Mini cassette
The minicassette (also known as minicassette) is an electromagnetic storage medium ( sound carrier ) for analogue recording and playback of audio signals . It was developed by Philips and first introduced in 1967. It is a small version of the compact cassette, also introduced by Philips in 1963 . It differs from this in that it has a much more compact housing with dimensions of 56 mm × 33 mm (according to DIN 32750).
Devices developed for the minicassette work with a tape speed of only 2.4 cm / s (for comparison 4.75 cm / s with conventional cassette recorders ). This enables long recording times despite the small dimensions, but the usable frequency range is severely restricted.
Since the mini-cassette does not use a capstan drive and the tape is only fed by the winding drive, recordings on mini-cassettes can mainly be used as sound carriers for speech, e.g. in answering machines and dictation machines, due to the undefined tape distance to the tape head and the slightly fluctuating tape speed . It was also used from the late 1970s as a data carrier for computers (Philips P2000).
To date (2011) cassettes with a playing time of 2 × 15 and 2 × 30 minutes are available. (Types 005 and 007)
Similar developments are the microcassette introduced by Olympus in 1969 and the Steno-Cassette 30 introduced by Grundig in the 1970s (see Grundig Business Systems ).