It used to be said that making a 60-minute or 90-minute mix tape for that special someone was a labor of love. However a new Sony cassette tape would make it pure labour, at least thirty or forty generations worth of labour.
Consequence Of Sound reports Sony has created and unveiled a tape which holds 148 gigabytes per square inch or 185 terrabytes. Essentially, it would make a iPod which might hold 20,000 songs the equivalent of a two-song vinyl 45.
The tape was revealed this past weekend at the International Magnetics Conference in Dresden, Germany and, according to Gizmodo, contains enough memory to hold 3700 Blu-Ray DVDs. Three blu-ray DVDs would fit on one square inch of the mammoth-memory cassette.
Without going into too much scientific detail, the tape holds so much memory thanks to the magnetic crystals on the tape packed together more closely than any other format ever known. The tape would also be able to hold the entire amount of materials at the Library of Congress almost 19 times over.
And finally, using a three-minute song as an example, the tape could hold 64,750,000 songs. That works out to be about 22,174 years worth of music. Needless to say, worrying if a song would finish before Side A or Side B ran out of tape wouldn't really be a problem.
The tape has no official release date as yet but will be available for commercial sale at some point. However, the tape is being considered for "industrial-sized data backup" and not for making the most epic mix tape of all time ever.