Ampex photo: Demo at Conrad Hilton Hotel, Chicago |
The Ampex Mark IV 2" Quadruplex recorder as it was unveiled to a select group of CBS network people and affiliates and during a private showing at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago in April of 1956.
A thunderous round of applause from convention goers several days later greeted the machine's public debut. |
Ampex photo at CBS, Television City, Hollywood |
CBS was the first on-air user of the machine, to tape-delay the evening CBS News broadcast with Douglas Edwards on Nov. 30, 1956.
In this photo, CBS Engineer John Radis inspects playback of an evening news broadcast from an Ampex quadruplex videotape recorder at CBS Television City in Hollywood.
Jim Morrison is on the phone to the right of VRX-1000 transport, one of only 16 hand-built machines. The two racks of tube equipment to the left contain the electronics for the recorder. |
Photo on CBS-TVC wall |
The CBS Television City tape room was responsible for recording network shows "off the line" and replaying them three hours later for West Coast broadcast by the twelve CBS affiliates on that leg of the network. |
Postcard: Hubert A. Lowman photo #LS-110 in a Series
Mirro-Krome Card by H.S. Crocker Co., Inc., San Francisco Manufactured for Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles.
NBC Burbank was dedicated on March 27, 1955. It was completed in 1962. |
Saturday, April 28, 2008 marked the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Videotape Central at NBC Burbank. The tape facility inside 3000 West Alameda (at Olive Ave.) cost $1.5 million.
The facility included one RCA Color Video Tape Recorder and eight Ampex black-and-white machines that could record color using with RCA Labs hetrodyne electronics.
NBC began time-zone delay from the Burbank tape facility when Daylight Savings Time kicked in.
Soon, three more RCA Broadcast Color Recorders were at work.
Pre-recording programs in Burbank happened later. http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/rca-nbc_firsts.html |
| Another 50-year Quad Tape anniversary in 2008: |
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Monitor Photo of dgital tape restoration by Ed Reitan, Don Kent, Dan Einstien
This and following photos by Ted Langdell,
July 17, 2006 visit to CBS Television City-Special Tour for Telecine Internet Group
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May 22, 1958, President Eisenhower becomes the first president to be recorded in color on videotape.
The president helped dedicate NBC's brand-new Washington, D.C. facilities housing network and WRC-TV television studios.
The Quad tape of this event was located at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas, and is the earliest known color recording discovered to date.
The recording was made in the new NBC Burbank Videotape Central using cross-country audio and video lines, according to Don Kent, who helped restore the tape in 1988.
We'll have more about how the tape was restored... and what happened to the audio mid-way through the broadcast in the near future.
Our webmaster is trying to catch up!
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President Eisenhower, RCA Chairman David Sarnoff and NBC President Robert Sarnoff spoke at the dedication.
It was covered by a combination of RCA Image Orthicon black and white cameras, and in monochrome by the two RCA three-I/O studio color cameras until Robert Sarnoff hit the big button under his right hand... signaling an engineer to
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hit the color burst on the colorplexer (encoder) of the RCA TK 41 camera.
In 1988, Ed Reitan of ITT, Don Kent of KTLA, and Dan Einstein of the UCLA Film and Television Archive undertook recovering the content of the Eisenhower Library tape.
"The effort involved historical research into the history of RCA's development of practical Color Video Tape recording and playback," Reitan told QVTG.com
"From this, the format of the earliest color tapes was determined." It used the RCA Labs hetrodyne color system.
"Some ten AVR-1 boards were modified and replaced production boards within the standard AVR-1," Reitan advised.
"Various available Quad elements of the May 22, 1958 Eisenhower Tape were transferred to D2 Digital tape and the first digital edit produced new masters on D2." |
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Reitan, (center) and Kent (right) watch the playback of their digital restoration inside CBS Television City's "Jurassic Park" during a tour on July 17, 2006 arranged by CBS engineer/colorist David Keleshian for members of the Telecine Internet Group
Reitan, Kent and Einstein won a Emmy in 1989 for "Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development (for)
Restoration of the Fred Astaire Specials."
The 1958 NBC Burbank recording was also made with the RCA Labs color system, Kent says "so we could transfer it, but it took a lot of 'finessing' it to make the complete show" on a D-2 digital master.
Video Editor Kris Trexler's color tv site hosts a clip from the show that demonstrates the high quality Quad produced even in 1958.
When CBS aired the special in 1964, the tape had to be played back from NBC Burbank, since CBS had no VTRs with the RCA Labs color system. Here's another clip, source and history unknown. |
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"Jurassic Park" is the lower-level facilty at TVC that houses multiple 2" Quadruplex machines, 1" Type C, BetacamSP, Digital Betacam, D-1, D-2 and machines for other broadcast tape formats.
This picture shows the interformat racks with rack-mountable analog and digital decks, routing and patch facilities, picture and QC monitoring.
Tapes can be fed world-wide from here, and there's at least one in a deck about to hit a bird.
Thousands of hours of Goodson-Todman game show Quad tapes were re-mastered here for use on the Game Show Network. |
| Come back to see the rest of our TVC tour... and see the reel with the oldest known entertainment program still preserved on Quad... along with the head that recorded the program. |
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