First Video Tape Recorder

The origin of video cassettes

Today in 1956, CBS went on air with the first videotape delayed broadcast, Douglas Edwards and The News, from Los Angeles, California, using the Ampex Mark IV.

The first practical videotape recorder, it was introduced on April 14, 1956, at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. It won an Emmy Award in 1957 and in 1959 it captured on tape the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “Kitchen Debate” which took place at the Moscow Trade Fair.

In Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years, published in 1999, John C. Mallinson wrote:

Over the last decade, some 50 million consumer video cassette recorders have been manufactured annually. This figure far exceeded the production of hard disk drives for personal computers, where an annual rate of 50 million units was attained only in the year 1995. Virtually every home worldwide that has a television receiver has also a video cassette recorder. It is arguable that the worldwide social impact of the video recorder has been far greater than that of all the other concurrent technologies, including semiconductors and computers.

Today, semiconductors and computers (i.e., disk drives and flash memory) have become the dominant recording and playback technology for all types of content, from video and audio to images and text.