On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 15:00:48 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

A neighbor is cleaning out some stuff the former owner of her house left behind several years ago. Included is a roll of 2 1/4" wide highly polished aluminum?? tape. The code on the box is 4024603-1. The same code is on the spool itself.

A plastic spool? Bigger than the roll? I would have thought it was
a roll of duct tape, or tape, for hot locations. There was a roll of
aluminum tape the first owner of this house left behind when I bought
it. The furnace guy used stuff just like it to tape up (for some
crazy reason) the air intake in the flue of my oil furnace. And
another tech used it to tape up the hole where he had put the stack
thermometer during adjusting.

Does it have a sticky side?

I see from google that they are still selling recording tape with this
number, but so far no picture or description, except
http://www.wbparts.com/rfq/5826-01-109-5092.html calls it foil,
recording, but no dimensions. Any chance this refers to the foil
taped onto recording tape to tell the machine when it's come to the
end of the tape, or some other location. . I'm pretty sure no one
uses aluminum tape now to actually record on. .

For electronic recording purposes I thought they went straight from
wire recording (on metal wire) to tape recording using vinyl or
polyethylene tape (with FeO2 coating, not visible to the consumer
(even with a magnet?)) The brown tape, on both sides.

A date handwritten on the box is 7/24/76. Googling the part number seems to indicate it is some sort of recording tape, but I can't figure out what kind of recorder it it would go on.

Reel to reel metal tapes of that era were no wider than 1/2", if my memory serves me correctly. This tape seems to take a permanentcrease/depression if you push on the surface. It almost looks like the tape in an old lie detector machine, but those used regular pens from what I have seen on TV(never had one myself).

I had a lie detector test once. It was crap. They talk about people
who can fool the detector and get false negatives, but they don't talk
about jackass operators who report false positives. It was suggested
by my neurologist for medical reasons, just to do a running
measurement of my blood pressure, but the guy asked me if I wanted the
whole test and being curious, of course I said yes.

On the report, he lied several times about what I had said or he
removed all the context and changed the meaning. When he put my
words in quotes he didn't lie, but more than half of the things he
claimed I said weren't in quotes

And this was done by one of the leading guys at one of the leading
"lie" detector places in Chicago.

He fancied himself almost like a doctor. I was a teenager, and before
the test even started, he went out to the waiting room where my mother
was and told her, "Don't worry, Mrs. Misc07, we had a case like this
last week and it was all in his mind." It wasn't in my mind at
all. I had orthostatic hypotension, which just means I got light
headed if I stood up quickly, something at least 1/3 of Americans
have. I just have an strong version of it, and I can pass out long
enough to hit the floor, sometimes**, especially if I'm concentrating
or reading something difficult just before, especially in dim light.
It's related to the valsalva maneuver, except I don't do it on
purpose. I still would have episiodes except I've learned to spark
myself awake before I start to stand up. That only takes a
split-second.

**Falling to the floor and hitting my head on the floor has only
happened 3 times, but the first time was right in front of my mother,
when I was 13. I'm not surprised it scared her. It would have scared
me too if my kid did that. The GP and the first neurologist thought
it was epilepsy, but they should have known better. Epileptic fits
happen unpredicably, not when one intentionally stands up.

The lie detector guy was a jackass. Be sure to get a video/audio
recording of the whole session if you subject yourself to a so-called
"lie detector."

Anyone have any ideas what it was used for, and what I could do with it (polite comments only please).