Earliest surviving B&W videotape recording
 

G'day all. A few years back I watched in my video course class at TAFE college a documentary on video recording which was part of the Tim Hunkin "Secret Life Of Machines" series and they showed an extremely rare piece of video footage from the mid 50s which they say is the earliest surviving Ampex B&W videotape recording which I assume dates around 1956 or 1957. This footage appears to be of the Hoover Dam shot by a cameraman standing on the OB van while the van is in motion.

I've plucked it off that show and uploaded the 13 second clip to YouTube http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=uOcEq9LzjxM .

Anyways I really want to somehow get a hold of the full footage of this recording and I need some leads so I was wondering if anyone here can identify this footage and possibly the date of recording?

Cheers
Troy

Hard to tell. If it had a clear shot of the car, that could give SOME clue...

I think there is some prior work. I think the earliest is a studio shot of a young lady. The pictures aren't very good, as it was somewhat early in the development of quad.

David

If you want the earliest video recordings, you can go back much earlier.

http://www.tvdawn.com/silvaton.HTM

http://www.tvdawn.com/tv1strx.htm

These were recorded on platters, not film or tape, of course.

Regards,

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Wow that was fascinating maybe I should dip my toes into the TV forums more often!

:thmbsp:

G'day Phil. I'm very aware of these early Baird disc recordings but thanks for the link anyways. These recordings are very fascinating, John Logie Baird is a genius!!! It's so awesome how these recordings have successfully been transferred too!

In regards of that videotape recording, I will have to contact Tim Hunkin himself on his website as VinylDavid suggested.

Somewhat related:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyE...ddlyEnoughNews

The most facinating thing I found about that footage was the shadow of the guy standing on the van...

Try that today, especially around Hoover Dam, and I can promise you'll probably be warming a bunk in the pokey for an evening... or more..

Times change :tears:

Hear it here (left sidebar): http://tinyurl.com/36z5cj

Or the official site:
http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/index.php

Neat photos:
http://www.firstsounds.org/press/032708/images.php

You may be thinking of a widely-reproduced still photo from an in-house demo at Ampex sometime in 1956; see attached.

Sorry--credit where credit's due; that copy of the picture came from Tim Stoffel's invaluable website:

http://www.lionlamb.us/quad/theory.html

According to my info, the 1st viable video tape recorder, an Ampex machine, made its debut at the NAB convention in Chicago in April 1956, upstaging the mighty RCA. Ampex's machine was crude, had very "soft" picture quality, was huge-remember, this was the era of tubes-and gym-floor-area size computers that could just barely do basic math were the norm-but even as primitive as it was, the Ampex machine was better than the old kinescope system. But the Ampex machine had one Achilles' heel-it couldn't do color, which wasn't much of a problem then, as color broadcasting was so limited to being inconsequential.

You might be right. I don't remember it being that particular picture, but I could have sworn that it was a moving one. I saw it at Ampex's museum before they closed, but that doesn't mean that it was really the earliest still existing.

David

You're right about everything but the "soft" picture quality--I've seen a digibeta master of "The Edsel Show" (generally accepted as the earliest surviving tape, from October 1957) and the picture is extremely sharp. The closeups of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby are rather brutal, in fact.