Prior to videotape, film was the only practical medium via which television programs could be recorded, which was a problem for U.S. television executives whose audiences were spread across several time zones. For a viewer on the East Coast to see a show on the same night as someone on the West Coast, the live broadcast had to be filmed, sent for processing, returned to the studio, and then retransmitted a few hours later.
A team at Ampex, including the enemy of hiss, Ray Dolby, and led by Charles Paulson Ginsburg (1920- 1992), developed the first solution in the form of a Videotape Recorder (VTR), a unit that could capture live images from television cameras, convert them into electrical signals, and save the information onto magnetic tape. In an audiotape recorder, the information is recorded linearly, the tape traveling past the record head at, for example, 3-7 inches (7.6-17.7 cm) per second (ips). But TV signals can contain 500 times more information than regular audio, so linear video recording, even with a much larger tape area, would require speeds of several feet per second. The Ginsburg/Ampex solution was to use multiple recording heads that were both slanted and rotated rapidly to create a transverse, rather than linear, recording pattern. This meant that the tape itself could pass the heads relatively slowly.
Ampex unveiled the first commercial VTR in April 1956. It used 2-inch (5 cm) wide 3M tape traveling at 15 ips. The monochrome machines were offered at around $50,000 each. Within four days, Ampex had received orders worth $5 million. Radio stars everywhere shed a tear.
