And There I Was, Switching Tapes Like An Idiot Every Time I wanted To Hear Something Different

I’m sure at some point, whether it held 3 or 5 or 25, almost all of us owned some sort of CD changer. And when I was young I remember my mom having a record player that could hold something like three or 4 at a time. But until today, I don’t remember ever having heard of a cassette changer. Damn, do I ever wish I’d had one. Life would have been so much simpler.

Imagine if someone tried to create an iPod type device for the home in 1972 using mechanical technology…this is what it would look like.

According to the adverts – the Panasonic RS-296US could play 2.5 days of music non-stop…that’s roughly the same play time to the ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ that the first 5GB Apple iPod boasted in 2001.

NOTE
2.5 days of play time equates to 60 hours which would require 20x 180-min cassettes. Whilst these tapes did exist at one point, 180-minute lengths were also very fragile and best avoided.

A more realistic play time is to load this machine up with 20x 90-minute cassettes which gives you 30 hours, and that’s why I refer to the ‘day and a half’ of continuous music at the end of video.

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