TECHNOLOGY - Nov. 24, 1992

Data Tapes: Odetics Inc. in Anaheim said it has signed agreements worth more than $49 million to sell its computer tape library systems to a variety of customers.

The company said the deals call for volume production of the automated tape libraries through 1997. In the libraries, a robotic arm automatically grabs computer data tapes from an archive and feeds them to a computer, which accesses the data it needs and then sends the tape back to archive.

Because the computer often must access a wide variety of data, the robot arm moves at high speeds, retrieving and storing tapes.