BBC’s Early Video Tape Experiments…

On July 20, 2013 - TV History


BBC’s Early Video Tape Experiments…

This is very much like the RCA test model built in 1950. I think both systems used 1/2 inch tape but they moved at 200 inches per second and could only record 15 minutes of programming, even though the reels were huge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f1GDQDB0Ss

Early video tape machine developed by the BBC starting in 1952. VERA – an acronym for Vision Electronic Recording Apparatus – used half inch magnetic tape on…

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5 Comments

  1. Roger A Summers July 20, 2013

    My concern is the stationary heads and 200 IPS??? I mean by that time our tape machines with rotating heads were widely available. And the Brits stuck stoicly with a stationary head? Don’t they get TV over there? I wonder how long it was before they abandoned the stationary head. And one more thing was it a split head for audio? 200IPS? I didn’t notice a sperate audio head? Of course the kinescope was fairly grainy and then youtube had it’s way with it. You would get you some great audio, no matter what the size of the audio track at 200ips.

  2. Chuck Conrad July 20, 2013

    If you got your necktie caught in the transport, you’d be in serious trouble…

  3. Michael Scott Ferguson July 20, 2013

    Ironic twist: the surviving record is a kinescope?

  4. Edward Croot July 20, 2013

    It was first used publicly on a Panorama programme and the picture quality wasn’t very good. I remember Richard Dimbleby saying how good it had been during rehearsal that afternoon.

  5. Terry Ricketts July 20, 2013

    When the bloody tape broke you ran for your life..