The first electronic storage medium, magnetic tape is made of flexible plastic with one side coated with a ferromagnetic material. The data are recorded as binary digits (bits) in the form of ...

A magnetic tape that was used to store data temporarily and later reused. In the 1950s and 1960s, prior to disk drives becoming abundant, tapes were the only storage medium other than punch cards.

Dimensions listed are in mils. Digital recording also uses magnetic tape as a storage medium, such as digital audio tape (DAT), but these smaller formats cannot be spliced. The tape speed for the DAT ...