Lately I've been thinking about magnetic tape preservation. I'd run across an excerpt of an article about baking tapes, written by Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead band. It was quoted in the current newsletter of the Annals of Improbable Research, a science comedy e-publication. They titled the item, "Baking by the Dead."
I'm not sure why it's supposed to be funny. Is the title a play on words?
Tape preservation is a serious matter to me, in that I've got dozens (probably more like hundreds) of old reels and cassettes of interviews, actuality (sounds), and air checks. They're mostly of and for my Asian American radio show, Gold Mountain, that ran on WPFW (89.3 FM, Washington, D.C.) from 1980 to 1995.
From my preliminary web surfing, I guess I would need to buy a food dehydrator that would provide an even temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The consumer convection ovens I checked don't seem suitable, in that they bake at higher temperatures.
I need to transfer the recorded content to a more stable, lasting media.
Some of the stuff, recorded on cheap tape and cassettes may not be recoverable. That would be a shame, because some of these people I interviewed are dead or the actualites have historical value.
Posted by raacluse at March 7, 2008 10:31 AM