In 1961, the first intelligent pig was run by Shell Development. It demonstrated that a self-contained electronic instrument could traverse a pipeline while measuring and recording wall thickness. The instrument used electromagnetic fields to sense wall integrity. In 1964 Tuboscope ran the first commercial instrument. It used MFL technology to inspect the bottom portion of the pipeline. The system used a black box similar to those used on aircraft to record the information; it was basically a highly customized analog tape recorder. Until recently, tape recording (although digital) was still the preferred recording medium. As the capacity and reliability of solid-state memory improved, most recording media moved away from tape to solid-state.