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Tape recorder

Doc Brown's tape recorder.

An audio cassette, also known as compact cassette, cassette tape, audio tape, or simply cassette or tape, was a magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback released in 1962. It replaced the reel-to-reel magnetic tapes used in tape recorders of this kind.

It remained the dominant music format, alongside vinyl records, until the 1990s, when it was replaced by the compact disc.

Tape recorders were commonly used to record messages for business or personal use. Devices such as the Walkman were commonly used to play back the audio recorded on cassette tapes.

Emmett Brown used a tape recorder as part of his automatic retrieval feature on the temporal duplicated DeLorean time machine. He left a message for Marty McFly letting him know that the appearance of the DeLorean without him in his timeline meant that Doc was in trouble at some point. He told Marty to go to the time coordinates listed on the LAST TIME DEPARTED entry on the time circuits panel.

In 1931, Marty used Doc's tape recorder to record Doc's younger counterpart struggling to answer an equation, so that the older Doc could solve it for him. He later used it to record Kid Tannen so that Tannen's accountant, Artie McFly, would be tricked to come out of hiding. This allowed Emmett Brown to serve him with a subpoena.

In 1955, Marty used his Walkman to playback a recording of an electric guitar solo, labeled "Van Halen", to scare his future father, George McFly, into asking Lorraine Baines to go with him to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

In 1985, Jennifer Parker tried to convince Marty to send a demo tape cassette of his music to R & G Records after his band, The Pinheads, failed their audition for Battle of the Bands on October 25, 1985.

That night, Marty put the submissions form and the cassette into a yellow envelope ready for mailing, but changed his mind and threw it in the waste basket before going to bed.

However, following his return from 1955 to what turned out to be an altered and improved present, a more confident Marty decided to send the cassette to R & G Records after all, and his brother Dave offered to mail it from the office where he now worked.

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