October 26th, 2005
Ampex VRX-1000 - The First Commercial Videotape Recorder
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
Take a look at this behemoth whenever you think technology is moving too slowly. What I didn’t realize is that the VCR dated back to the 1950’s, but sure enough, the very fist model made its debut in 1951 priced at a reasonable $50,000 with a recording time of 16 minutes per tape.
Research on recording video on tape was begun in the early 1950’s, and Bing Crosby Enterprises demonstrated a prototype system in 1951 that ran at 100 inches/second and had 16 minutes per reel. But the quality was poor. RCA demonstrated a better system in 1953, but it ran at 30 feet/second and only had 4 minutes per reel. The small Ampex Corporation came up with the ideas of using rotating heads, transverse scanning, and FM encoding which allowed broadcast quality recording at 15 inches/second and 90 minutes per reel.
The VRX-1000 set off a storm when it was demonstrated on April 14, 1956 at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters Convention, sending RCA and all the other VTR developers back to the drawing boards. The VRX-1000 was renamed the Mark IV and sold briskly at $50,000. Ampex dominated the broadcast VTR business for a number of years to come. The fourth person from the left in the above design team group photo is Ray Dolby, later of Dolby Laboratories fame. Source: CED Magic via Engadget
Alan F. Miller says:
I believe in addition to the transport that is shown, there was also at least one 7 foot rack of electronics (all tubes no solid state) as well.
October 27th, 2005 at 5:02 am
Ted Bruner says:
Actually the first Video Tape Recorder was not called VCR, because it was a VTR. Not until Beta-Max and another company (Curtis-Mathis) produced Cassettes - one like our “modern” cassettes and the other an “endless-loop” (much like the “carts” used in radio broadcasting and 4 & 8-track audio players of yesteryear) did the VTR (Reel-to-reel) become replaced with the VCR (Video-Cassette-Recorder). The reason was because, in order to produce a long enough swath for recording, the earlier versions required what came to be known as the “Omega-Loop” where a spinning head could cut a horizontal path on the tape which started the loop a “story” above and wind around the “Omega-loop” and exit just below where it entered. The reels were set on two stages for transport.
Sony changed the configuration and tilted the spinning heads. Their design “Vertical Helical Scanning” became the new standard and all tape sold today for non-commercial use is known as VHS. As soon as tape cassettes could remain on one horizon, the VCR became a household term and common item.
October 27th, 2005 at 9:16 am
Robert Wendell Kenney says:
I am interested in the v-pod. How much does it cost? What are its features?
I do know that the standard TV gives a sharper picture and costs less than the plasma or other comparable LCD or other display
October 27th, 2005 at 11:36 am
Raymond J. Combs says:
I was trained to work on these “stand alones” when Sears & Roebuck started selling them in the early ’70’s. I was “chosen” because I worked on the “reel-to-reel” machines in the Army. The humorous part was that when the customer bought one, the instructions on how to operate it were on a cassette! You had to play a tape to see how to set it up, and you had to set it up in order to see the tape on how to do it! BTW, the electronics unit (about 20×20x10 inches), was referred to as the “fish tank” because of the shape. You never repaired one, you replaced the whole thing and returned the “fish tank” back to the manufacturer.
October 27th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
Eric Tompkins says:
http://www.ampexdata.com/
Still in business.
October 28th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
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March 28th, 2007 at 6:10 am
ClapekDodki says:
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July 16th, 2007 at 7:49 am