Magnetic Tape

Live broadcast using a kinescope at WDTV

Origins of the videotape recorder

Although the seemingly insurmountable problem of recording television on film played a significant role in motivating the development of videotape recorders, a problem which had to be resolved because of the time-delay between the East and West Coast of the United States, the trajectory that it took was also defined by pre-existing technology, and social and political circumstances. (See right)

Poulsen's first Telegraphone, 1899

Magnetic recording: from audio to video 

The invention of the magnetic videotape recorder was the result of a combination of contributions.

The magnetic recording technology developed by Valdemar Poulson, who invented the Telegraphone, provided the underlying technology. Poulson’s aim was to simplify telephone communication and improve the poor audio quality of the phonograph. He was himself building on many prior innovations. (See left)

Magnetophon from a German radio station in WWII

Magnetic videotape recording technology also owed a great deal to the Magnetophon, a German innovation which America only knew of after World War II. The Magnetophon was in turn, the result of several innovations, one of which was made by a German engineer working on cigarette manufacturing machines. (See right)

Government support and the persistence of the four organisations 

The successful development of videotape recording also owed a great deal to the determination of four organisations: Bing Crosby Enterprises, RCA, BBC, and Ampex Corporation; as well as the U.S. government which awarded Crosby Enterprises a $1 million contract in 1951, the first year it opened, to develop videotape recorders for military purposes.

AMPEX Quadruplex VR-1000-A, the first commericaly produced video tape recorder, 1961

Use of videocassette recorders 

The ways in which videocassette recorders were used was not solely technologically determined, nor was it predetermined by demand for home video. It simply offered enticing possibilities that cultural critics leapt on to challenge and critique the moral decadence of television.

Sick of bad television? Make your own home videos!

Portable video recorders 

Perhaps one significant change from the film medium, is the enhanced possibilities for portability that videotape offers. Relying on helical-scan technology, portable video recorders were in part, developed in response to military demand, but was also utilised in new ways, by amateurs, to challenge the dominance of TV and Hollywood. It also gave empowered artists against TV and gave birth to new art forms which reflexively critiqued the new video medium. This is a trend that continues into the digital era.

Next: Digital Era