What is the transfer rate of an eight-track magnetic tape whose speed is 120 inches per second and whose density is 1600 bits per inch?

The transfer rate of a tape is the number of bits passing the read head per second. It equals the recording density times the tape speed.

$$\text{Transfer rate} = \text{density} \times \text{speed} = 1600 \times 120$$

$$\text{Transfer rate} = 192{,}000 \text{ bytes per second}$$

The eight tracks are read in parallel, so one bit from each track forms one byte at every position. Therefore the transfer rate is 192,000 bytes per second (about 1.54 million bits per second).