Topic List

Click a topic to learn more.


Term of the Moment

full stack developer


Look Up Another Term


Definition: scratch tape


A magnetic tape that was used to store data temporarily and later reused. In the 1950s and 1960s, prior to disk drives becoming abundant, tapes were the only storage medium other than punch cards. Since memory (RAM) was limited, programs sometimes required one or more scratch tapes to temporarily hold data until the program was finished. See scratch disk and scratchpad.