Over a few beers last night I was chatting to colleagues Bryan Glick and Mark Samuels and the three of us - all of a roughly similar vintage - wound up reminiscing about the days when you might compile a tape to catch the ear of some fancied other. We ended up wondering if today’s youth, more familiar with crashed iPods and corrupted files than chewed tape and scratched vinyl, would even comprehend what a C90 was. So, being journalists, we investigated...

We seized on a passing example of the modern breed - one of the company's graduate trainees. As feared, talk of blank tapes produced thoroughly blank looks. So I attempted to explain the concept of the compact cassette, and C90’s dominance due to being the right length for holding the contents of a home-taped LP.

Sadly this simply deepened our victim's frown of incomprehension. “What’s an LP?” she asked. Further explanation triggered recognition of "those square things" her dad owns.

It’ll come to her too, of course. As Bryan pointed out, some day in the future she will find that the younger recruits will puzzle over the term Facebook. Give it 20 years and young people will probably think Facebook means those folders of 2D photos that grandma still looks at on her ancient laptop.