When I was first getting started in radio a long time ago and was learning the ropes, I remember being fascinated by carts and the machines that played them. There was something about the cartridges that held all the music, news reports, commercials and jingles that captured my imagination. 

It meant that - outside of the tape inside being mangled, a rare thing - you never had to worry about cueing up a record or a tape and there was less margin for error. And they sounded pretty good, too. 

In case you're not familiar with them, they looked a lot like an 8-track tape, but generally there was only one thing on it. And they would automatically recue themselves to the beginning once whatever was playing on it was finished.

You could also put a special inaudible tone on it to signal you when the song had 30 secs. left, so you could do other things while it was playing on air. And the label allowed you to list the outcue, the number of posts you could hit on any particular song and when the vocal started. What more could you ask for? 

It made being tight on air relatively easy - as long as they were properly cued and didn't misfire.(We always had an emergency cart with a song loaded up ready to go, just in case one of them malfunctioned.)

The reason this comes up again is that I came across this site that traces the various models of cart machines that were made going back to the very first prototype, way back in 1955! It was called the MacKenzie repeater and could play up to five tapes at once.



The computer age has wiped them out (do they even make them anymore?) But they sure were fun while they lasted.

By the way, the blue cart pictured below was one I kept as a souvenir. You might remember hearing it. It had Jim Brady's famous "Good Morning" shout out on it, that he used at the top of the hour at CFTR. Too bad I have nothing to play it on, so I haven't heard it in years. (Wonder if it's cued up?)