“Shatters”
Yeah, that’s a challenge. I’ve been around tapes that powdered, though. When 3M’s 400 videotape had been around for a couple of years, those of us using it discovered trying to play back older shows resulted in a white powder clogging the video heads. It had something to do with the glue that held the oxide on the tape. At CBS, the tech crew created a jig that had a group of cloth rollers on it. You threaded the tape through it, then turned the roller slowly by hand as the tape dragged against the cloth. We ended up spending most of one summer dubbing two years worth of show masters to save them. The “baking” solution was discovered some time later.
“Shatters”
In the early days of reel to reel tape handlers we had quite a few “stretch tape” commands that somehow crept into the programs.
Never saw a shattered tape. Some looked like fermicelli, but never shattered. No way to splice that garbage together to get anything out of it.
I still have reels of 400 with bloopers and programming. Now if I could just find a working Ampex quad machine....
Yes, I remember that old magnetic tape could go brittle, but I’ve never seen it break like glass, which is what the author seems to be claiming.
Perhaps the tape snapped when the make-up feel fell off the spindle. That would have required a single splice to fix.
I think someone’s exaggerating.
Should say, take-up reel.
Darn autocorrect!