April 11 -- National 8-Track Tape Day!

April 11th is National Eight Track Tape Day, a day dedicated to bring back the good memories of the sixties, seventies and early eighties! No I'm not making this up, it is a real holiday. Although the origin is unknown, it has been brought up on online forums since the late 1990s. If you make a search on Google, you will find more sites bringing this holiday up.

"Stereo 8" 8-Track tapes were invented in 1964 by a group of engineers for Bill Lear (yes, the Lear Jet guy) for use in his planes. Thanks to his connection to Motorola (who made radios for Ford cars), 8-track players were introduced in Ford cars in 1965. 8-track tapes were very popular by 1968 and factory players were available for most cars and trucks. Lear's design was inspired by the 4-track "Muntz Stereo-Pak" invented in 1962 by Earl "Madman" Muntz for use in cars. Muntz's 4-track tape was inspired by the 3-track "Fidelipac" invented by George Eash in 1954 for use in radio broadcasting. Fidelipac broadcast carts were used well into the 90s and even used a little today. Although many think the cassette tape came after the 8-track, the 8-track actually came after the cassette! The cassette was actually invented in 1962 by Philips and were first being mass produced in 1964 by Philips in Germany.

8-track tapes are packed with a continuous loop of 1/4" tape and are ran at a speed of 3-3/4ips. They contain 4 stereo programs, 2 tracks for each program. Their players are knocked out of alignment 4 times per tape (the head moves) and that is activated by a foil splice going past 2 contacts. They can hold more music than a CD as CDs usually can hold a max of 80 minutes while an 8-track can be packed with more than 90 minutes of tape.

In 1983, most record companies have dropped the format and soon after prerecorded 8-tracks have been removed from store shelves. Columbia House and a few other record clubs continued to offer the format available in limited music/bands until 1988. 8-tracks continued to be offered by small recording studios well into the 1990s and even into the 2000s (by then, they were mostly offered as a joke and a novelty). The most recent 8-track to be majorly released was in 2009 by Cheap Trick and their album The Latest, they were sold for $39.99 each!


(okay, I may have too many)







https://sites.google.com/site/8trackrepair/

Now this holiday isn't completely about 8-track tapes, the 8-track tape is just one of those 1970s icons. You can celebrate this holiday by remembering the good ol' days and most importantly, by running a pre-1980 Cox engine!