This ridiculous thing the size of several washing machines is the world's first "Vidac"

Exactly 65 years ago, on April 14, 1956, the world's first commercial video recorder was born.

New

the device was called Ampex VRX-1000 and cost $50,000. The first prototype appeared back in 1951, but then the video ran on 100-inch film and lasted 16 minutes.

In 1956, Ampex already introduceda technology using FM coding, which allowed up to 90 minutes of video to be recorded on 15-inch film, and later switched to a two-inch Quadruplex format.

Of course, afford such a VCRcould only be large television networks, where the novelty was accepted as a technological breakthrough. In 1958, Khrushchev saw the apparatus at an exhibition in Moscow, and Soviet engineers were ordered to develop an analogue. Two years later, the Kadr-1 videotape recorder appeared in the television studios of the USSR.