Obsolete technologies such as film never die, they just go back to the lab to reincarnate in a new application.
Films and tapes are rapidly going the way of the dodo: audio tape was wiped out by compact disc, DVD has all but completed the video cassette, and digital cameras are hunting down the last few surviving models that use film. But the businesses that perfected magnetic tape and photographic film are still around - even though sometimes in reduced circumstances - and they are busy thinking of new ways to use the stuff.
Most liquid crystal televisions, for example, include at least one of Fujifilm’s polarising films and at this week’s huge CEATEC consumer electronics show in Japan, TDK was showing prototypes of what you can do with tape.
One example was a sheet of transparent plastic, coated with conductive ITO film, that was picking up a pretty good Television signal even in the concrete cave of the Makuhari Messe. Make that work and the applications are obvious: your vehicle windscreen could be one giant aerial, or the screen of your Television could act as its aerial as well.
Another example was a sheet coated with a film that conducts heat. Again, if it can be made commercially, you could use it to stop heat escaping through windows or, potentially, to act as a heat sink.
You’re still going to have to get rid of all those old video cassettes, but the tape inside them has life in it yet, and so do the companies that make it.
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