1950's: BBC vs Ampex

[ppppenguin]

Originally Posted by NewVista

While Ampex solves the problem in a few months at no public expense.

Ampex also started on VT work in 1952 according to that paper. Even the very telented team of Ginsberg, Dolby et al didn't crack the problem in a few months.

Back in 1952 there was no clearcut route to recording video on magnetic tape, it was very much a research problem. Quadruplex machines worked, but were VERY expensive. This cost may have been acceptable to US networks with their timezone problems but was a deterrent to European broadcasters. Had some form of linear recording worked, it would likely have been quite a bit less expensive to build though the tape costs would have been high. I suspect this was the reason why the BBC pursued VERA until 1958.

It would be hard to find the total R&D costs for either Quadruplex or VERA. From what I know of the BBC Research labs the amount of expenditure would have been pretty small. A barely measureable fraction of the BBC's total budget.

If you want a different comparison, look at standards conversion. BBC Research and Designs departments produced the world's first all electronic standards converters between 525/60 and 625/50. They did it in time for the 1968 Mexico olympics where it was urgently needed. I don't know if there was any work at all in the US on this subject.