Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic tape can with relative ease record and play back audio, visual, and binary computer data.
Magnetic tape revolutionized sound recording and reproduction and broadcasting. It allowed radio, which had always been broadcast live, to be recorded for later or repeated airing. 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.[1] The exception is data tape formats like LTO which are specifically designed for long-term archiving.[2]