Life forever changed on April 14th...

[oldschooler]

That is the day that AMPEX demonstrated commercially-viable 2" quad videotape. A brief excerpt from http://www.lionlmb.org/quad/theory.html, picking up the story in the early Spring of 1956:

"...The Mark IV was finished, and several improvements were made. Work continued nights and weekends to prepare for the big show. Finally, the machine was broken down into many pieces and shipped to Chicago. Meanwhile, the Mark III was given a cosmetic facelift, and prepared for demonstration to the press in Redwood City, CA. (Home of Ampex). This demonstration was to take place the day the NARTB convention opened in Chicago. Unfortunately, this machine developed severe problems just before the NARTB team left for Chicago. A team (Headed by Ray Dolby, I believe) was left behind to fix the Mark III, and the rest headed for Chicago.

When everything was put back together in Chicago, the Mark IV was making the best pictures it had ever made. However, some CBS engineers said, predictably, 'It isn't good enough'. So, two feverish days of tweaking followed, and the performance goals were met. This was also aided by the delivery of some tape samples that were the best yet seen. (The development of these tape samples by 3M is another interesting story!) Meanwhile, the Redwood City crew solved the problems with the Mark III. All was now ready for the demonstration, both to take place on the opening Saturday of the NARTB convention.

The demonstrations, first for the CBS affiliates meeting, and then the general convention delegates was a bombshell. The Redwood City demonstration was a complete success as well. As a result, Ampex was flooded with orders. It is said that some orders were even taken on napkins! In any case, the videotape machine was an instant, astounding success!"

Yes, that is the same Ray Dolby who developed the noise-reduction system for sound.

And the rest, as they say, is history. It's a shame that you will see likely no celebration of this fact anywhere except on this board.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Wasn't the Mark IV prototype eventually mass-manufactured as the VR-1000, Ampex's first videotape machine??

For many years, broadcast videotape machines used reel-to-reel tape that was two inches wide. With that format having been abandoned, time is probably running out to find two-inch videotapes and remaster them in other formats (especially digital) used today for archival purposes.

 

[Stanislav]

I've read of that day before -- the "demonstration" consisted of a camera taping some of the speakers' remarks and panning the crowd, the they played it back on a monitor set up on stage. There was complete silence for a few seconds, and then the entire audience broke into hearty, spontaneous applause. Not surprising, as video tape technology was a huge leap forward.

 

[oldschooler]

> Wasn't the Mark IV prototype eventually mass-manufactured as
> the VR-1000, Ampex's first videotape machine??
>
> For many years, broadcast videotape machines used
> reel-to-reel tape that was two inches wide. With that format
> having been abandoned, time is probably running out to find
> two-inch videotapes and remaster them in other formats
> (especially digital) used today for archival purposes.
>
Indeed. Talking with an old friend at one northeast VHF outlet in 2004, he said (read: claimed) that there were only two working machines in the northeast: One in Maine, another in NYC. I would bet there would be more than just one in NYC, considering that's the home of the big 3. I also read on the web -- many years ago -- that a guy had a working model in his home in Rochester, NY!
But you don't know--- the big three may've transferred all their 2" stuff years ago to digital, and trashed their quad machines. They are large, they require compressed air to operate, and the engineers who maintained them are old enough to have retired -- hell, DIED. They were the peak of modern industrial age engineering. I trained on a quad in college (dating myself here ). The engineer on campus showed me how to power it up and tune it up. That was 1979. The next year it was traded in for a Sony 3/4" editing system, the kind we all in the TV biz worked on (and still do) for decades.

I know ch. 7 in Watertown had a workign quad machine up until at least 1998 or '99...Sitting in the engineering shop, for whatever use. Same at WSTM in Syracuse -- it sat in an archive room in the basement, below master control. Once formats like MII, beta and all that came along, these things quickly became boat anchors. They weren't very nimble, they required a five-second pre-roll to gain sync, and used a lot of power.

What is a shame is there are likely hundreds, maybe thousands, of 2" reels that got trashed, and NO ONE BOTHERED TO DUB THEM OFF! Who knows what could've been on them -- copies of local afternoon/evening/late night TV shows gone forever, air checks of newscasts from long, long ago, lost episodes of The Hollywood Squares -- maybe even history. WSTM used to have President Johnson's famous Gulf of Tonkin speech that he gave at S.U. in 1964 on 2" -- I wonder if they've kept it? (I am sure S.U. kept their's.)

One gentleman at a small UHF in upstate NY told me, back in the sixties, they never kept the local shows they taped. Videotape was so expensive, they used it as it was meant to be used -- over and over again!

 

[Stanislav]

There are still a good handful of working quad machines around -- a few have been restored by private collectors, and some video transfer companies have them. I think that by now most anything of value that still existed on 2" tapes has been transferred to more contemprary digital media.

You are right about so much being lost -- a lot of TV stations used VT back then solely for (a) tape-delay and time-shifting (especially in the days when DST wasn't uniform across the country) and (b) local TV shows like public affairs, kiddie shows, etc. Typically, they taped something, ran it at its scheduled time, then wiped and reused the tape. Don't forget that back in the 60's a reel of 2" tape could cost $100-150 or more.

We're fortunate that a few exceptional things survived. For instance, NBC, CBS, and Dallas' WFAA all rolled tape throughout the weekend that JFK was assasinated. This was not normal procedure, but all these folks quickly realized that this was "history in the making" and worthy of the expense of taping and saving the coverage. CBS was already running tape on the live East Coast feed of "As the World Turns" for West Coast delay when the first bulletins broke, and they just kept rolling. NBC wasn't programming at that moment, and it took them awhile to get the cameras and tape machines warmed up, but all but the first 11 minutes of their coverage survives. And WFAA was just very quick on the draw, firing up the Ampex even before they went on with the first bulletin (existing tapes start with a couple minutes of an in-progress live women's talk show before the local anchor abruptly breaks into programming, clearly out of breath and stumbling over his words as he reads the first wire bulletins).

BTW, there is a website that chronicles the discovery of the oldest extant 2" tape ever found. It is of a 1957 (!) black and white special titled "The Edsel Show" (yes, THAT Edsel of automobile infamy). Apparently, it was one of the first experiments with tape-delaying a prime-time program for the West Coast. They taped the network feed out in California, then ran the tape 3 hours later at local scheduled time. Someone with brains decided to save the tape (which had the file number of "1") (!) and it languished for about 45 years until rediscovered. They found a machine, cued it up, and it played perfectly. They quickly transferred it to digital tape.

 

[oldiesfan]

> They weren't very nimble, they required a
> five-second pre-roll to gain sync,
> and used a lot of power.

Five seconds for a small spot reel, yes.
Put a :60 or a :90 program reel up and
it may need a ten-second pre-roll to
lock up in time.

This was typical for RCA machines--TR-4,
TR-22, TR-50, etc. Perhaps Ampex VTRs
came "up to speed" faster.