Last week in history

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Videotape Beginnings:
Friday, was the start of Videotape's use in broadcast television.

55 years ago last week, CBS made broadcast (and videotape) history when it replayed the Nov. 30, 1956 evening news broadcast with Douglas Edwards from an Ampex Quad VTR at CBS Television City in Hollywood.

After recording the live feed coming down the network line from New York at 4 p.m. Pacific time, the program was played back three hours later and fed to the dozen West Coast CBS affiliates.
CBS Engineer John Radis supervised the process on this VRX-1000.
Jim Morrison is on the phone to the right of VRX-1000 transport, one of only 16 hand-built machines Ampex rushed to produce after debuting the VTR eight months before.
The two racks of tube equipment to the left contain the electronics for the recorder.
CBS created a videotape room that was kept busy recording network feeds for time-zone delay and eventually, programs produced in the studios at Television City.

The picture show this early VTR which was black and white only. The two racks are all tubes used for the transport operation and signal system. Video was recorded using a video modulated FM signal to reduce video noise in playback. Mono audio was recorded on one edge of the 2 inch tape as a linear track the same as reel to reel recording. When I started in Chicago, we would turn our's on during the winter to keep the tape room warm. Standing in front was like a trip to a sauna. Years later we discovered the building maintenance people had removed the fuses in the duct heater and had forgot to replace them.