TV History Main Page
The earliest video recordings -- of Baird's mechanically-scanned images -- were on wax phonograph disks, since the video bandwidth of the 30-line images was within audio recording range. German development of the magnetic tape recorder-reproducer in the late 1930s led to early attempts at video recording in the US in the post-war period when commercial television was booming. To get the necessary bandwidth, the tape had to be pulled past the recording head at upwards of 35 mph! Ampex engineers were the first to perfect a technique of four heads rotating at 9600 rpm across the width of a 2-inch tape pulled from reel to reel at 15 inches per second. It was called Quadruplex recording, and it was the standard of the television industry for a quarter century from its introduction in 1956.
These VTRs were real workhorses, and were about as large; these are the Clydesdales of video recording. Collectors of these monsters have to be a little crazy. I wish I had one too! (Well, a little.)
Pretty quickly after the complexities of Quad video recording were mastered (and patented), other tape-base forms of television recording were developed. Most of these, understandably, were somewhat simpler, and eventually aimed at the huge consumer market. Now that almost all video is digitally recorded, and more of it is going directly to semiconductor memory (no moving parts), these early analog recorders are being collected and appreciated.