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Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or eight-track, is a...

Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or eight-track, is a magnetic tape sound recording technology, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, primarily in the US (it was relatively unknown in many European countries). Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Motorola and RCA Victor Records (RCA). It was a further development of the similar Stereo-Pak four-track cartridge created by Earl "Madman" Muntz. A later quadraphonic version of the format was known as Quad 8 or Q8. The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made widely available in the late 1940s. However, threading tape into the recorders was more difficult than simply putting a disc onto a phonograph player. Manufacturers introduced a succession of cartridges which held the tape inside a metal or plastic housing to eliminate handling. The first was RCA, which in 1958 introduced a cartridge system called Sound Tape or Magazine Cartridge Loading, but until the introduction of the Compact Cassette in 1963 and Stereo 8 in 1965,