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Video Tape Recorder Unveiled 50 Years Ago
Argyle writes "50 years ago Ampex unveiled the first video tape recorder. TV Technology has an excellent story about the surprise launch of the video tape recorder, impacting almost every aspect of business, entertainment, and family life as we know it today. The enabler of the entire modern entertainment industry, the video tape recorder was was designed by only six men, Charles Ginsburg, Charles Anderson, Ray Dolby, Shelby Henderson, Alex Maxey, and Fred Pfost."
Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.
Simple concept, complex implementation. If you RTFA you know that other companies were working on the same problem and didn't manage to pull it off. These six guys did the job and won the day for Ampex, which I only previously knew as the company that made the best vt220 clone I've ever used (ignorance abounds.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, difficult to believe... if you're 16 years old. Jesus, it was less than 20 years ago that VCRs became ubiquitous.
Tell that to someone without a DVR... I was just digitizing VHS tapes the other day, and the memories came flooding back, of eaten tapes, tons of visual glitches, tapes deteriorating from age or repeated recordings, etc. Magnetic tape recording seems very iffy, even today.
That whole article is a waste of time. Extremely verbose and filled with hyperbole, and yet very little to say.
I strongly recomend the (defacement-proof link) Wikipedia Ampex article which I found infinitely more informative and concise than this article, when I was reading up on the history of broadcast a few weeks ago.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"If you RTFA you know that other companies were working on the same problem and didn't manage to pull it off."
I did RTFA, did you GMFP? It wasn't a "put more people on it" kind of problem. Try to imagine putting 100 software developers to write a new version of Notepad, and you'll start to see what I mean.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I watched cartoons untill i was about 10, got a computer and have never watched tv since, thought im only 20 now so much easier to ditch tv when it can be replaced by something more interactive.
Life imitates The Onion.
Bulk storage of data is so pervasive these days. Perhaps none of us really appreciate what a challenge this was.
I remember when I was 13 or so. My computer had a 300 baud modem to store data on casette. My uncle had a reel to reel audio recorder and I used to fantasize about getting 9600 baud out of it. That would have been some incredible storage system.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
...because it is irrevocably tied to a bunch of other stuff in a big tangle of cables.
Cristopher Columbus broke asked a question "How do you make an egg stand on its end?"
Listen, I'm pretty sure the video tape recorder was not invented by someone posting drunk on slashdot.
"Bulk storage of data is so pervasive these days. Perhaps none of us really appreciate what a challenge this was."
I understand that it was a challenge. Read the sentence immediately following the one you quoted. I wasn't saying it wasn't a big f'n deal. I wasn't saying that those guys didn't do incredible work. I wasn't even saying that their work was overrated. What I was saying that the significance of 'only six men' is virtually nil. 100 men wouldn't have made it go faster. It wasn't a 'throw more people' at it problem.
Honestly, guys.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. I dropped my usage down to zero when I moved into a small unit, and didn't have room for the large and rather old set I had, so it went to my sister. It's been almost 10 years without TV now.
What I find constantly amazing is seeing otherwise intelligent people I know watching the pure shit on television. Whether it's re-runs of the stuff I used to watch or new stuff, it's all really poor.
I too couldn't see how bad it was until going a few years without a tele.
We had one of the first betamax videos when they came out. We had it for a couple of months ... during the world cup in Mexico my father sat up until 2am programming the thing to record every game. Then a few weeks later some ****ers broke into the house and stole the thing, along with all my father's world cup tapes. By that time VHS was taking over, and since we didn't know anyone who'd had a VHS stolen, we replaced those lovely DAT-like betamax tapes for the horror, the horror, of chewed VHS tape.
Tape rules, bring back the audio cassette (only this time clean yer heads and don't use anything bigger than a C60).
Simple concept? No, it isn't. Transverse recording is a major jump in technology from longitudinal recording. It enables head to tape speeds far in excess of that possible with longitudinal recording. It requires a complex rotating head assembly and very close attention to tape handling. A friend of mine used to use one of these beasties, modified for improved performance, to record image data from the LANDSAT-1 satellite. It was the only tape machine that could do the job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is cool because it reminds us what can happen when a *real* innovation is created, instead of version X+1 of existing software program with new feature Y.
People go crazy, you make more money than you can dream of, the world changes.
That's what geeks should dream to do...
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Yup. My wife and myself have been TV-free since 10/10/2004. It's somewhat curious how I find myself outright offended at some of the stupidity and out-of-control consumerism that advertising promotes (lost another viewer to Ditech!). The most TV we catch is usually when we go over my parents' house to visit, but despite the 100+ channels they have, there seems to be nothing interesting on. Raising kids w/o television is going to be an interesting ride, though.
One thing I have found that I really enjoy is listening to the ballgame on the radio. It's an amazing experience if the commentators are good (WEEI Boston is the best in this arena, IIRC).
I've also been accused of gloating as well. To each their own, however.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
... there wasn't widespread belief of a flat Earth at the time of Christopher Columbus. This misconception is generally attributed to Washington Irving.
We Build Beautiful Websites
Simple concept with a huge barrier to overcome, but still a simple concept. ...says the marketing guy to the engineer. ;)
If you are not in marketing, you should be.
Neither did it create a truly new product kinescope already existed and provided a pretty similar function. Just slower.
So what this really proves is that most tech is based on other tech and that devices wich the average human considers revolutionary are in fact evolutionary.
Funny that even after reading an article that constantly mentions how the various parts of the video recorder existed before you still claim to be innovative.
It is, but because they got existing tech to work better and together.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yup, I stopped watching tv a few years ago, and now I'm utterly addicted to pointless internet activity. In fact, I'm indulging the addiction right now.
I'm not. I have been without a television for four years now, and I love switching it on when I'm staying at hotels. The great thing with a television is that it shows you things you didn't know you were looking for. You switch it on, and a story, some images or some facts you didn't know anything about come to you. The only reason I haven't bought one, is that I cannot see how I could make time to both watch television and do all the other things I do.
There are of course some areas of the world where the available programs are less inspiring than elsewhere, but on the whole, I think it is a great invention.
" ...says the marketing guy to the engineer. ;) If you are not in marketing, you should be."
Heh. Actually I'd rather be the PHB. "Video recording is a big complicated problem. If we hire 1,000 engineers, we'll have this problem licked by next week!"
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The question at the time was of the size of the earth, and whether there were more landmasses to be found west of Europe (aside from those already discovered by going east).
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Well almost, I have a PVR and I use it to record 'the sky at night'and other science based shows shown on the BBC here in the UK, I can't watch everything else that passes for entertainment these days.
"Simple concept? No, it isn't. Transverse recording is a major jump in technology from longitudinal recording."
I think the point is widely being missed here. If only six men built the Great Wall of China, that would be worthy of a number of exclamation points. It isn't so easy to measure a leap of technology by the number of people who were or weren't involved in developing it. It's sort of like saying the only 3 cans of Mountain Dew were consumed while developing the MP3 algorithm.
"Derp de derp."
then went back to my Clancy novel
Isn't that what they call "out of the frying pan, into the fryer?"
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Babe, do what I do, choose not to watch it; thats
what an adult would do; you have the power right
there in your hands.
Yes, you made that choice to drop television, BUT
at the same time, what gives you the right to some how
unilaterally start imposing your values on those
who may not share them.
And yet you post and read /.? So much for making good use of all that extra time!
/. and posting your personal opinions is what does it for you, great! But don't look down your nose at other people just because they enjoy something you don't.
Really though, at different point in my life I have gone without TV, and I just don't get the whole "TV sucks" thing. Just like anything else, there are good shows, and there are bad shows. There is stupid stuff, and there is really enlightening stuff. Besides, some people need to just unwind sometimes.
I mean, I have been 10 years now without a car, and I could certainly make comments like "What I find constantly amazing is seeing otherwise intelligent people I know throwing away tens of thousands of dollars just so they can be fat and lazy and not have to walk to the store." By the same token I haven't gotten drunk in years and I could say "What I find constantly amazing is seeing otherwise intelligent people I know pay money to kill off brain cells." However, I realize that it is a gross oversimplification to even think that way.
People do what pleases them. If reading on
Very nostalgic, for those of us who work with broadcast VTR's on a daily basis. I can still thread a quad machine in a pinch, but even I can't wait to get rid of tape completely.
The next generation of broadcasters are going to look at tape like we look at recording on wax cylinders.
Good to see it's beginning, and even better to see its end. It's time has passed.
How the hell do you interpret this guy's decision to give up TV and his asking if anyone else has as "unilaterally ... imposing your values on those who do not share them?"
Are you stupid or crazy or angry or what?
What if the guy sold his car and started walking to work? Or he finally bought a car and no longer had to take the bus? Or made any change in his life he was glad he did and wanted to know if anyone else had?
Yeah that prick would really be imposing his views on the rest of us.
Insert witty sig here.
That's what Vasari says, in his Lives of the Artists (1550): http://www.fordham.edu/HALSALL/basis/vasari/vasari 5.htm
Getting more or less back on topic: if you're sick of television, get a digital video recorder (DVR). That sounds like a contradiction, after all why would you want a recorder for the stuff you hate, but a DVR will help you skip the crap and find the gems. Especially if you record some stuff that you never heard of, stuff that the guys around the water cooler never discuss, and stuff that airs at 3am.
A DVR really is a lot more than just a VCR with a hard disk. I find myself watching less TV but seeing a lot more, quality-wise. No more channel surfing! Instead, you'll be program-surfing: picking and recording shows, and then watching whatever fits your current mood. No tapes to swap, no finding blank tapes to record new stuff, no difficult programming, easy selection of shows on the on-screen tv guide, skipping commercials: these may be relatively small improvements over tape-baced VCRs, but they add up to making this new way of watching TV possible. I can highly recommend a DVR to people who don't want to spend a lot of time in front of the TV, but aren't ready to throw it out.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Word up! That's what I'm talking about.
I haven't owned a TV for years for various reasons. But I am not one of these elitist TV ascets that everybody hates. Some folks believe that throwing out their TV instantaneously increases their IQ by 20 points. That isn't the case.
In fact the TV provides certain informations that you can't or won't easily get otherwise. A lot of politics and news is boring, yet important. I can watch a newscast about a financial scandal or party politics, but I wouldn't read about it, if I could choose to read other stuff.
(Here in europe, the political landscape is changing over time. New parties form, some split, others join and some disappear, so you have to keep on top of these things)
TV is low effort. This is btw. why many in more stressfull jobs who don't have the luxury of unproblematic internet access during the day, like to watch TV. Hunting for information on the Internet, or reading a complicated newspaper is no fun after a long day of hard work.
Also, the TV gives its viewers a set of common and current references and stories that can be used to start small talk. That's very practical.
Well this analogy is kind of flawed. It would be a good analogy, if car users admitted outright that they just like to drive cars and to possess them as status symbols and would always prefer them to cheaper, quicker and less stressful means of transportation. Instead they come up with all of these lame rationalizations for car driving. Over here in europe, this is totally ridiculous. We do have great bike lanes and cheap and realiable public transportaion 24/7 on one hand and traffic jam plus scarce parking space on the other. In my town, the majority doesn't own a car, yet everybody somehow manages to do everything from commuting to shopping to raising kids.
Yet the car drivers among my coworkers insist that all of this is absolutely impossible to do without a car.
These same folks complain about high gaz-prices every six months or so, whining that it is impossible live anymore and concocting wild conspiracy theories about which evil polititions and companies are allegedly ripping them off.
Also, car use has a huge environmental footprint. Oil can and should be put to better uses.
Here in europe, the political landscape is changing over time.
and
Over here in europe, this is totally ridiculous. We do have great bike lanes and cheap and realiable public transportaion 24/7
Not sure in what oparadise you live in, but Here in Europe, this is not the case. Just state your country and don't geberalize these things. Not all countries in Europe are the same and/or have identical problems or solutions.
Where I live (Belgium) there is no 24/7 public transport to speak of. Many busses drive till 20:00. No good bike lanes, so the asshole bikes think they own the road (and don't stop for pedestrians either)
The larger parties here have changed name, but nothing shocking happening. Nothing you would not notice in other meadia or just by talking with people about politics.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The time was ..... 12:00 .... 12:00 .... 12:00 ..... 12:00 .... 12:00 .... 12:00
(Apologies to those of you who are 30yo and have no idea what I'm talking about).
There was a film a couple of years back about Hogan's Heroes' Bob Crane called "Auto Focus" starring Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe. He was one of the first to use the new "portable" VTR from Sony for sex video's. I googled up this: http://crimemagazine.com/bobcrane.htm
They unleashed a monster. Could have nipped it in the bud back in the 50's.
Geez. Well if it makes you sleep better, let me proclaim the following: All uses of the phrase "here in europe" in my initial comment are supposed to refer only to the better parts of europe.
Don't forget that whenever we hear about new galactic phenomenon, the news is always millions of years old.
Actually, people had established experimentally for at least a couple of thousand years prior to Columbus that the earth was round.
Much of the population and lots of politicians were unfamiliar with science at the time, but that hasn't changed.
With the internet there is no reason to own a TV anymore, you can just download episodes of TV shows and watch them whenever the hell you want.
Have you metaroderated recently?
The "TV sucks" comments come probably for three major reasons:
1. It's a generational thing. Older people always remember some media when they grew up was different (TV, music, movies) and the new stuff is different and "not how it should be", so it tends to "suck" or just not tend to appeal to them. This also works in reverse with the younger generations watching older stuff.
2. With the advent of videogames and the internet, the younger generations are used to more interactive media. TV is passive, even though they try to make it more superficially interactive (Game shows where you can go online to win a small prize, etcetera), so it is probably aging without anybody really acknowledging the fact.
Actually, to counter this, I've noticed niche programming really get better (and more numerous) the last 10 years as they are catering to smaller and smaller audiences. Of course, the big 3 networks don't do this.
3. It really does suck - the catchall:)
I'm probably a mix of 1 and 2. When I was still watching TV, the only shows I considered worth watching were on comedy central and the discovery/history channels. The big 3 especially seemed like a big waste of time, as everything has either become a reality show, a game show, a psychic-type show, or a CIS-type show. All the great Sit-coms seem to have died with the 90's/early 00's.
for the dupe!
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Actually, it wasn't the only way. In the late 1920s, back when cameras were still mechanical-scan, there were people in the UK who had hooked up vinyl disc recorders (search for "phonovision") to their primitive television sets and recorded a few programs. Not only did they record programs, but they actually used them for time-shift viewing!
The video recorder wasn't trivial. The problem was getting enough octaves of bandwidth for the video signal. And the bandwidth was directly related to the head-to-tape speed. Using transverse or helical scan (transverse scan is really just helical scan at a very sharp angle), you can increase the head speed enough for video. Later, color added another problem, and a technique called "color under" was used which shifted the chroma information to another band.
Laserdisc isn't really much different, except that it has enough bandwidth to not need color-under. And no, just because it has pits and non-pits, it is NOT digital, though the audio can be. The distance between the pit edges represents a wideband analog signal, with four sub-bands for audio and one for video.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Some of the stories on Slashdot can be a bit dated, but this happened fifty years ago and /. is only reporting on it now?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Why no national holiday? The VCR did more to take Pornography from the seedy theater into your homes. In fact, were it not for the VCR, many people would still be thinking of motor oil whenever the subject of 'lube' came up.
Yep, you know some of them still think they invented the computer too, another British achievement that was less publicised than the american version half a decade later.
A good show like that is BETTER on DVD. I don't have cable anymore, but I can't stand these people who go on about, "I don't own a TV" They are just trying to take on a cause, and a pretty weenie wimpy one as well.
Loved that Onion article!! Glad to see you've got a sense of humor about what, while an increasing trend, still seems a bit of an idiosyncrasy. As you mentioned, difficult with children -- probably not impossible, but Very difficult. For me, there is still enough quality stuff on, which if you truly are sans TV, you have shoved in your face every time you mention it. In a way, I am the other stereotype -- the TV snob who would do without a TV were it not for X, Y and Z... with X, Y and Z showing my astute taste in the finer things in life and oh, also not mentioning the other crap that sneaks into my TV diet as a result of the beast being in the room. The DVR has turned the TV into a new animal. For those of us who can't 'do without', it does allow us to minimize our time in front of the Glass Teat as Harlan called it...
If you've ever seen the Anime OAV "Otaku no Video" you might remember the guy who was a videotaping freak. That was me from about 1987 until 2 years ago when I canceled my cable TV. I have boxes and boxes and shelves full of VHS tapes, primarily of movies and TV series, but also stuff from my tape trading days. It used to be that you couldn't download fansubbed anime, you would have to trade tapes with people. Tape traders lived by a strict code. No money was to change hands...you "repaid" your fellow tape trader with blank tape and stamps, or a nominal sum to cover blank tape and postage. If a legit release came out of a particular title, you stopped circulating the tape.
I have been thinking about getting a DVD recorder, but have been hesitant due to the expense. However, they are coming down in price. And now that I have a camcorder (thank you eBay) I have a need to burn footage to DVD+R to free up the expensive little DV tapes it consumes. And they *are* expensive, dammit. $4/tape! Damn, I remember when Maxell, TDK and Fuji VHS tape were that price...now they're a buck a tape or less.
It's amusing to look at my little chibi-DV camcorder and think about the gargantuan machine Ampex built. The thing fits in the palm of my hand. The tapes are about 2" x 1" x 1/4". And you can hear the mechanism wrapping the tape around the helical scan drum just like with any other videotape format. And DV tape is on its way out as a standard, replaced by mini-DVD and in camera hard drives. Looks like DV tape is going to eventually wind up at Total Rewind on display. Oh well, it's working for me now.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Raising kids w/o television is going to be an interesting ride, though.
Its probably going to be easier than you expect. When you and I were growing up (assuming your age from wife/no kids/planning), everybody watched TV. Lunchroom chatter was about TV. Sometimes I watched stuff I didn't care about just to not be left out of the next day's conversation.
Nowadays, why would kids watch TV when they can sit at the computer after school and stay in constant contact? Now the responses to "Did you see (modern replacement for SNL)?" will be "Nah, I was busy", "I tivoed it", "I watched (something else from the 500 channel) instead", "Who cares".
The golden age of TV is defintely over. Our kids probably won't even care.
An old (1970?) copy of Audio magazine toured Hugh Hefner's 'Playboy Mansion' and gave details of his gear and gadgets. A big reel-to-reel video recorder was pictured along with a library of Hef's favorite movies. Wow. Watch whatever movie you wanted, right in your living room. Hot stuff for the day.
But 50 years ago, they didn't realize that any idiot would be able to go out with a $100 video camera and take countless videos of their friends doing stupid stunts with absolutely no meaning. No theme, no posture, just footage of people jumping off of buildings.
Everyone's favorite Jewish kid!
MPAA celebrates 50 years surviving in the uneven battle with the evil video recorders.
And they still got enough money to sue kids and grandparents too! Yei!
If you had read the fucking article would have known that they mention VERA and how much it sucked. It moved tape at 16 feet per second and could only record 15 minutes at 3Mhz while Ampex ran 15 inches per second and recorded 90 minutes at a full 4Mhz. The article should have been posted as the first pratical VTR.
One of which was the series "Tribal Life" on the Travel Channel depicting the life of the Bunlap tribe on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu.
Locust Valley High School, circa 1974 - 1980:
My "high tech" junior high and high school was wired for video. Most classrooms had a coax port on the wall . . . nor for "cable" TV but for local transmission.
As I recall, there were maybe four channels.
The A.V. room had a funky old rack unit with a patch panel and a couple of small B&W monitors. Feeding into this were three reel-to-reel video tape machines: Two half-inch, plus one giant 1" Ampex. (Near the end of my high school years we got a video cartridge machine; nothing you'd be familiar with. The carts were huge, pre-VHS and pre-Beta.)
There were also units on wheels we could trundle into classrooms that didn't have the connection. There were maybe three or four video cameras as well; these were not self-contained, and had to be plugged into a reel-to-reel unit.
There were no commercially available tapes to speak of. We recorded stuff off of the air, mostly from PBS. (There MIGHT have been a timer available, but maybe I'm imagining that!)
Now, the nerd pay-off:
One of the senior AV guys (Richard Salz?) figured out a neat trick. He connected a camera to VTR "A", and the patch panel monitor to VTR "B." He then ran a tape from the "source" reel of "A", past "A"'s recording head, across a foot of space, over "B"'s recording head, and into "B"'s "sink" reel.
He then pointed the camera at the monitor, creating a "tunnel" effect . . . monitors nested in monitors.
Bear with me.
When you waved a hand between the camera and the monitor, it appeared in the FIRST of the nested monitor images on screen.
A few seconds later -- the time it took for the tape to travel from the recording head of "A" to the play head of "B" -- the waving hand appeared in the next nested monitor image..
And so on, until you could see just a blur in the inmost-visible nested monitor image.
Um, OK, I guess you had to be there.
We had one of the first betamax videos when they came out.
I still have one! Free to a good home - want it? (Warning: you pay shipping.) E-mail me, slant6mopar@yahoo.com. If I could find my digital camera (damned miniturization makes things get lost easily!), I'd put photos online. It's a 1975 Sony top-loader with mechanical tuners, and *only supports Beta I* (effectively, SP only - no LP or EP speeds). If there's interest, I'll actually pull it out of the closet and copy down the model number. FOB Ottawa, Canada.
We had it for a couple of monthsHeheh... can you imagine the back injuries? Until the end of Betamax, they were always heavy machines, with a good strong steel chassis. Lovely pieces of work, far more reminiscent of their broadcast quality 3/4" U-Matic brothers than the pedestrian VHS crap.
By that time VHS was taking over, and since we didn't know anyone who'd had a VHS stolen, we replaced those lovely DAT-like betamax tapes for the horror, the horror, of chewed VHS tape.Yah. VHS uses what's called an "M-load" design, while Betamax, 3/4" and all professional formats use a U-load design. While VHS had that Rube Goldberg bicycle-chain-pulls-the-threaders design, everything else had a threading ring which simply rotated and threaded the tape - a lot simpler and less dependent on mechanical tolerances than the multilinks of the VHS threader.
Both machines can chew tape, but even new (and "improved") VHS machines are still criminally reprehensible in the face of Betamax.
Tape rules, bring back the audio cassette (only this time clean yer heads and don't use anything bigger than a C60).Cassettes are crap. Stick with OGG/MP3 for portable use and FLAC for anything serious!
On the other hand, it's a hell of a lot of fun to fire up my Ferrograph, and watch the tape fly by at 15IPS every now and then. Yeah, there's something really deliciously tactile about the analog formats, especially with a good quality machine - the snaps of solenoids, the hum of threading motors, the whirr of the capstan motor.
Having worked as a maintenance and production technician at a TV station during the dying days of Quad, I miss most the "WWWOOOOoooowwww..." of the brakes stopping a full 6lb reel of tape at the end of a rewind cycle. I still have a few scars on my hands from trying to change a tape before the reel stopped, with the director screaming "We're live! We're live!" in my ClearCom.
[sigh]
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yeah, there's nothing like getting the family gathered around the computer desk to watch a 19" LCD (I'm being generous)
but 'only six men'... So?
More likely, only six men got the credit.
If I really am talking out of my ass...explain it to me with respect so I'll at least pull my ears out to listen.