Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsAbramso
The History of television, 1942 to 2000
– McFarland, 2003 – , page 286, Chapter 2, footnote 34 "1944 he founded Ampex (the name was created from his initials, AMP, plus "ex" for excellence)" Today, Ampex operates as Ampex Data Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Delta Information Systems, and consists of two business units. The Silicon Valley unit, known internally as Ampex Data Systems (ADS), manufactures digital data storage systems capable of functioning in harsh environments. The

Colorado Springs, Colorado Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since ...

unit, referred to as Ampex Intelligent Systems (AIS), serves as a laboratory and hub for the company's line of industrial control systems, cyber security products and services and its

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

technology. Ampex's first great success was a line of reel-to-reel tape recorders developed from the German wartime Magnetophon system at the behest of

Bing Crosby Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby Jr. (May 3, 1903 – October 14, 1977) was an American singer, musician and actor. The first multimedia star, he was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide. He was a ...

. Ampex quickly became a leader in audio tape technology, developing many of the analog recording formats for both music and movies that remained in use into the 1990s. Starting in the 1950s, the company began developing

video tape recorder A video tape recorder (VTR) is a tape recorder designed to record and playback video and audio material from magnetic tape. The early VTRs were open-reel devices that record on individual reels of 2-inch-wide (5.08 cm) tape. They were use ...

s, and later introduced the

helical scan Helical scan is a method of recording high-frequency signals on magnetic tape. It is used in open-reel video tape recorders, video cassette recorders, digital audio tape recorders, and some computer tape drives. History Earl E Masterson fro ...

concept that made home video players possible. They also introduced multi-track recording, slow-motion and instant playback television, and a host of other advances. Ampex's tape business was rendered obsolete during the 1990s, and the company turned to digital storage products. Ampex moved into digital storage for DoD

Flight Test Instrumentation Flight test instrumentation (FTI) is monitoring and recording equipment fitted to aircraft during flight test. It is mainly used on experimental aircraft, prototype aircraft and development aircraft - both military and civil, and can monitor variou ...

(FTI) with the introduction of the first, true all digital flight test recorder. Ampex supports numerous major DoD programs with the

US Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

US Marines The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

and other government entities (

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

DHS The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-ter ...

and national labs). Ampex also works with all major DoD primes and integrators including

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and p ...

General Atomics General Atomics is an American energy and defense corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, specializing in research and technology development. This includes physics research in support of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion energy. The ...

, Lockheed, Northrop,

Raytheon Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitaliza ...

and many others. Currently, Ampex is attempting to do more with the data stored on its

network attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

(NAS) devices. This includes adding encryption for secure data storage; algorithms focused on control system cyber security for infrastructure and aerospace platforms; and artificial intelligence/machine learning for automated entity identification and data analytics.

Origin

Russian-American inventor Alexander Matthew Poniatoff established the company in San Carlos,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The company name came from his initials plus "ex" to avoid using the name

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already in use (by Aircraft and Marine Products). During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Ampex was a subcontractor to Dalmo-Victor, manufacturing high quality electric motors and generators for radars that used

alnico Alnico is a family of iron alloys which in addition to iron are composed primarily of aluminium (Al), nickel (Ni), and cobalt (Co), hence the acronym ''al-ni-co''. They also include copper, and sometimes titanium. Alnico alloys are ferromagnetic, ...

5 magnets from

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

.The History of Magnetic Recording by Steven Schoenherr, University of San Diego, Nov 5, 2002
Ampex was initially set up in an abandoned loft-space above the Dalmo-Victor plant; eventually they would have offices at 1313 Laurel Street, San Carlos, California (at the intersection of Howard Avenue and Laurel Street). Near the end of the war, while serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Major Jack Mullin was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics experiments. He discovered the Magnetophons with AC biasing on a trip to Radio Frankfurt. The device produced much better fidelity than shellac records. The technological processes in tape recording and equipment developed by German companies before and during the 1939-45 war had copyrights which were effectively voided after Germany's 1945 surrender and defeat. Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of

BASF BASF SE () is a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The BASF Group comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries ...

Type L tape, and brought them to America, where he produced modified versions. He demonstrated them to the

Institute of Radio Engineers The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) was a professional organization which existed from 1912 until December 31, 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) to form the Institute of Electrical ...

in San Francisco on May 16, 1946.

, a big star on radio at the time, was receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs. He disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. He had already asked the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

network to let him pre-record his 1944–45 series on transcription discs, but the network refused; so Crosby had withdrawn from live radio for a year and returned (this time to the recently created

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

) for the 1946–47 season, only reluctantly. In June 1947, Mullin, who was pitching the technology to the major Hollywood movie studios, got the chance to demonstrate his modified tape recorders to Crosby. When Crosby heard a demonstration of Mullin's tape recorders, he immediately saw the potential of the new technology and commissioned Mullin to prepare a test recording of his radio show. Ampex was finishing its prototype of the Model 200 tape recorder, and Mullin used the first two models as soon as they were built. After a successful test broadcast, ABC agreed to allow Crosby to pre-record his shows on tape. Crosby immediately appointed Mullin as his chief engineer and placed an order for $50,000 worth of the new recorders so that Ampex (then a small six-man concern) could develop a commercial production model from the prototypes. Crosby Enterprises was Ampex's West Coast representative until 1957.

Early tape recorders

The company's first tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200A, was first shipped in April 1948. The first two units, serial numbers 1 and 2, were used to record Bing Crosby's show.History of The Early Days of Ampex Corporation As recalled by JOHN LESLIE and ROSS SNYDER, AES Historical Paper, Dec 17, 2010
/ref> The

American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...

used these recorders along with 3M Scotch 111 gamma ferric oxide coated acetate tape for the first-ever U.S. delayed

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

broadcast of Bing Crosby's ''

Philco Radio Time ''Philco Radio Time'' was an old-time radio radio series starring entertainer Bing Crosby. The series ran over ABC Radio with episodes airing from October 16, 1946–June 1, 1949. The series also was syndicated for a period of time over th ...

''. Ampex tape recorders revolutionized the radio and recording industries because of their superior audio quality and ease of operation over audio disk cutting lathes. The firm's earliest production of multichannel machines wasn't aimed at music recording; it noted in 1953-54 that "Ampex began the commercial production of multitrack tape recorders about four years ago for those interested in telemetered information from guided missiles and the like. These equipments provided any number of simultaneous channels up to 14. It was a simple step, therefore, to make stereophonic tape recorders with two or more channels." During the early 1950s, Ampex began marketing one- and two-track machines using tape. In May 1953 the firm announced proudction of two- and three-track machines on 1/4 inch tape. The line soon expanded into three- and four-track models using tape. In the early 1950s, Ampex moved to Redwood City, California. Ampex acquired

Orradio Industries Quantegy Inc. was a manufacturer of magnetic tape and professional external hard drives based in Opelika, Alabama. Their tape products were primarily used in analog audio and video recording studios, but they also have some use with digital dat ...

in 1959, which became the Ampex Magnetic Tape Division, headquartered in

Opelika, Alabama Opelika (pronounced ) is a city in and the county seat of Lee County in the east-central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. As of the 2020 census, the population of Opelika is ...

. This made Ampex a manufacturer of both recorders and tape. By the end of that decade Ampex products were much in demand by top recording studios worldwide. In 1952, movie producer

Mike Todd Michael Todd (born Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen; June 22, 1909 – March 22, 1958) was an American theater and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of '' Around the World in 80 Days'', which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Act ...

asked Ampex to develop a high-fidelity movie sound system using sound magnetically recorded on the film itself, as contrasted with the technology of the time, which used magnetic tracks on a separate celluloid base film (later commonly known as mag stock). The result of this development was the CinemaScope/

Todd-AO Todd-AO is an American post-production company founded in 1953 by Mike Todd and Robert Naify, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. For more than five decades, it was the worldwide leader in theater s ...

motion picture sound system, which was first used in movies such as ''The Robe'' (1953) in 35mm and ''Oklahoma'' (1955) in 70mm (and also in 35mm). In 1960, the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...

awarded Ampex an

Oscar Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology) ...

for technical achievement as a result of this development. Les Paul, a friend of Crosby and a regular guest on his shows, had already been experimenting with overdubbed recordings on disc. He received an early portable Ampex Model 200A from Crosby. Using this machine, Les Paul invented "Sound on Sound" recording technology. He placed an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Paul to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track. This was a destructive process because the original recording was recorded over.

Professional 8-track recorders

Ampex built a handful of multitrack machines during the late 1950s that could record as many as eight tracks on tape. The project was overseen by Ross Snyder, Ampex manager of special products. To make the multitrack recorder work, Snyder invented the

Sel-Sync Sel-Sync or Selective Synchronous recording is the process of selectively using audio tape record heads as play back heads so that new signals can be recorded on other tracks in perfect sync with the existing tracks. Sel-sync recording dramaticall ...

process, which used some tracks on the head for playback and other tracks on the head for recording. This made the newly recorded material be in sync with the existing recorded tracks. The first of these machines cost $10,000 and was installed in Les Paul's

home recording Home recording is the practice of recording sound in a private home instead of a professional recording studio. A studio set up for home recording is called a home studio or project studio. Home recording is widely practiced by voice actors, narrat ...

studio by David Sarser. In 1967, Ampex responded to demand by stepping up production of their 8-track machines with the production model MM 1000. Like earlier 8-track machines of this era, it used 1 inch tape.

16 and 24-track recorders

In 1966, Ampex built their first 16-track recorder, the model AG-1000, at the request of Mirasound Studios in New York City. In 1967, Ampex introduced a 16-track version of the MM 1000 which was the world's first 16-track professional tape recorder put into mass-production. Both used a tape transport design adapted from the video recording division. The 16-track MM-1000 quickly became legendary for its tremendous flexibility, reliability and outstanding sound quality. This brought about the "golden age" of large format analog multitrack recorders which would last into the mid-1990s. MCI built the first 24-track recorder (using 2 inch tape) in 1968 which was installed at

TTG Studios TTG Studios was a recording studio in Los Angeles, California, co-founded in 1965 by recording engineers Tom Hidley and Amnon "Ami" Hadani. History The studio was located at 1441 North McCadden Place in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, n ...

in Los Angeles. Later machines built by Ampex starting in 1969 would have as many as 24 tracks on 2 inch tape. In addition to this, the introduction of

SMPTE time code SMPTE timecode ( or ) is a set of cooperating standards to label individual frames of video or film with a timecode. The system is defined by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in the SMPTE 12M specification. SMPTE revised ...

allowed studios to run multiple machines in perfect synchronization, making the number of available tracks virtually unlimited. By the 1970s, Ampex faced tough competition from the Swiss company

Studer Studer is a designer and manufacturer of professional audio equipment for recording studios and broadcasters. The company was founded in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1948 by Willi Studer. It initially became known in the 1950s for its professiona ...

and Japanese manufacturers such as Otari and Sony (who also purchased the MCI brand in 1982). In 1979, Ampex introduced their most advanced 24-track recorder, the model ATR-124. The ATR-124 was ruggedly constructed and had audio specifications that nearly rivaled the first digital recording machines. However, sales of the ATR-124 were slow due to the machine's high price tag. Ampex sold only about 50 or 60 ATR-124 machines and withdrew from the professional audio tape recorder market entirely in 1983.

The 1990s

By the 1990s, Ampex focused more on video recorders, instrumentation recorders, and data recorders. In 1991, Ampex sold their professional audio recorder line to Sprague Magnetics. The Ampex Recording Media Corporation spun off in 1995 as Quantegy Inc.; that company has ceased producing recording tape. File:Ampex1250.JPG, Ampex Model 1250 tube stereo tape recorder c. 1962 – Designed for the high end consumer market File:Ampexampb.JPG, The 5 watt Ampex tube stereo amplifier as it lay hidden inside the Model 970 shown in photo above.

Video technology

Video Processing

While AMPEX are well recognized for their contribution to magnetic tape recording, they also had a huge impact on developments the whole video signal chain. They did rebadge some specialist low-volume OEM products to complete the package, but their in-house teams developed industry leading products in the following categories...

Digital Optics

ADO - Ampex Digital Optics provided comprehensive frame manipulation in 2 and 3 dimensions. Adjusting the aspect, size, and rotation of the image was performed continuously in real-time. An optional digital 'combiner' was available to perform the foreground layering and priority switching - to reduce the burden on the vision mixer with multi-channel effects.

Video Switching & Effects

AVC - The AVC range of vision mixers ranged from small, single buss devices up to the high-end Century Series, with multiple Mix/Effect busses, infinite re-entry and powerful keying and control software.

Editing controllers

The product line evolved quickly from manual editing on the actual VTRs themselves to incorporate SMPTE timecode providing advanced timeline control. The RA-4000 and EDM-1 were fully functional early products, but soon evolved to the extremely powerful ACE family to compete with CMX and other edit controller brands.

Quadruplex Two-Inch tape

Starting in the early 1950s, RCA,

and others tried to record

analog video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying Copying is the duplication of information or an artifact based on an instance of that information or artifact, and not using the process that originally generated it. With analog f ...

on very fast-moving

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...

. As early as 1952, Ampex developed prototype video tape recorders that used a spinning head and relatively slow-moving tape. In early 1956, a team produced the first videotape recorder. A young, 19-year-old engineer

Ray Dolby Ray Milton Dolby (; January 18, 1933 – September 12, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He helped develop the video tape recorder while at Ampex and was the founder of Dolby Lab ...

was also part of the team. Ampex demonstrated the VR-1000, which was the first of Ampex's line of 2-inch Quadruplex videotape recorders on April 14, 1956, at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. The first magnetically recorded time-delayed

television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...

program using the new Ampex Quadruplex recording system was

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

's '' Douglas Edwards and the News'' on November 30, 1956. The "Quad" head assembly rotates at 14,400 rpm (

NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...

). The four head pieces (quad) are switched successively so that recorded stripes cross the video portion (most of the tape middle, audio is on one edge, control track is on the other) so that head to tape write speed is well in excess of the physical motion. They wrote the video vertically across the width of a tape that was wide and ran at per second. This allowed hour-long television programs to be recorded on one reel of tape. In 1956, one reel of tape cost $300; and Ampex advertised the cost of the recorder as $45,000. A version was released later, and this required a new, narrower headwheel. This vertical writing facilitated mechanical editing, once the control track was developed to display the pulse that indicates where a frame ends and the next one begins. Later, Ampex developed electronic editing. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Ampex its first Emmy in 1957 for this development. Ampex received a total of 12 Emmys for its technical video achievements. In 1959,

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

, then Vice President, and

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

held discussions at the Moscow Trade Fair, which became known as the "

Kitchen Debate The Kitchen Debate (russian: Кухонные дебаты, translit=Kukhonnye debaty) was a series of impromptu exchanges through interpreters between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, then 46, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita ...

" because they were mostly held in the kitchen of a suburban model house. These discussions were recorded on an Ampex color videotape recorder, and during the debate Nixon pointed this out as one of the many American technological advances. In 1967, Ampex introduced the Ampex VR-3000 portable broadcast video recorder, which revolutionized the recording of

broadcast quality Broadcast quality is a term stemming from quad videotape to denote the quality achieved by professional video cameras and time base correctors (TBC) used for broadcast television, usually in standard definition. As the standards for commercial tele ...

television in the field without the need for long cables and large support vehicles. Broadcast quality images could now be shot anywhere, including from airplanes, helicopters and boats. The Quadruplex format dominated the broadcast industry for a quarter of a century. The format was licensed to

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

for use in their "television tape recorders." Ampex's invention revolutionized the

television production A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

industry by eliminating the

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...

process of

time-shifting In broadcasting, time shifting is the recording of programming to a storage medium to be viewed or listened to after the live broadcasting. Typically, this refers to TV programming but it can also refer to radio shows via podcasts. In recent year ...

television programs, which required the use of motion picture film. For archival purposes, the kinescope method continued to be used for some years; film was still preferred by archivists. The Ampex broadcast video tape recorder facilitated

time-zone A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between countries and their subdivisions instead of strictly following longitude, because it i ...

broadcast delay so that networks could air programming at the same hour in various time zones. Ampex had trademarked the name "

video tape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassett ...

", so competitor RCA called the medium "TV tape" or "television tape". The terms eventually became

genericized A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products or ...

, and "videotape" is commonly used today. While the quadruplex recording system per se is no longer in use, the principle evolved into the

helical scanning Helical may refer to: * Helix, the mathematical concept for the shape * Helical engine, a proposed spacecraft propulsion drive * Helical spring, a coilspring * Helical plc, a British property company, once a maker of steel bar stock * Helicoil A t ...

technique used in virtually all video tape machines, such as those using the consumer formats of VHS, Sony

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, ...

and

Video 2000 Video 2000 (also known as V2000, with the tape standard Video Compact Cassette, or VCC) is a consumer videocassette system and analogue recording standard developed by Philips and Grundig to compete with JVC's VHS and Sony's Betamax video techn ...

. Sony

Betacam Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. Al ...

was successful as a professional format but operated with a different recording system and faster tape speed than Betamax. One of the key engineers in the development of the Quadruplex video recorder for Ampex was Ray Dolby, who worked under

Charlie Ginsburg Charles Paulson Ginsburg (July 27, 1920 – April 9, 1992) was an American engineer and the leader of a research team at Ampex which developed one of the first practical videotape recorders. Biography Ginsburg was born on July 27, 1920 in San ...

and went on to form

Dolby Laboratories Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (often shortened to Dolby Labs and known simply as Dolby) is an American company specializing in Noise reduction#In audio, audio noise reduction, Audio data compression, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and ...

, a pioneer in

audio noise reduction Noise reduction is the process of removing noise from a signal. Noise reduction techniques exist for audio and images. Noise reduction algorithms may distort the signal to some degree. Noise rejection is the ability of a circuit to isolate an un ...

systems. Dolby's contribution to the videotape system was limited to the mathematics behind the reactance tube FM modulator, as videotape then used FM modulation for the video portion. Another contributor designed the FM modulator itself. Dolby left Ampex to seek a PhD in physics in England, which is where Dolby Labs was later founded, before moving back to San Francisco. Dolby's brother Dale was also an engineer at Ampex.

VR-5000 and VR-8000

In 1961, Ampex introduced the first 1-inch

video recorders, the

Ampex 2-inch helical VTR Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...

s, which recorded video using helical scan recording technology on tape.

Ampex 2-inch helical VTR

Ampex 2 inch helical VTRs were manufactured from 1963 to 1970. Model VR-1500 for home. The VR-660 for

Broadcast television systems Broadcast television systems (or terrestrial television systems outside the US and Canada) are the encoding or formatting systems for the transmission and reception of terrestrial television signals. Analog television systems were standardized by ...

, industrial companies, educational institutions, and a few for

In-flight entertainment In-flight entertainment (IFE) refers to the entertainment available to aircraft passengers during a flight. In 1936, the airship ''LZ 129 Hindenburg, Hindenburg'' offered passengers a piano, lounge, dining room, smoking room, and bar during the ...

. The VR-1500 and VR-660 found service at educational institutions especially due to their relatively low cost vs. quadruplex VTRs. These machines were simple to operate, reliable, small in size and produced, for their time, very good video without the complexity of the larger and much more complex 2" Quad machines.

HS-100 & HS-200 "slo-mo" disc recorder

In March 1967, Ampex introduced the HS-100 video disc recorder. The system was developed by Ampex at the request of the

(ABC) for a variety of sports broadcast uses. It was first demonstrated on the air on March 18, 1967, when ABC's '' Wide World of Sports'' televised the "World Series of Skiing" from

Vail Vail is a home rule municipality in Eagle County, Colorado, United States. The population of the town was 4,835 in 2020. Home to Vail Ski Resort, the largest ski mountain in Colorado, the town is known for its hotels, dining, and for the numer ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

. The video was recorded on analog magnetic disc. The disc weighed and rotated at 60rps, 3600rpm (50rps in

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

). One

unit could record 30 seconds of video,

units 36 seconds. The video could then be played back in slow motion, stop action to freeze frame. A more deluxe version, the HS-200, was introduced in April 1968, and provided a large control console with variable speed playback. This made it ideal for

instant replay Instant replay or action replay is a video reproduction of something that recently occurred which was both shot and broadcast live. The video, having already been shown live, is replayed in order for viewers to see again and analyze what had j ...

for sports events and precise timing control in post-production service. CBS-TV was the first to use the technique during live sportscasts, though it was quickly adopted by all American TV networks. The HS-200, which was an HS-100 connected to a control console when combined called the HS-200, had greater precise frame and timing control capability, lending itself to

post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. The ...

applications like

special effect Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual wor ...

s and titles. The HS-200 had a frame accurate timing computer that enabled frame-accurate cuts and dissolve transitions by way of a two-input video switcher. Slow-motion sequences could likewise be programmed and could be "triggered" to begin via an external control pulse such as might come from an external VTR editor like the Ampex VR-2000 VTR with Editec. The HS-200 was the first system capable of single-frame video animation recording, using magnetic discs as opposed to videotape. The HS-200 also provided a readout with specific frame numbers showing from the 900 frames available (NTSC version.) Sequences could be triggered to start from any of these 900 frames with frame-accurate repeatability for creative fine tuning of sequence start and end points.

Type A

1 inch type A videotape (designated Type A by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers,

SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...

) was an open-reel helical scan videotape format developed by Ampex in 1965, one of the first standardized open-reel videotape formats in the width; most others of that size at that time were proprietary.

Type C

1 inch type C videotape (designated Type C by SMPTE) was a professional open-reel videotape format co-developed and introduced by Ampex and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

in 1976. It became the replacement in the professional video and television broadcast industries for the then-incumbent Quadruplex.

D2

D2 is a digital video tape format created by Ampex and other manufacturers (through a standards group of SMPTE) and introduced at the 1988 NAB ( National Association of Broadcasters) convention as a lower-cost alternative to the

D-1 D1, D01, D.I, D.1 or D-1 can refer to: Science and technology Biochemistry and medicine * ATC code D01 ''Antifungals for dermatological use'', a subgroup of the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System * Dopamine receptor D1, Dopamine ...

format. Like D-1, D-2 video is uncompressed; however, it saves bandwidth and other costs by sampling a fully encoded NTSC or PAL

composite video Composite video is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video (typically at 525 lines or 625 lines) as a single channel. Video information is encoded on one channel, unlike the higher-quality S-Video (two channels) a ...

signal, and storing it directly to magnetic tape, rather than sampling component video. This is known as digital composite.

DCT & DST

Digital Component Technology (DCT) and Data Storage Technology (DST) are VTR and data storage devices respectively, created by Ampex in 1992. Both were similar to the D1 and D2 VTR formats, using a width, with the DCT format using DCT ( discrete cosine transform)

video compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

, also its namesake. The DCT and DST formats yielded relatively high capacity and speed for data and video. Double-density DST data storage was introduced in 1996. The final generation of these products were quad density, introduced in 2000, resulting in a large cartridge holding 660GB of data.

Milestones

* In 1948, the first tape-delayed U.S. radio program was broadcast by using an Ampex Model 200 tape recorder. * In May 1949 Model 300 introduced improvements in audio head, tape drive and tape path. * In 1950, Model 400 introduced lower cost professional quality audio recorder, soon to be replaced by the Model 400A, which was the logical precursor of the Model 350. * In 1950, Ampex introduced the first "dedicated" instrumentation recorder, Model 500, built for the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

. * In April 1953 Model 350 introduced audio recorder to replace the Model 400/Model 400A. The Model 350 had more simplicity and durability. Ampex released the 35mm four-track CinemaScope stereo reproduction system. * In May 1954 Model 600 introduced mastering quality audio portable recorder. Models 3200-3300 high-speed duplicators also introduced. * In 1954, in a recording studio equipped with an Ampex

reel-to-reel audio tape recording Reel-to-reel audio tape recording, also called open-reel recording, is magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording tape is spooled between reels. To prepare for use, the ''supply reel'' (or ''feed reel'') containing the tape is plac ...

machine, an unknown truck driver named

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...

recorded his historic first single, "That's All Right" at Sun Studios in Memphis. Also that year, Ampex introduced the first multi-track audio recorder derived from multi-track data recording technology. * In 1955, Ampex released the 70mm/35mm six-track/four-track

system, and an improved 35mm four-track system. * On March 14, 1956, The Ampex VRX-1000 (later renamed the Mark IV) videotape recorder is introduced at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. This is the 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. * In March 1957, Ampex won an Emmy award for the invention of the Video Tape Recorder (VTR). * In 1958, NASA selected Ampex data recorders and magnetic tape. It has been used for virtually all U.S. space missions since. * In 1959, the Nixon-Khrushchev

was recorded on Ampex videotape. The fact that the debate was being videotaped was mentioned by Nixon as an example of American technological development. * In 1960, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Ampex with an Oscar for technical achievement. * January 1961 Helical scan recording was invented by Ampex. The technology behind the worldwide consumer video revolution; it is used in all home Video Tape Recorders today. * In 1963, Ampex technology was used to show replays of the live assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. * In 1963, Ampex introduced EDITEC, electronic video editing, allowing broadcast television editors frame-by-frame recording control, simplifying tape editing and the ability to make animation effects possible. This was the basis for all subsequent editing systems. * On December 7, 1963 – Instant Replay is used for the first time during the live transmission of the Army Navy Game by its inventor, director, Tony Verna. * In April 1964, Ampex introduced the VR-2000 high band videotape recorder, the first ever to be capable of color fidelity required for high quality color broadcasting. * February 1965 introduced VR-303\VR-7000 closed-circuit video tape recorder. * May 1965 introduced AG-350 first all-transistorized audio recorder. * July 1965 introduced VR-660B VTR advanced version of VR-660; replaces VR-660/1500. * November 1965 introduced VR-7000 compact portable closed circuit video tape recorder. * During 1966–1967, Ampex FR-900 data drives were used to record the first images of the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

from the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, as part of the

Lunar Orbiter program The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five uncrewed lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moon's surface, they provided the first photographs ...

. Two drives were refurbished to recover the images as part of the

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) is a project to digitize the original analog data tapes from the five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft that were sent to the Moon in 1966 and 1967; it is funded by NASA, SkyCorp, SpaceRef Interactive, an ...

(LOIRP). * In 1967, ABC used the Ampex HS-100 disk recorder for

slow-motion Slow motion (commonly abbreviated as slo-mo or slow-mo) is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger in the early 20th century. This can be accomplished through the use ...

playback of downhill skiing on the program ''World Series of Skiing'' in

. This was the first use of slow-motion instant replay in sporting events. * In 1968, the introduction of the Ampex VR-3000 revolutionizes video recording: the first truly portable VTR. It is used at the '68 Summer Olympics in Mexico City to follow the world's cross-country runners for the first time in Broadcast history. * In 1969, Ampex introduced Videofile, still in use today at

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

for the electronic storage and retrieval of fingerprints. * In 1972, Ampex introduced the ACR-25, the first automated robotic library system for the recording and playback of

television commercial A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...

s. Each commercial was recorded on an individual cartridge. These cartridges were then loaded into a large rotating carousel. Using sophisticated mechanics and vacuum pneumatics, the "carts" were loaded into and extracted from the machine with an 8-second cycle time for spots under 61 seconds. This freed TV stations from loading individual machines with spots in real time, or preparing spot reels in advance of a broadcast. The TV newsroom also began to use the ACR-25 to run news stories because of its random-access capability. The ACR-25 used AVR-1 signal, servo, and timebase systems, and a machine-programming control bay designed by Ampex engineer E. Stanley Busby. Both machines had a lockup time of 200 milliseconds, as distinct from the industry standard 5 second pre-roll. This was accomplished with optical-vacuum reel servos providing the vacuum capstan negligible inertial mass to control, and predictive digital servos that could re-frame vertically at horizontal rate, as well as timebase correction with a window exceeding 64 microseconds (compared to the VR-2000's window of less than 5 microseconds). * Also in 1970, Ampex started its own record label,

Ampex Records Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence.AbramsoThe History ...

. Its biggest hit was "We Gotta Get You A Woman" by

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...

(as "Runt"), reaching #20 on the charts in 1970. * In 1978, the Ampex Video Art (AVA) video graphics system is used by artist

LeRoy Neiman LeRoy Neiman (born LeRoy Leslie Runquist, June 8, 1921 – June 20, 2012) was an American artist known for his brilliantly colored, expressionist paintings and screenprints of athletes, musicians, and sporting events. Early life Neiman was ...

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. * In 1983, Ampex introduced the DCRS digital cassette recorder, offering compact cassette storage with the equivalent of 16 digital or 8 DDR instrumentation reels on one cassette. Also, 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. * In 1982, Ampex introduced

DST Daylight saving time (DST), also referred to as daylight savings time or simply daylight time (United States, Canada, and Australia), and summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and others), is the practice of advancing clocks (typicall ...

(high-performance computer mass storage products able to store half the Library of Congress in of floor space) and DCT, the first digital component postproduction system using image compression technology to produce high quality images. * In 1985, Ampex introduced the DIS 120i and DIS 160i dual port, data/instrumentation recorders. These made 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. * In 2005, Ampex received its 12th Emmy award for its invention of slow-motion color recording and playback. Also honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards were the members of the engineering team that created the videotape recorder when they worked for Ampex: Charles Andersen,

, Shelby Henderson, Fred Pfost, and the late

Charles Ginsburg Charles Paulson Ginsburg (July 27, 1920 – April 9, 1992) was an American engineer and the leader of a research team at Ampex which developed one of the first practical videotape recorders. Biography Ginsburg was born on July 27, 1920 in San ...

and Alex Maxey.

Sticky-shed syndrome

Some master tapes and other recordings predominantly from the 1970s and 1980s have degraded due to the so-called

sticky-shed syndrome Sticky-shed syndrome is a condition created by the deterioration of the binders in a magnetic tape, which hold the ferric oxide magnetizable coating to its plastic carrier, or which hold the thinner back-coating on the outside of the tape. This de ...

. When sticky-shed syndrome occurs, the binding agent deteriorates, resulting in the magnetic coating coming off the base and either sticking to the backing of the tape layer wound on top of it (resulting in dropout), or being scraped off and deposited on the tape heads while lifting the head off the tape, degrading the treble. The problem has been reported on a number of makes of tape (usually back-coated tapes), including Ampex tapes. Ampex filed for a baking process ("A typical temperature used is and a typical time is 16 hours") to attempt to recover such tapes, allowing them to be played once more and the recordings transferred to new media. The problems have been reported on tapes of type 406/407, 456/457, 2020/373.

Branding

* In 1959, Ampex acquired Orradio Industries and it became the Ampex Magnetic Tape Division. * In 1995, Ampex divested this division, then called the Ampex Recording Media Corporation. This became Quantegy, Inc., which later changed its name to the current

Quantegy Quantegy Inc. was a manufacturer of magnetic tape and professional external hard drives based in Opelika, Alabama. Their tape products were primarily used in analog audio and video recording studios, but they also have some use with digital dat ...

Recording Solutions. * In January 2005, having previously filed for bankruptcy protection, Quantegy closed its manufacturing facility in Opelika. * In October 2014, Ampex Data Systems Corporation was sold to Delta Information Systems, but retains the rights to the Ampex name. *In 2017, Ampex established a second business unit, Ampex Intelligent Systems (AIS), in Colorado Springs Colorado, and branded its Silicon Valley business unit Ampex Data Systems (ADS).

Record labels

Ampex Records started in 1970. Its biggest hit was "We Gotta Get You A Woman" by

(as "Runt"), reaching #20 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 charts in 1970. Ampex also originated three subsidiary labels: Bearsville, Big Tree, and Lizard. Ampex Records ceased around 1973 and Bearsville and Big Tree switched distribution to

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

and

Bell Records Bell Records was an American record label founded in 1952 in New York City by Arthur Shimkin, the owner of the children's record label Golden Records, and initially a unit of Pocket Books, after the rights to the name were acquired from Benny ...

, respectively with Lizard becoming an independent entity. Later on, Big Tree was picked up by

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...

Legal history

In 2005, iNEXTV, a wholly owned subsidiary of respondent Ampex Corporation, brought a defamation lawsuit against a poster on an Internet message board who posted messages critical of them (Ampex Corp. v. Cargle (2005), Cal.App.4th ). The poster, a former employee, responded with an anti-

SLAPP Strategic lawsuits against public participation (also known as SLAPP suits or intimidation lawsuits), or strategic litigation against public participation, are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with t ...

suit and eventually recovered his attorney fees. The case was unique in that it involved the legality of speech in an electronic public forum.

Current situation

After being sold to Delta Information Systems in 2014, two former subsidiaries of Ampex Corporation continue business as part of the Ampex legacy. Ampex Data Systems Corporation (ADSC) headquartered in Silicon Valley, and Ampex Japan Ltd. These are the only two Ampex businesses that still exist as more than "in name only" entities. ADSC has two business units. The Silicon Valley unit, Ampex Data Systems (ADS), continues the Ampex tradition in the storage industry by manufacturing ruggedized, high-capacity, high-performance digital data storage systems. The Colorado Springs, Colorado unit, Ampex Intelligent Systems (AIS), is the center for company's line of industrial control system cyber security products and services and its artificial intelligence/machine learning technology which is available in all of the products. The Ampex video system is now obsolete, but many thousands of quadruplex videotape recordings remain. Machines that survive are used to transfer archival recordings to modern digital video formats. Ampex Corporation supported the Ampex Museum of Magnetic Recording, started by Peter Hammar in 1982. "The Ampex Museum of Magnetic Recording" by curator Peter Hammar. "Electronic Servicing & Technology" magazine 1982 June. The contents of that museum were donated to Stanford in 2001. A project is now underway to curate Ampex artifacts in physical and digital form. This project will find a permanent home in Redwood City for the Ampex Museum and digital artifacts will be curated at AmpexMuseum.org"AmpexMuseum.org"
by Hammar, Wilson, Parker This project is being funded by contributions from former Ampex employees.

References

External links

*
Ampex Virtual Museum
{{Authority control Video storage Companies based in Hayward, California Electronics companies of the United States Defunct record labels of the United States Electronics companies established in 1944 American companies established in 1944 1944 establishments in California Record labels established in 1970 Record labels disestablished in 1973 Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008 Video equipment manufacturers 2014 mergers and acquisitions