Quantegy files for bankruptcy.

Another small milestone of sorts passed by a week or so ago, as Quantegy, the last manufacturer of 2“ studio quality tape filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As with many people in their 30's I remember when CD's first came out and how much better they were touted as playing and sounding (wow and flutter were effectively unmeasureable) and I vividly remember those impressive scratch/gouge demonstrations. However, the potential demise of Quantegy as a going concern reminds us all that we should maintain some reservations about combining the words "digital" and "archive" in the same sentence. I love iTunes, and iPhoto, and my academic and other writing is very important to me, but I wonder how I’m going to preserve all of my work - turning to photocopies, printouts hardly seems like the solution (especially in terms of space). At any rate, it's a lot to keep track of.

Tape had it's heyday in the period running from the middle of the 1940's through to the beginning of the 1980's. Basically it’s claimed that anything put onto tape since it came into being in the 1930's can still be played back today - often with a high degree of fidelity. It's salutory to compare this with the reality of digital copies and archives and the notion of a "digital master - perfect forever". Perfect yes, but held on what media? Since I started with computers I've recorded data on cassette tapes, 5 1/4" floppies, 3 1/2" floppies, memory sticks, CDR's, and hard drives that I've sealed and stored. Already I struggle to read back copies of data preserved for the moment on 800k 3 1/2” floppies. USB floppy drives won’t read them.

Hopefully Quantegy will be able to get the US$10 million investment that it's CEO, Richard Lindenmunth believes would be enough to save the company.