<html><body><div>I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I highly recommend this video:<br><br>http://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo<br><br>It's titled "The Secret History of Silicon Valley". Ever wonder why so many tech companies are in the valley?<br>Lots of interesting bit of info relating to radar, and that is related to instrument and radar data recorders.<br></div><div><div><br>On Jan 21, 2013, at 12:57 AM, Don Norwood <dwnorwood@embarqmail.com> wrote:<br><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div class="msg-quote"><div>Hi Dave:</div><div>In the useless trivia department, Ampex used this style switch on the instrumentation recorders before they used it on the video decks. The VR-1100 was the first quad transport to use them but the first video machine to use them was the VR-8000 2" helical. However, they had already been in use on instrumentation decks. Here's a picture of a transport control for an FR-600 that I had and it predates the video decks. There seemed to be a lot of technology and design sharing within the company, but many video folks don't know much about other Ampex products. A similar situation existed at RCA, and both companies had government contracts for specialized products that were often far more sophisticated than what we saw in the television business.</div><div><div><FR-600sml.jpg></div></div><div style="FONT: 10pt arial" data-mce-style="font: 10pt arial;">Don Norwood<br>Digitrak Communications, Inc.<br><a href="http://www.digitrakcom.com" data-mce-href="http://www.digitrakcom.com">www.digitrakcom.com</a></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div><div><br href="http://www.digitrakcom.com" data-mce-href="http://www.digitrakcom.com"></div></body></html>