Electronic Information Media

Magnetic recording—a brief history

The basic principles of magnetic recording were first discovered in the 1890s. Not much was done with the discovery because the necessary electronics hadn't been invented.

Audio recordings on tape were invented in the early 1930s and introduced to the domestic market in the late 1940s.

Several companies tried to develop a videotape recorder in the early 1950s, but Ampex was the first to succeed in April 1956.

The first on-air broadcast of videotaped material occurred on 30 November 1956, with the CBS Douglas Edwards evening news broadcast.

In 1968, Sony introduced the first videotape recorder that was small enough and cheap enough for use in education. It was replaced by the Sony U-Matic cassette recorder in 1971 which was still in use 25 years later.

The videotape recorder was not cheap enough for the consumer until Sony introduced the BetaMax in 1975. In 1976, JVC introduced the VHS VCR, and the battle of the formats began. In 1989, Sony introduced the Hi8 camcorder.

Digital videotape recording started in 1987 when the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers established the D1 standard. Digital has a major advantage over the previous analogue-based recorders, because there is no degradation when tapes are copied.

Since the introduction of the D1 format, at least four others have been launched. None of them dominates the market and D1 itself is now virtually obsolete.