Chapter 3

Video Recording – the Impossible Dream

Imagine, if you can, that the year is 1951. Someone asks you what three technological developments you would like to see in existence in five years time, as birthday presents perhaps. Possible answers might include an all-electronic refrigerator, a light amplifier to make large-scale television projection as bright and vivid as film, and a television picture recorder which can record a video signal just as audio can be recorded on an inexpensive disc or tape and played back in the home.

This was the wish list of David Sarnoff, chairman of the mighty RCA corporation, given as a challenge to his technical staff at a celebratory gathering to mark his forty-five years in the business and the renaming ...

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