Vehicle audio is equipment installed in a car or other vehicle to provide in-car entertainment and information for the occupants. Until the 1950s, it consisted of a simple AM radio. Additions since then have included FM radio (1952), 8-track tape players, cassette players, record players, CD players, DVD players, Blu-ray players, navigation systems, Bluetooth telephone integration and audio streaming, and smartphone controllers like CarPlay and Android Auto. Once controlled from the dashboard with a few buttons, they can be controlled by steering wheel controls and voice commands.
A DIN head unit with radio and CD
1937 Philips Auto Radio. Weighing 24 kg and taking 8 litres of space, it was floor mounted with a wired remote control to be fitted to the dashboard.
A 1950s Philips car radio using both transistor and valves. This model used a range of valves that only required 12 volts for their plate (anode) voltage.
A car stereo head unit in a dashboard
The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips, the Compact Cassette was released in August 1963. Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either containing content as a prerecorded cassette (Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette—the generic term cassette tape is normally used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity.
A TDK SA90 Type II Compact Cassette
Wollensak portable reel-to-reel tape recorder
Operating instructions for the Philips/Norelco Cartridge Tape Carry-Corder 150 (1964)
One of the first cassette recorders from Philips, the Typ EL 3302 (1968)