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Ampex's Its on again -- Off again relations with the Broadcast Industry.
Now over five decades old, Ampex Corporation has been involved in broadcast and at the forefront of technology breakthroughs nearly all the way. Their "foot in the door" was the, now legendary, real-to-real audio tape machine found in nearly every radio station from 1950 on. Among Ampex's many contributions are the development of the first practical videotape recorder, the introduction of helical scan recording and the invention of slow motion instant replay. It is sad to see Ampex making one more turn away from the broadcast industry. According to their current CEO, Ampex has recently decided to refocused its business and is leveraging its core expertise in hopes of becoming a leader in the next stage of Internet development – Internet video. Through its iNEXTV subsidiary, Ampex has entered several Internet video-related markets, including advertising and commerce-supported original video programming and improved video streaming technology, as well as Webcasting services. Through what some perceive as gross misdirection of marketing and management, Ampex has gone from a household word in broadcasting to nearly a "has-been." What appears to some as a step in this same direction, Ampex intends to sell its high performance mass data storage operations to help fund this "strategic" redirection, as they call it. There is little proof that the name, AMPEX was an accident. Approcifa tales aboud that it is the initials of it's founder Alexander M. Poniatoff and the other two letters were suposed to be for "Electric Company," but the C got mistaken for and X. Not a bad mistake. To help perpetuate what once was, the following is a chronology for milestones Ampex has achieved when it was truly one of the greatest. Mile Stones 1944 Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company is
California. 1948 American Broadcasting Company uses an Ampex Model 200 audio recorder for the first-ever U.S. tape delay radio broadcast of The Bing Crosby Show. 1950 Ampex introduces the first "dedicated" instrumentation recorder, Model 500, built for the U.S. Navy. 1954 Ampex introduces the first multi-track audio recorder derived from multi-track data recording technology. 1954 Ampex introduces the first magnetic theater sound system, made for Todd/AO CinemaScope. 1956
The Ampex VRX-1000 (later renamed the Mark IV) videotape recorder is introduced on March 14, 1956, at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. This is the world's first practical videotape recorder and is hailed as a major technological breakthrough. CBS goes on air with the first videotape delayed broadcast, Douglas Edwards and The News, on November 30, 1956, from Los Angeles, California, using the Ampex Mark IV. 1958 NASA selects Ampex data recorders and magnetic tape, used for virtually all U.S. space missions since. 1959 The famous Nixon-Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate" takes place at the Moscow Trade Fair, and is captured on an Ampex videotape recorder. 1960 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents Ampex with an Oscar for technical achievement. 1961 Helical scanning recording is invented by Ampex, the technology behind the worldwide consumer video revolution, and used in all home VCRs today. 1963 Ampex introduces EDITEC electronic video editing, allowing broadcast television editors frame-by-frame recording control, simplifying tape editing and making animation effects possible. This was the basis for all subsequent editing systems. 1963 Ampex introduces a new computer peripheral digital tape transport, the TM-7. Its design far surpasses previous tape drives, using 80 percent fewer parts and completely eliminating pinch rollers and brake cylinders. 1964 Ampex introduces the VR-2000 high-band videotape recorder, the first ever to be capable of the color fidelity required for high-quality color broadcasting. 1967 ABC uses the Ampex HS-100 disk recorder for playback of slow-motion downhill skiing on World Series of Skiing in Vail, Colorado. Thus begins the use of slow motion instant replay in sporting events. 1967 Ampex introduces the RG memory. It is a medium capacity memory with an access time of 350 nanoseconds (less than half of one millionth of a second) and expandable from medium to very large capacity (up to 5,000,000 bits) by adding memory modules. 1967 The introduction of the Ampex VR-3000 revolutionizes video recording 1968 Ampex invents magneto-resistive (MR) heads, now used in advanced computer disk drives. 1969 Ampex introduces the Videofile® system, used by Scotland Yard for the electronic storage and retrieval of fingerprints. 1970 Ampex introduces the ACR-25, the first automated robotic library system for the recording and playback of television commercials. 1970 Ampex introduces TBM (TeraBit Memory), a 2-inch transverse tape-based online digital storage system for high-performance computing applications. 1972 The first TBM delivered reaches a never-before-achieved 3 trillion-bit capacity. 1974 Ampex introduces the AVR-2, the first modular quadruplex recorder/reproducer for professional broadcasters. It requires one-half to one-third the operating space required by other quad machines. 1976 Ampex introduces the VPR-1, helical scan, 1-inch videotape recorder. The VPR-1's successor, the Type C VPR-2 (1978), becomes the industry standard for video recording. 1977 Ampex introduces the AST® process, the first automated scan tracking for variable speed effects, making slow motion possible directly from tape for the first time. 1977 Ampex introduces Electronic Still Store (ESS™) which allows producers to store digital video images for later editing and broadcast. 1977 Ampex introduces the HBR-3000, the first high-bit rate, high-density magnetic recorder for logging and storage of electromagnetic data. 1978 The Ampex Video Art (AVA™) video graphics system is used by artist Leroy Nieman on air during Super Bowl XII. AVA, the first video paint system, allows the graphic artist, using an electronic pen, to illustrate in a new medium, video. This innovation paved the way for today's high quality electronic graphics, such as those used in video games. 1981 Ampex introduces the ADO® system, which creates digital special effects, allowing rotation and perspective of video images. This changed forever the way television material would be manipulated and created. 1983 Ampex introduces the DCRS digital cassette recorder, offering compact cassette storage with the equivalent of 16 digital, 14 inch, 8 DDR instrumentation reels on one cassette. 1983 Partial-response maximum-likelihood (PRML) data decoding technology has its first use in Ampex's DCRsi™ recorders. This technology is now commonly used in high performance computer disk drives and other high density magnetic data storage devices. 1988 Ampex introduces D-2, the first composite digital video recording format. 1991 Ampex obtains patent for keepered media, which adds a soft magnetic layer to magnetic recording media, increasing the resulting recording capacity. 1992 Ampex introduces its DCT® products, the first digital component post-production system using digital image compression technology to produce unsurpassed quality images. The system includes the finest videotape recorder ever made, the DCT 1700d. 1992 Ampex introduces its DST® products, high-performance computer mass data storage systems able to store half the contents of the Library of Congress in 21 square feet of floor space. 1995 Ampex introduces the DIS™ 120i and DIS 160i dual port, data/instrumentation recorders, making it possible for the first time to capture real time instrumentation data and then utilize the same recorder to process the data in a computer environment through its second port using SCSI-2 protocol. 1996 Ampex introduces the new double density DST data storage product line, offering the highest capacity data storage system in the industry. The DST 812 robotic library can now store 12.8 terabytes of data, the entire Library of Congress, in 21 square feet of floor space. 1997 Ampex introduces the DST 712 Automated Cartridge Library System capable of storing up to 5.8 terabytes with an aggregate data transfer rate of up to 40MB/sec. 1998 Fox Television Network becomes the first network to store its primetime television programs as data files on DST media and library systems. 1999 Ampex Introduces scalability to the to the DST 712 library system, allowing multiple DST 712 cabinets to be connected via a simple cartridge pass through mechanism Multiple libraries can be configured for almost unlimited capacity.
Emmy Awards 1957 VTR development 1967 VR-2000 color VTR 1978 AST® Video Tracking 1978 Type C format development 1981 ESS™ Still Store 1983 ADO® Digital Effects System 1984 VPR-5 (first helical scan portable VTR) 1986 Zeus™ Advanced Video Processor 1986 VPR-3 Videotape Recorder 1989 D-2 video recording technology development 1990 ACR 225 Commercial Spot Player
Monitor Awards Presented by the International Teleproduction Society for outstanding technical achievement 1983 ADO® Digital Effects System 1985 VPR-5 Portable Videotape Recorder 1987 Zeus™ Advanced Video Processor 1994 DCT 700d Digital Tape Drive |
