[QuadList] Fwd: Ampex, RCA and Sony

[C. Park Seward]

Here is some excellent info from my friend and TV guru, Mark Schubin.  
If Mark says it, you can believe it.

Best,
Park

C. Park Seward
Visit us: http://www.videopark.com



Begin forwarded message:
> Date: June 17, 2009 7:47:45 PM PDT
> To: "C. Park Seward" <park at videopark.com>
> Subject: Re: Ampex, RCA and Sony
>
> C. Park Seward wrote:
>> Hi  Mark,
>
>> Then, later Ampex exchanged patents with Sony (I guess the most  
>> important was the FM patent) and got more transistor technology, it  
>> is suggested.
> I believe that is true.  According to James Lardner's book "Fast  
> Forward," (which Sony has told me is gospel and which I personally  
> know was well researched), "With the backing of George Long, Ampex's  
> president, [Ampex vp Phil] Gundy made a proposal to Akio Morita and  
> Masaru Ibuka [of Sony], and in July 1960 -- with typical Sony  
> dispatch -- they signed a one-page letter of agreement.  Sony would  
> design and supply transistorized circuits for use in a 'portable'  
> version of the standard Ampex VTR.  In return, Sony would get the  
> right to make VTRs for nonbroadcast customers.  It was an  
> unprecedented step in Japanese-American corporate relations, and one  
> take, by all accounts, with high hopes on both sides.  Masahiko  
> Morizono, later a deputy president of Sony, spent months in Redwood  
> City studying Ampex's VTR technology, and a team of Ampex engineers  
> was dispatched to Japan to work with a Sony team on the design of  
> the circuits."
>
> He goes on to describe the collaboration in more detail.  Then, "In  
> 1961 Ampex underwent a change of management.  George Long resigned  
> as president after a bad year, and in came William Roberts, an  
> ambitious man...."  "...Roberts envisioned Ampex as a consumer  
> company."  "...it was his position -- and the position of Ampex's  
> lawyers -- that the one-page document signed by Gundy, Morita, and  
> Ibuka was not an agreement at all, just a preliminary memo."  Sony  
> disagreed and put the SV-201 on the market in 1961.  "More  
> ominously, several Japanese firms (not including Sony) began to  
> supply broadcasters with VTRs that closely resembled Ampex's --  
> without, of course, obtaining Ampex's permission.  One company,  
> Shibaden, had the audacity to put out a machine that was a dead  
> ringer for an Ampex VTR -- down to the useless holes in the top  
> plate, which Ampex had put there by mistake.  When Ampex's people  
> complained, MITI [Japan's Ministry of Trade & Industry] officials  
> unapologetically told them they had better take on a full-fledged  
> Japanese partner if they hoped to sell any VTRs in Japan beyond the  
> fifty or sixty they had sold to date.  And to end what they regarded  
> as out-and-out patent infringement, they would have to negotiate  
> licenses with the alleged infringers, allowing them to go legitimate.
>    "Having no real choice in the matter, Ampex yielded on both  
> points, and it proceeded to set up a joint venture with Toshiba.   
> Toshiba would hold fifty-one percent of the stock...."  That was the  
> origin of Toamco.
>
>
>> Around 1961, Ampex and Sony worked on a large helical VTR which was  
>> never marketed.
> Actually, both Sony and Ampex had large, two-inch-tape helical  
> machines that WERE marketed.
>
>> Jim Wheeler said it was to modify TV equipment for the Japanese TV  
>> industry and to also work on a home VTR that was never produced.
> No.  Here's Lardner again.  "...the Toamco VTRs quickly captured a  
> handsome share of the Japanese broadcast market."
>
> I seem to recall that Toamco MIGHT have been interested in making a  
> home VTR at one point, but the company's revenues came from the sale  
> of broadcast VTRs and the licensing of Ampex VTR patents to Japanese  
> companies (including Shibaden).
>
>
>> And we have seen pictures of a Bosch quad that was not delivered in  
>> the U.S. Seems they did not exchange patents with Ampex.
> It seems unlikely that they did not license Ampex's patents.  This  
> is from the Bosch book "Fifty Years of Fernseh":  Regarding  
> videotape recording, "many ideas and experimental models were  
> available between 1952 and 1954 but only the system of transversal  
> recording that was most thoroughly developed though systematic and  
> painstaking work by Ampex, and for which a German patent application  
> had already been filed, led to success."   "Through an exchange of  
> patents, RCA was also able to take part in the introduction of this  
> system so that Ferseh GmbH, because of its outstanding know-how  
> contracts with RCA was kept fully informed.  Ampex, however, was in  
> possession of already granted patents that could not be got round  
> because they were coupled with the system standard.
>    In our negotiations to obtain a license, Fernseh's satisfactory  
> patent situation in Europe was an advantage.  In 1958 Ampex had  
> delivered some video recording equipment, modified to the CCIR  
> standard, to the German broadcast houses.  In the same year,  
> development work undertaken by Fernseh GmbH led to the vacuum-tube- 
> equipped quadruplex system BM20...."
>
> TTFN,
> Mark
>

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