Leonard Erickson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 -=> Quoting Roy J. Tellason to Bob Ackley <=-

 RJT> Bob Ackley wrote in a message to RUSSELL TIEDT:

 RJT> I've seen speeds of half that.  But like you say,  not much fidelity. 
 RJT> I was at a radio station one time that was pretty heavily automated, 
 RJT> and a lot of what was going out over the air was on either
"carts" or
 RJT> on big reels of tape,  which seemed to pretty much *crawl*,  compared
 RJT> to the way I was used to seeing them move. 

 LE> Well, I think those cartridges use wider tape and something like
 LE> the "helical scan" used on VCRs, so the track is a series of
 LE> diagoinal stripes laide down by a spinning head, set at an angle to
 LE> the tape. That way the speed of the tape past the *head* is faster
 LE> than the speed thru the tape transport rollers.

That sounds like the way DAT works,  if I'm not mistaken.  No,  these were
standard broadcast "carts",  which,  if I'm remembering right, 
run at 3-3/4 ips.  It was the reels I was referring to as
"crawling" -- they were 10.5" reels,  of what appeared to be
standard quarter inch tape.

I'm thinking this was one of those "easy listening" stations, 
where stuff that gets played is *so* processed that fidelity isn't a major
concern.

 RJT> Wow.  Are the old records marked,  or what?  I have some vague
 RJT> recollection of some sort of a mechanical speed control,  that would
 RJT> vary it just a bit.  This may have been on an *acoustic* record player
 RJT> -- no electronics in it at all.  I've seen a few of them. 

 LE> When I was a kid we had one of those old wind up record players for
 LE> quite a few years. 

I've seen a bunch of that sort of thing,  though not in recent years.  A
number of years ago I knew a guy who collected that kind of thing.  I'd
help out with the electronics portions,  while he re-did the cabinetry. 
Usually that involved changing out some tubes,  and replacing *all* of the
old paper capacitors with mylar ones,  plus the power supply filters.

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