Tape recording technology was used from the early days of computing to store digital information. As computer technology improved, so did magnetic tape technology. In the 1980s Digital Audio Tape (DAT) technology emerged. DAT is designed to work much like cassette, except DAT's magnetic patterns represent digital data instead of sound vibrations. This digital data is a digital audio recording which can be copied and reproduced with many different computer systems. Moving to digital takes the medium one step farther from the original sound. Instead of being a sound medium, the DAT is a data medium, and the data is a sound medium. This is more technically complex, but also more flexible. DAT has been used for many kinds of data recording, in addition to sound.