[BC] CD, LP, RIAA, etc...

[Kevin Tekel]

Fred Gleason wrote:
> It's scary how reality imitates art.  I can remember as far back as the
> early nineties where my sister-in-law would refer to Nintendo game
> cartridges (essentially, a ROM chip on a plug-in card) as a "tape", as
> in "I need to return the Nintendo tapes to the rental place today".
> She speaks in the exact same way today about DVDs.

One of the early video game systems, the Fairchild Channel F, used game
cartridges that were almost exactly the same size and shape as 8-track
audio tape cartridges.  Atari 2600 cartridges had the same rectangular
shape, too, just a bit smaller, and you'd jam them in and yank them out of
the console just like an 8-track tape -- so that's likely where the habit
of calling video game cartridges "tapes" came from.

I've noticed that "rewind" seems to have become a permanent part of our
lexicon even when there's no longer any tape to wind back onto a spool.
Somehow "fast reverse" just doesn't have the same ring to it.  And "tape"
is still often used as a synonymous with "to record" or "recording,"
especially in reference to video, as in "we got it on tape" or "during
the taping of the show."  Of course there are some tape-based digital
video formats in wide use in both the consumer and professional arena,
so that usage is not entirely archaic.