<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Here is some excellent info from my friend and TV guru, Mark Schubin. If Mark says it, you can believe it.<div><br><div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div><div>Best,</div><div>Park</div><div><br></div></div><div>C. Park Seward</div><div>Visit us: <a href="http://www.videopark.com">http://www.videopark.com</a></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></div></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Date: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">June 17, 2009 7:47:45 PM PDT</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>To: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">"C. Park Seward" <<a href="mailto:park@videopark.com">park@videopark.com</a>></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#000000" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #000000"><b>Subject: </b></font><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica"><b>Re: Ampex, RCA and Sony</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> </div><div>C. Park Seward wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Hi Mark,</blockquote><br><blockquote type="cite">Then, later Ampex exchanged patents with Sony (I guess the most important was the FM patent) and got more transistor technology, it is suggested.<br></blockquote>I believe that is true. According to James Lardner's book "Fast Forward," (which Sony has told me is gospel and which I personally know was well researched), "With the backing of George Long, Ampex's president, [Ampex vp Phil] Gundy made a proposal to Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka [of Sony], and in July 1960 -- with typical Sony dispatch -- they signed a one-page letter of agreement. Sony would design and supply transistorized circuits for use in a 'portable' version of the standard Ampex VTR. In return, Sony would get the right to make VTRs for nonbroadcast customers. It was an unprecedented step in Japanese-American corporate relations, and one take, by all accounts, with high hopes on both sides. Masahiko Morizono, later a deputy president of Sony, spent months in Redwood City studying Ampex's VTR technology, and a team of Ampex engineers was dispatched to Japan to work with a Sony team on the design of the circuits."<br><br>He goes on to describe the collaboration in more detail. Then, "In 1961 Ampex underwent a change of management. George Long resigned as president after a bad year, and in came William Roberts, an ambitious man...." "...Roberts envisioned Ampex as a consumer company." "...it was his position -- and the position of Ampex's lawyers -- that the one-page document signed by Gundy, Morita, and Ibuka was not an agreement at all, just a preliminary memo." Sony disagreed and put the SV-201 on the market in 1961. "More ominously, several Japanese firms (not including Sony) began to supply broadcasters with VTRs that closely resembled Ampex's -- without, of course, obtaining Ampex's permission. One company, Shibaden, had the audacity to put out a machine that was a dead ringer for an Ampex VTR -- down to the useless holes in the top plate, which Ampex had put there by mistake. When Ampex's people complained, MITI [Japan's Ministry of Trade & Industry] officials unapologetically told them they had better take on a full-fledged Japanese partner if they hoped to sell any VTRs in Japan beyond the fifty or sixty they had sold to date. And to end what they regarded as out-and-out patent infringement, they would have to negotiate licenses with the alleged infringers, allowing them to go legitimate.<br> "Having no real choice in the matter, Ampex yielded on both points, and it proceeded to set up a joint venture with Toshiba. Toshiba would hold fifty-one percent of the stock...." That was the origin of Toamco.<br><br><br><blockquote type="cite">Around 1961, Ampex and Sony worked on a large helical VTR which was never marketed.<br></blockquote>Actually, both Sony and Ampex had large, two-inch-tape helical machines that WERE marketed.<br><br><blockquote type="cite">Jim Wheeler said it was to modify TV equipment for the Japanese TV industry and to also work on a home VTR that was never produced.<br></blockquote>No. Here's Lardner again. "...the Toamco VTRs quickly captured a handsome share of the Japanese broadcast market."<br><br>I seem to recall that Toamco MIGHT have been interested in making a home VTR at one point, but the company's revenues came from the sale of broadcast VTRs and the licensing of Ampex VTR patents to Japanese companies (including Shibaden).<br><br><br><blockquote type="cite">And we have seen pictures of a Bosch quad that was not delivered in the U.S. Seems they did not exchange patents with Ampex.<br></blockquote>It seems unlikely that they did not license Ampex's patents. This is from the Bosch book "Fifty Years of Fernseh": Regarding videotape recording, "many ideas and experimental models were available between 1952 and 1954 but only the system of transversal recording that was most thoroughly developed though systematic and painstaking work by Ampex, and for which a German patent application had already been filed, led to success." "Through an exchange of patents, RCA was also able to take part in the introduction of this system so that Ferseh GmbH, because of its outstanding know-how contracts with RCA was kept fully informed. Ampex, however, was in possession of already granted patents that could not be got round because they were coupled with the system standard.<br> In our negotiations to obtain a license, Fernseh's satisfactory patent situation in Europe was an advantage. In 1958 Ampex had delivered some video recording equipment, modified to the CCIR standard, to the German broadcast houses. In the same year, development work undertaken by Fernseh GmbH led to the vacuum-tube-equipped quadruplex system BM20...."<font class="Apple-style-span" color="#006312"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE"><br></font></font><br>TTFN,<br>Mark<br><br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></body></html>