Next time you pop in a cassette… oh wait. How about slot in a CD? Probably not either. You’d probably be listening to music through your portable music player or through the speakers of your computer. In fact, you’re probably listening to music without the help of any storage media such as a disc or a cassette, much less a reel that looks like this:

cc image by Erik Hartberg

Chun See blogs about his first tape recorder which he owned in the late 1960s. It looks similar to this one, and you can read about it here.