Magnetic tape

Devices that use magnetic tape can with relative ease record and play back audio, visual, and binary computer data.

Since the early 1950s, magnetic tape has been used with computers to store large quantities of data and is still used for backup purposes.

Magnetic tape begins to degrade after 10–20 years and therefore is not an ideal medium for long-term archival storage.

[9] Because of escalating political tensions and the outbreak of World War II, these developments in Germany were largely kept secret.

[10] It was only after the war that Americans, particularly Jack Mullin, John Herbert Orr, and Richard H. Ranger, were able to bring this technology out of Germany and develop it into commercially viable formats.

Bing Crosby, an early adopter of the technology, made a large investment in the tape hardware manufacturer Ampex.

Modern magnetic tape is most commonly packaged in cartridges and cassettes, such as the widely supported Linear Tape-Open (LTO)[12] and IBM 3592 series.