Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Early Color Television Message-ID: Date: 3 Mar 91 00:44:31 GMT Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News) Reply-To: Scott Dorsey Organization: NASA Langley Research Center Lines: 89 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 174, Message 3 of 9 Originator: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: hub.eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu In article bilver!bill@uunet.uu.net (Bill Vermillion) writes: >>> There were NO commercial video tape machines available before about >>> 1961. >> Two corrections: >> As for VTRs, Ampex rolled out its first machine at the NAB convention >> in 1953. CBS bought the first for something in the neighborhood of >> $100,000. > They may have shown that early, but none were availaale until about > 1960 on a commerical basis. This was the early Quad format VTR. It was B&W only, and used 2" instrumentation tape. For more details on Ampex's development of the format, take a look at the article on the history of magnetic recording in {Broadcast Engineering} magazine (sometime late in '89). While Ampex did make a Quad machine in '53, and while it was very popular among the networks for cross-country time delay, it was extremely expensive. The heads had to be replaced on a regular basis and it ate up 2" instrumentation tape at an amazing rate. If the tape jammed (as it did quite frequently), a vapor cloud of oxide would quickly appear around the head drum as the tape coating disintegrated. Because of the price, it didn't appear in local stations that quickly. The quality wasn't all that much better than the kinescopes that it replaced, though it didn't require several hours of processing. While Ernie Kovacs showed that the tape could be edited, it was very difficult to do, required frequent resplices, and made the format almost impossible to use for program production. Basically, there were two types of programs. Some were done live, and others were produced on film for later broadcast through flying spot scanners. (Anybody else ever used a Rank Telecine out there?) The programs produced on film didn't move over to video production until the late sixties when good electronic editing became available (if there can be such a thing). The programs done live for cross-country broadcast began using tape for delay in the later time zones as soon as it became available. Very few programs are done live anymore. This is more a change due to creative evolution than technical developments. Slickness is very much valued in modern production. Actually, producing programs on film and then scanning them for broadcast stayed on for a long time, because of the difficulty of editing, and the fact that the film resolution was (and still is) much better than videotape. 16mm Kodachrome has 12,500 lines of resolution (equivalent to a TV image with 25,000 scanlines). A lot of programs are still created on film, though they are distributed on tape or over network feed. >> Bing Crosby was a major force behind the invention because >> he hated doing his show live on the West Coast and having it sent on >> kine to the East. I was recently digging through old copies of >> "Broadcasting" and came across an article describing how the first >> machines would work. At the time this article was written, Ampex had >> not yet been chosen as the manufacturer. > Right man, Crosby, but the wrong machine. > Crosby was instrumental in the development of the first AUDIO tape > recorder. > In those days the disk recorder manufacturers were also moving into > audio tape machines. I have seen reel to reel machines from Presto > and RCA. Scully came along much later. The Ampex 200 recorder became available in 1949. A lot of folks bought them. Basically, once the idea of AC bias became known, it became easy for anyone to build a pretty good recorder. The Ampex 300 was introduced a year or two later; I still use an Ampex 350 (the "portable" version of the 300) for recording. The 300 really became popular; there wasn't a radio station in the country that didn't buy one, and many of them are still using them. Scully, RCA, Presto (ugh), etc. came out with their own machines, usually licensing the Ampex and Rangertone patents. They were all great improvements over the awful transcription discs. > First tape recorder I got to use was an old Brush Sound-Mirror about > 1950-51 in school. Bought a wire rerorder with hard saved money in > 1953. I have great pity upon you. Did you ever get it to keep a constant speed? scott