Quadruplex videotape

The Ampex recorder unveiled in Chicago, April 14, 1956 Before videotape, the only way to keep a television picture was kinescope: pointing a film camera at a monitor and waiting hours for the film to be developed. Ampex's two-inch quadruplex machine recorded the picture magnetically and played it back at once. CBS put the first one on the air in late November 1956, using it to repeat Douglas Edwards's evening news for the Pacific time zone so he no longer had to perform it twice. Production machines were priced at $45,000. Tape gave broadcasters editing, repeats and time-zone delays, and it began the long road that ended with people recording television themselves.