Memorial Tributes: Volume 7
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History of the Early Days of Ampex Corporation
PAPER History of The Early Days of Ampex Corporation As recalled by JOHN LESLIE and ROSS SNYDER Alexander M. Poniatoff founded Ampex in 1944, primarily to manufacture small motors and generators for military applications. When WWII ended, the military contracts dropped off, and Alex had to search for a new line of business to continue his company’s existence. He and his small group of engineers heard a demonstration of a Magnetophon, a German magnetic tape recorder used by Hitler during WWII. The demonstration quickly convinced Alex to redirect his company and soon it was designing and manufacturing professional-quality magnetic tape recorders. Bing Crosby was a great help in Ampex’s early years. The company grew quickly and, within a short time, dominated the magnetic tape recorder market in radio, television, the record industry, and industrial and military markets for instrumentation recorders . Alex was born in Russia in 1892. His father was well-to- 0 INTRODUCTION do, and sent Alex to Germany for an education in engineering. After college, he returned to Russia only to see his country It has been amazing how many people today are asking become engaged in a civil war. Alex escaped to China, where questions about Ampex and the Company’s contribution to the he went to work for the Shanghai Power Company. He music recording industry, the radio and television broadcast immigrated to the United States in 1927 where he worked for industry and the stereophonic home entertainment field. There General Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric, and the Dalmo Victor is no question that Ampex was a major factor in each of these Corporation in San Carlos, California. -
Toward a Grammar of Special Effects
Peter Weibel BEYOND Tim CUT ; V t Toward a grammar of special effects The aim of this paper is to show that special effects are not purer trick effects from the magic department, but formal derivations' the two basic technifues of cinema, which are cut and superimposition, comparable - if we want to follow a suggestion to of Roman Jakobsorrmetonymy and metaphor as the two basic procedures of - { c language. ---T6 - fully understand this concept we have at first to fortget what we have learned about the history of cinema, which always was shown to us under the perspectives of literature,lnarration and the humani ties and very recently ;only in the context of the socio-economical or socio-technological it IS evolution (see Paul Virilio) . For our argument important i=7to recall that '14e of the moving image has to be divided in~- the art oft the cinematographic ~ge and J - the electronic mevi g image'--` . Both , share - common fundamentals, but both have also--a-different histo*q which ii 5 sometimes parallel and sometimes asynchronous . What they have namely in ar c. C ; common is the destruction of the aesthetics and ontology of the stable image t w V,,-1s Cr (painting, sculpture) : The question is even-,--, an ontology of the moving image is even possible or whether the moving image destroys any ontology . the early optico-chemical experiments and invention, des discoveries of the fundamental physiological laws governing the appearance and disappearance of moving images'. tam -princi~Tesare- ~-- pers effect./It persistence of~rision/ formilat# by~Peteroget 4,is ba6ed on tYfe fact that the human eye/holds lig~t values for a fraction Optico-physiologial laws founding the art of the moving image . -
The Invention of Television
f (0,1 ! , t-/ r 1 The Invention of Television Albert Abramson elevision is the electrical transmission and came in 1843 when Samuel F. B. Morse developed reception of transient visual images, and is his telegraph (distant-record) machine. This was probably the first invention by committee, in a means of communication by which the letters the sense of resulting from the effort of hundreds of of the alphabet were converted into electrical equi- individuals widely separated in time and space, all valents (the Morse code) that could be either re- prompted by the urge to produce a system of seeing corded on paper tape or transcribed by trained over the horizon. operators. Since the code was transmitted over wires Whether with tom-toms. smoke signals, or sema- at almost the speed of light, it soon became the phore. human beings have always tried to com- quickest means of point-to-point communication. municate with neighbours beyond the horizon. The Before long, electric wires were strung on poles con- desire has been a matter of commerce, curiosity, or necting most of the major cities. These same wires most importantly, warfare. Written messages were were also run under the lakes and oceans of the sent by ships, horses, birds, and shanks mare. But world. these were slow, cumbersome, and subject to the About the same time, other inventors were seek- whims of weather, terrain, or the endurance of ing means to transmit more than dots and dashes animals. The first steps towards instant commun- over these same wires. One of the earliest was ications were really taken by seventeenth- and Alexander Bath in 1843. -
Principles of Magnetic Recording
Chapter 6.1 Principles of Magnetic Recording E. Stanley Busby 6.1.1 Introduction Magnetic recording enjoys a rich history. The Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen made the first magnetic sound recorder when, in 1898, he passed the current from a telephone through a recording head held against a spiral of steel wire wound on a brass drum. Upon playback, the magnetic variations in the wire induced enough voltage in the head to power a telephone receiver. Amplification was not available at the time. The hit of the Paris Exposition of 1900, Poulsen’s recorder won the grand prize. In this mag- netic analog of Edison’s acoustic recorder (which impressed a groove on a rotating tinfoil-cov- ered drum), one whole cylinder held only 30 s of sound. In a few years, the weak and highly distorted output of Poulsen’s device was vastly improved by adding a fixed magnetizing current, called bias, to the output of the telephone. This centered the signal current variations on the steepest part of the curve of remanent magnetism, greatly improving the gain and linearity of the system. In 1923, two researchers working for the U.S. Navy first applied high-frequency ac bias. This eliminated even-order distortion, greatly reduced the noise induced by the surface roughness of the medium, and improved the amplitude of the recovered signal. Except in some toys, ac bias is used in all audio recorders. Wire recording, further developed in the United States, found wide use during World War I1 and entered the home recording market by the late 1940s. -
The Birth of Tape Recording in the U.S. by Peter
THE BIRTH OF TAPE RECORDING IN THE U.S. Peter Hammar Arnpex Museum of Magnetic Recording Redwood City, California Presented at the 72nd Convention 1982 Oct~ber23-27 Anaheim, California This preprint has been reproduced from the author's advance manuscript, without editing, corrections or consideration by the Review Board. The A ES takes no responsibility for the contents. Additionalpreprints may be obtained by sending request and remittance to the Audio Engineering Society, 60 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10165 USA. AI1 rights resenled. Reproduction of this preprint, or any portion thereof, is not permitted without direct permission frorn the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. AN AUDlO ENGINEERING SOCIETY PREPRINT The Birth of Tape Recordlng rn the 1J.S. by Peter Hammar, Curator Ampex Museum of Ma~netlcRecording Redwood City, CA In 1945 when Major Jack Mullin, U.S.A. S~gnalCorps, came home to San Franclsco w~thtwo German Magnetophon audio tape recorders, he had no idea he and three other Bay Area engineers, Bi11 Palmer, Harold Lindsay, and Myron Stolaroff--not big companies llke GE, RCA, or Westinghouse--would be the ones to revolutionlze Amerlcan record~ng. By 1947, tlny Ampex Corporatlon surprised U.S. studios and broadcasters w~ththe flrst successful American Version of the tape recorder. How were Arnpex's Lindsay and Stolaroff able to bu~lda hi-fi tape machlne while others failed7 [This article 1s dedicated to the late Harold W. Llndsay, AES member and aud~oploneer, the designer o€ America's flrst successful professional audio tape recorder. Harold's hlgh englneerlng Standards and personal regard for hls fellow man made him a friend of us all. -
Bibliography and References
Bibliography and References BOOKS Athey, Skipwith W. Magnetic Tape Recording. Washington: NASA SP-5038, U.S. Gov. Printing Office, 1966. Begun, S. J. Magnetic Recording. New York: Rinehart Books, Inc., 1949. Bernstein, Julian. Video Tape Recording. New York: John F. Rider Publications, 1960. Bycer, Bernard. Digital Magnetic Tape Recording. New York: Hayden Book Co., 1965. Carnras, Marvin, (ed). Magnetic Tape Recording. Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania: Van Nostrand Rein- hold Co., 1985. Davies, Gomer. Magnetic Tape Instrumentation. New York: McGraw Hill, 1961. EMI Technology Inc. Modern Instrumentation Tape Recording. EMI Technology Inc. 1978. Eargle, John. Sound Recording. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1980. Hoagland, Albert. Digital Magnetic Recording. New York: John Wiley, 1963. Howard, James A. and L. N. Ferguson. Magnetic Recording Handbook. Mountain View, CA: Hewlett Packard Co. AN 89, 1966. Jorgensen, Finn. The Complete Handbook of Magnetic Recording. Blue Ridge Summitt, PA: Tab Books Inc., 1980. Kalil, Ford (editor). Magnetic Tape Recording for the Eighties. NASA Reference Pub!. 1075. Washington: U. S. Gov. Printing Office, 1982. Lowman, Charles E. Magnetic Recording. New York: McGraw Hill, 1972. Mee, C. D. The Physics of Magnetic Recording. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964. McKnight, J. G., and Morrison. Level and Frequency Response Standardization in Magnetic Sound Recording. Redwood City CA: Ampex Corp., 1968. McGinty, Gerald P. Videocassette Recorders, Theory and Servicing. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1979. Pear, C. B. Magnetic Recording in Science and Industry. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1967. Sebastian, L. G. Digital Magnetic Recording for Computer Applications. London: Chapman and Hall, 1973. Snel, D. A. Magnetic Sound Recdrding. -
Recording Technology History
http://homepage.mac.com/oldtownman/recording/notes.html 1 of 16 Recording Technology History notes revised July 6, 2005, by Steve Schoenherr 1. Origins 2. Cylinder vs. Disc 3. New Popular Music 4. Electric Era Replaces Acoustic Era 5. Music for the Masses What's New 6. Magnetic Tape Recording Invented 7. Tape Recording Comes to America 8. War of the Speeds 9. Rock and Roll 10. From Stereo to Cassette 11. Video Tape Recording 12. Japanese Introduce Helical Scan 13. Betamax Battles 14. Digital Revolution 15. Motion Picture Sound 16. Microphone History 17. Loudspeaker History 18. Radio and Television History 19. Sources and Suggested Readings 20. Films and Videos and CDs 21. Links 22. Acknowledgements Origins 1877 - Edison made the first recording of a human voice ("Mary had a little lamb") on the first tinfoil cylinder phonograph Dec. 6 (the word "Halloo" may have been recorded in July on an early paper model derived from his 1876 telegraph repeater) and filed for an American patent Dec. 24. John Kruesi built this first practical machine Dec. 1-6 from a sketch given to him by Edison that was made Nov. 29 (not on "Aug. 12" that Edison mistakenly wrote on another Scott phonautograph sketch in 1917). When Kruesi heard Edison's first words Dec. 6, he exclaimed from before Edison "Gott in Himmel!" (but these words for "God in Heaven" were not recorded and thus have been forgotten). Others before Edison had tried to record sound, but Edison and his tinfoil phonograph were the first to succeed. 1878- Edison was granted patent 200,521 on Feb. -
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Memorial Tributes: Volume 7 CHARLES P. GINSBURG 84 Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Memorial Tributes: Volume 7 CHARLES P. GINSBURG 85 CHARLES P. GINSBURG 1920–1992 WRITTEN BY PETER HAMMAR SUBMITTED BY THE NAE HOME SECRETARY CHARLES P. GINSBURG, the man who led Ampex Corporation's development of the world's first practical videotape recorder, died at his Eugene, Oregon, home on April 9, 1992. He was seventy-one. Ginsburg was born in San Francisco and diagnosed with diabetes at the age of four, just two years after insulin was discovered. He lived a normal childhood and graduated from Lowell High School. Electronics was not his first career choice. He entered the University of California, Berkeley, as a premedical student but transferred to the Davis campus two years later to study animal husbandry. Out of money, he dropped out in 1940 and began work at a series of jobs that eventually steered him into the field where he made his mark sixteen years later. In 1942 he worked as a sound technician for Harry McCune Sound Services, and from 1943 to 1947 as a studio and transmitter engineer at Associated Broadcasters, Inc., both in San Francisco. It was also during this time that he entered San Jose State College, where he earned a B.A. degree in 1948 in engineering and mathematics. From 1947 to 1952 he worked as a transmitter engineer at Station KQW (now KCBS-AM), San Francisco. It was there in 1951 that he received a telephone call from Alexander Poniatoff, founder and president of Ampex Cor Copyright National Academy of Sciences.