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Comment by Anarch157a | Hacker News Reader

It's such a versatile product. I bet everyone here who's older than 45/50 have at least once used a Bic pen to rewind a cassete tape.

I also used the plastic clip as a stapler remover.

There were many other uses for it, for sure.

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The clip is also a superb stress-reliever by biting it :-)

Never tried myself but I know they were used to defeat older U locks for bikes.

For that job you needed one of the opaque round ones with a more flexible plastic. It had to friction fit over the centre of the keyway so it could deliver some torque as you were working the tumblers.

I'm not that older, but I had learned this trick, mainly when the device goes wrong and we need to fix the tape :)

cassettes were still popular 20y ago, you can probably take 15y off your estimate!

At least in my area, cassettes were still popular 30 years ago during the transition to CDs, but by 20 years ago we were in the midst of the transition from CD to iPod. I don't remember seeing new tapes for sale anywhere after about 2000, and we were definitely burning CDs full of MP3s before then instead of making mixtapes. Personally, I bought my last cassette around 1995. Your point still stands, however...I think cutting 10-15y off the estimate would be reasonable.

In my own case CD's, MP3 and cassette use have overlapped. MP3 players were expensive, Discmans were too big to fit in a small pocket. So walkmans were still useful. I used to record tunes and mixes from the radio at the time too as it was super quick to hit record on the ghettoblaster when listening to the radio provided you had a tape ready. So yes I was still using and listening to cassettes in the early 2000's.

as 32 year old, I can confirm I used BIC pen (or similarly shaped pencils) to rewinds tapes.

I always just used a pencil.

I usually had neither on me when needed, so I just used my pinkie.

That worked too, was just a bit more uncomfortable.

That's good for small rewinds, but with a Bic pen, you can rewind the whole tape as fast (maybe even faster than some) ad a tape deck. Just slide the pen in the spool and start spinning the cassete.

Like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So

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