Meet The Men Who Gave Us Videotape!
In the photo, you see the Ampex Videotape Team…the men who created the VR-1000 and revolutionized broadcasting. Pictured with this six man team is the unit Ampex took to Chicago for the legendary demonstration at the 1956 NAB Convention, to the amazement of all who attended.
In today’s next post, you will be able to read the fantastic first hand account of how all this happened by team member Fred Pfost. To give you an idea of what’s coming, here is Fred’s description of the events of the week of the demonstration in which Ampex took almost 100 orders for the $50,000 VR-1000.
“On April 16, 1956 (a Monday) we demonstrated the Mark lV recorder at an NARTB convention (National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters), today renamed the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters), at the Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago.”
“On the Saturday before the convention started (April 14) we demonstrated the recorder for about 300 CBS affiliates meeting at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. I recorded (from behind a curtain) the opening speech of Bill Lodge, V.P. of CBS, who described all the activities that CBS had been involved in during the past year and that he had a big surprise to announce. After I rewound the tape and pushed the play button for this group of executives they saw the instantaneous replay of the speech.”
“There were about ten seconds of total silence until they suddenly realized just what they were seeing on the twenty video monitors located around the room. Pandemonium broke out with wild clapping and cheering for five full minutes. This was the first time in history that a large group (outside of Ampex) had ever seen a high quality, instantaneous replay of any event. My wife, JoAnn, who had accompanied us to Chicago (as a reward from Ampex for her patience during my long overtime hours pursuing this development) and I consider this demonstration one of the most exciting experiences of our lives. The experience still brings tears to my eyes when I recall this event.”
Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Thank you boys!!
I had the pleasure of meeting 5 of the 6.
I’ve got that picture as my cell phone home page.
I always think good thoughts when I pass the Redwood City facility.
Thanks, Ray.
4 head 2 inch tape…handled a ton of it, still a gas to see this!
I thank them for giving me my 35-year career in television, starting out in the onair videotape room at Channel 7 in Sydney, operating Ampex machines.
I edited machine to machine for some time, an AVR1 player and a VR2000 edit recorder.
Great combination and subtracting the 36 frame preroll (1:11 in PAL) was my mathematical forte for years!
Get out your microscope and iron filings. We’re gonna edit!
I think about it everytime i look at my old vcr. I don’t care if it’s useless today. I do respect the history and the development of the video tape machines.
I LOVE this!
If I am not mistaken, this was almost a year after the actual first demonstration. I believe it was first shown to work in June of 1955, then in September, I was born. (to work on them!)
Great machine. The only problem surrounded the quad heads. On rare occasions the head would lose vacuum and shredded the tape. KTLA kept them going for years, keeping up with modifications until the AVR and ACR came out. The VR 1000 started it all. Now, you can store the same information in a chip.
We had 3 VR100’s at KVDO-TV in Salem, OR. I was the fastest tape loader! Haven’t needed that skill for a while!
Thanks for the great memories. The Quad was just on the way out when I graduated from Napa College in ’81. The class had a VR-1200. Funny, now I can record videos on my I-Phone, but still miss the old analog stuff at times… 🙂