Recording video in the 1950s

[Mike Watterson]

Not forgetting Bing Crosby & Crosby Enterprises:

https://www.vtoldboys.com/bing.htm

https://ethw.org/First-Hand:Bing_Crosby_...o_Recorder

Mentions the Magnetofon, and AEG/Telefuken had changed to AC Bias and plastic tape even before WWII. I have a 1965 portable reel to reel model which could give poorer journalists / radio studios an alternative to Uher and Nagra. Telefunken also sold a licenced version of the Swiss Nagra, made in Germany. The mechanical chassis was used for over 10 years.

No doubt Ampex's experience making radar motors etc was invaluable for designing audio and video tape chassis.

Bing certainly didn't like 78s or "live" or Hollywood, so had quite an incentive to change to audio tape. Thus no surprise his company tried to do video. Wide tape and multiple tracks was their approach to limit tape speed. The DCC (1992) used 3.8 mm tape (and playback only analogue Compact Cassette) and nine tracks with a innovative Magneto-resistive stationary head instead of the video inspired helical head on DAT (1987). Perhaps Bing's company would have tried wider tape and more tracks, but Ampex Quadruplex killed that idea. Do we know if Bing bought any Quadruplex VTRs?

In theory the DCC concept could have been extended to record digital video on wider tape, but it was really a dead-end approach and a failure commercially.