapes you can buy at Radio Shack, Wal-Mart, or the local pharmacy.
Why then, are they called “mini”? Is there a precursor cassette that was bigger? It was my impression that other than 8-track, previous tapes had been reel to reel.
The question is further complicated by this thread, where Sunspace alleges normal cassettes are properly referred to as “compact” cassettes, a view seconded by this site. The latter site, however, implies there are mini-cassettes which are not the same as standard or compact cassettes.
Yes, as I gather, normal tape cassettes were called “compact” when they were invented in the 1950s or 1960s, presumably because they were so much smaller than reel-to-reel tape and 8-track tape. This is similar to the way that CDs started out as “comapct (audio) discs”, because they were so much smaller that vinyl LPs.
I remember tape cassettes from the seventies, that had a little “compact cassette” logo on them. A short search found one in my collection of tapes, so I scanned and posted it.
I just looked at your link (the HTML link was a little broken and I had to go to the top of waynetronics.com) and the “mini-cassette” described there is new to me. I was about to say that the “mini cassette recorder” you mentioned just referred to the size of the tape recorder, not the size of the tapes, but it looks like I was wrong.
I’ve read of a couple of other post-8-track tape cassette formats that lost out to the compact cassette. Sony had one called the Elcaset, and I think there was at least one other. I’ve never seen either of them though.
I’ve actually seen the standard tapes themselves referred to as mini-cassettes, such as here, admittedly not the best source. You’d think that a mini-cassette recorder would use mini-cassettes.
Unfortunately, I didn’t put in that extra half hour of searching before posting my question, or I would have found this a while ago. The mini cassettes pictured are indeed unlike any other tapes I’ve seen, and at a price only a professional transcriptionist could love.
I accept the argument that “compact cassette” was a bit redundant, not intended to distinguish them from mega cassettes which once roamed the countryside.
Question answered. Gracias.
Follow-up: The “Compact Cassette” logoSunspace posted reminds me of the Compact Disc logo found on CDs. Any idea if it’s the same idea of a cooperative industry logo to promote the medium, and if so, why’d it disappear?
: 