You're a Listener and you don't get it... 

Ah, the bulk tape eraser... another relic from the golden days of radio and radio production. Digital has all but done away with the need for the bulk tape eraser. When you needed to start a production project with a "clean" reel of tape, you'd place this handy device over the reel of tape and press the button.. this created a huge magnetic field which erased the tape and also stopped your watch. Today such a device can be used to sabotage hard drives.

Today's new batch of production kids will never have touched a white grease pencil, splicing block, razor blade or bulk tape eraser... thanks to digital production systems. It's all done on the computer. No tape on the floor, no takeup reels spinning at twice the speed of sound and suddenly flying off the tape deckl, spewing tape everywhere. No splicing tape, no... well, now we're just giving away our ages. You see, back in the day, a production wizard really worked "hands on" so to speak. They truly earned the title "Wizard". What now takes five minutes to do could have taken hours to do back in the days when the bulk tape eraser was a necessity in every production studio.