8-Track Players

The 8-track cartridge is a magnetic tape technology for audio storage, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. The 8-track was created by Bill Lear in 1964 at the Lear Jet Corporation, after he heard Earl "Madman" Muntz's 1962, 4-track tape system, called Stereo-Pak. more...

Home
Amplifiers
Audio Accessories & Cables
Cable TV
DVD Players & Recorders
Digital Video Recorders, PVR
Gadgets & Other Electronics
Home Audio
Home Theater Projectors
Home Theater in a Box
Radios: CB, Ham & Shortwave
Satellite Radio
Satellite TV
Telephones & Pagers
Televisions
VCRs
Vintage Electronics
8-Track Players
Amplifiers, Tube Amps
Books, Manuals, Magazines
Capacitors
Cassette Decks
Drivers & Horns
Other Vintage
Preamplifiers, Tube Preamps
Radios
Receivers
Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders
Speakers
Telephones
Televisions
Transformers
Tubes
Tuners, Tube Tuners
Turntables

Stereo-Pak, in turn, had been inspired by the 1959 Fidelipac 3-track system (invented by George Eash in 1954) used by radio broadcasters for commercials, jingles, and single song hits.

The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made available after World War II in the late 1940s. However, the machines were bulky and the reels themselves were more difficult to handle than vinyl records. Born from the desire to have an easier-to-use tape format, the enclosed reel mechanism was introduced in the mid-1950s.

Development

The endless loop tape cartridge was first designed in 1952 by Bernard Cousino of Toledo, Ohio, around a single reel carrying a continuous loop of standard 1/4-inch, plastic, oxide-coated recording tape running at 3.75 inches per second (9.5 centimeters per second). Program starts and stops were signaled either by a conductive foil splice or sub-audible tones.

This cartridge was later revised and marketed under the name Fidelipac in 1959 by George Eash (also of Toledo, Ohio), an inventor who had rented a work space in the Cousino building in the 1950s. These Fidelipac cartridges were first used as radio station promo and advertising "carts" starting in late 1959. They had been introduced at the 1959 National Association of Broadcasters convention by Collins Radio.

Entrepreneur Earl "Madman" Muntz of Los Angeles, California saw a potential in these "broadcast carts" for an automobile music system and in 1962 introduced his "Stereo-Pak" 4-track system and tapes, mostly in California and Florida. He licensed popular music albums from the major record companies and duplicated them on these 4-track cartridges, or "CARtridges", as they were first advertised.

The Lear Jet Stereo-8 track cartridge was designed by Bill Lear, of Lear Jet fame, in 1964. It simplified the mechanism by rolling the motorized metal capstan in the player against a pinch wheel installed inside the cartridge to pull the tape across the player's read head (in the earlier Muntz 4-track Stereo-Pak, the pinch wheel was part of the player and flipped into the cartridge through an access hole). The tape was pulled from the center of the reel, passed across the opening at the end of the cartridge and wound back onto the outside of the same reel. The spool itself was freewheeling and the tape was driven only by tension from the capstan.

The tape was coated with a slippery backing material patented by Bernard Cousino, usually graphite, to ease the continuous slip between the tape layers. This coating sometimes also caused the pinch wheel to slip, leading to poor speed control and tape flutter. Due to these and other problems, 8-track cartridges were unpopular with audiophiles. While the design allowed simple, cheap, and mobile players, unlike a two-reel system it didn't permit winding of the tape in either direction. Some players offered a limited fast-forward by speeding up the motor while cutting off the audio, but rewinding was impossible.

Read more at Wikipedia.org