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I've seen that picture many times in the past - but I never figured out what the 'steering wheel' on the lower left of the picture was for. Anybody know or want to take an educated guess?

Peter

Posted (edited)
I've seen that picture many times in the past - but I never figured out what the 'steering wheel' on the lower left of the picture was for. Anybody know or want to take an educated guess?

It's actually a doctored photo of a mock-up submarine maneuvering room, it even took in Sun Microsystems Chief Executive (2004) Scott McNealy.

Full details on Popular Mechanics (where the original was allegedly published) own website http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology...de/1303271.html

Edited by Crossy
Posted

In 1958, the first six VTR's bought by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were set up in Calgary to do time-zone delay.

This Ampex VR-1000 was the first, practical, broadcast quality recorder.

The VR-1000 recorded a black and white picture with a mono audio channel on a 2" wide video tape. The tape ran at a familiar and economical 15-inches per second. The picture was recorded across the tape from top to bottom using four heads on a rotating drum (Quadraplex recording). This arrangement gave an effective video recording speed of approximately 1560 inches per second.

It had tape deck that was the size of an Aga cooker, and a rack of electronic equipment two metres wide and two metres high stood beside it. We maintenance/operator lads soon found that the air con for the room was vital as there were no transistors then (just thermionic tubes) and each machine consumed 5.5kW of filament power.

When they were superseded, one bloke bought one and set it up in a garden shed, as the first home videotape recorder.

That would have made a genuine photo to rival the 'spoof' one above.

post-1966-1206002197.jpg

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