invented in 1961, the compact audio cassette was commercialised by Philips of the Netherlands, and introduced by them at the Berlin Radio Show in 1963. Although sound quality was not as good as that from vinyl discs, the devices nonetheless proved popular thanks to their convenient small size. Housed in a plastic case, a mangnetic tape wound between two reels, providing up to 90 minutes of stereo recording. At the same time Philips also launched the EL-3-300 cassette player, whice was an immediate success, the more so when the firm decided to licence the format free of charge.
In the 1970s cassettes were the only rival to vinyl discs and they claimed almost half the market for recorded music. As an added bonus, they allowed people to record material themselves, either from records that they owned or their own playing. From 1979 onwards, the invention of the Walkman gave cassettes a fresh fillip.
One drawback of the format was the slow pace of the pace of the tape-just 4.75cm per second. This limited the sound quality, particularly at high frequencies. Improvements, notably the Dolby systems, were introduced to reduce distrotion and blackground noise. The arrival of compact discs in the early 1980s failed to kill off the audio cassette, but digital recording and downloading finally did so. Attempts to introduced digital cassettes-DAT, DCC and MiniDiscs-proved commercial failures.