Television Puts Sounds and Pictures Together In 1928 the technology to broadcast video and audio together was invented It was called television In the early twentieth century people were entertained by movies and radio Movies allowed them to see their favorite entertainers on the screen in a theater Radio let them listen to their favorite entertainers at home But they couldn't hear and see shows at home What they wanted was radio with pictures What they wanted was video Video was different from movies It was broadcast through the air like radio In 1941 the first commercial black and white television shows were broadcast There were only about 7 000 TV sets in the US Then the United States got involved in World War II TV was all but forgotten No more TV sets Introduced in 1946 the RCA 630 TS was the first mass produced television set
Videotape Allows Live Events to Be Recorded Two the playback image was poor Three the sound didn't stay in synch with the picture Television started out as a live technology Viewers saw things as they actually happened It also meant that if you missed something you missed it forever Television companies wanted to find a way to record programs and events In 1951 the Ampex company came out with a videotape recorder But it had three problems One it took a mile of tape to record four minutes of video Ginsburg's Ampex VRX 1000 the first successful videotape recorder Ampex hired Charles Ginsburg to fix these problems One of the people Ginsburg hired was Ray Dolby Dolby went on to invent a noise reduction system for audiotape that we still use today In 1956 Ginsburg's team made a new machine It solved the three problems of the first videotape recorder The machines were very AMPEX
Eleanor Roosevelt on Meet the Press in 1956 expensive But the big networks bought them record news talk shows and daytime dramas NASA began using videotape on its missions in 1958 News organizations used videotape to get accurate coverage of news events Videotape was used to record and play back sports events It was used to keep sports officials from making incorrect calls It was used to 50 000 Cost of the first video recording machine THINK ABOUT IT Television spread into homes faster than telephones or indoor plumbing It replaced reading listening to the radio and going to the movies What do you think this meant for families Television companies wanted a way to record live events Only the big networks could afford videotape recorders Videotape was used to record news events sports space flights and more
