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The Ampex Sign Is Coming Down (fastcompany.com)
harrymcc writes: If you ever watched anything on videotape, you have Silicon Valley pioneer Ampex -- which invented the technology -- to thank. And for years, the company's vintage sign has stood alongside Highway 101 as a tribute to its historical significance. But Stanford University, which owns the land the sign sits on, is in the process of dismantling it -- an act which Redwood City could have prevented but didn't. I wrote about this dismaying example of cultural shortsightedness at Fast Company.
About 25 years ago, I worked for a radio station as a sound engineer. They used open-reel tape decks as their main recording medium, and we had loads of Ampex 456 reels in use.
Now most tape manufacturers sold their tape on plastic reels. Ampex however used reels with aluminium flanges. Because we were always in a hurry when doing live radio, we engineers had the habit of braking the reels by hand when rewinding them. When doing that on a plastic spool, the worst that could happen was overheated fingers from the friction. On the Ampex reels however you had to beware of the 3 large holes in the flange; if you caught one of those, the aluminium would cut right through your fingers.
It's actually YOU that missed the point - Ampex didn't have a clue about tape recorder technology until it was able to examine tape machines brought back from Germany. The Nazis used wire recorders in the field, but it was (I think) Telefunken that designed and built large orchestra quality tape machines that the Nazis played back 24/7 over the air. An article back in the 70's examined this, and mentioned the the Allies couldn't believe that Hitler would keep orchestras playing on the air all night long. They got their answer when they captured the tape machines, and hauled them back to the US. While we were able to copy the machines, it took much longer to duplicate the tape, and until we did studios used and reused the original tape captured with those Telefunken tape machines. So it was actually war that brought tape recording into it's own, not peace.