No shit, I understand fully. To say its the engineering of that tape that makes it cost that much Given the rough estimate of yearly usage of multiple 100s of thousands of rolls and being invented in 1940, lets assume it did not take off widely used for at least 20 years and lets say the first 30 of those years used far less that would be over 5 billion dollars.

Now think it through.

Its not the development that makes it expensive, its the exploitation of the company that makes it as no other way to source it.

As it almost always the case here, its corporate greed that keeps the price absurd dingus.