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From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.audio,rec.video
Subject: Re: What is the life-time of magnetic tape?????
Message-ID: <38204@cup.portal.com>
Date: 19 Jan 91 03:13:30 GMT
References: <1991Jan17.183902.24474@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
  <1991Jan17.191341.12193@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 7

It seems to me that the "imprinting" phenomenon which slowly destroys
magnetic tape recordings could be eliminated by winding two tapes onto
a spool headed for storage: one tape holding the data and a second tape
with something to diffuse the magnetic field such as nickel metallization.
Or maybe a fairly thick tape, say 1 mil, would be enough to separate the
tape layers and prevent imprinting.  Or maybe just winding a blank tape
onto the same spool would be enough.  Has any of these ideas been tried?