[QuadList] Quad Pioneer Charles Anderson enters hospice--Prayers requested

[Ted Langdell]

(Reno, Nevada, March, 28, 2012)— Quadruplex Videotape pioneer Charles Anderson is in a Reno hospice, following surgery last week.

Friend and former KNPB, Reno co-worker Tim Stoffel advised Anderson is "very sick and needs prayers."

Charlie is over 80 now, and one of the four people still alive from the group of six people that created the Quadruplex Video Recorder for Ampex, and made practical the recording live television pictures on magnetic tape.

With a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, Ohio, Charlie worked for ElectroCircuits Inc. and Consolidated Engineering before he joined Ampex in the spring of 1954.

The Video recorder project had been on and off again at Ampex since 1951.  Enough progress was being made by the summer 1954 that team leader Charles Ginsburg was able to secure funding for 80-man hours of work.  

Anderson was brought into the program and the two men became known as "Charlie A" and "Charlie G."  The two took  Walt Selstad's proposal to use four equally spaced heads on a drum rotating at right angle to the tape travel and made it work well enough to prove the concept. 

With machinist and model maker Shelby Henderson already part of the group, things began moving ahead when Fred Pfost came aboard in late September and Alex Maxey joined in October.

Charlie Anderson had been given the task of developing the signal system, but the problem of automatic gain control for the four heads was proving a problem due to the Amplitude Modulation being used to get video onto the tape. 

By late December, Anderson proposed using vestigal sideband Frequency Modulation, and developed one approach. Ray Dolby returned from military service joined the project again, creating a simpler modulator using a multivibrator scheme that could be directly modulated by the incoming video.

The use of FM worked! The first FM pictures came off tape in February, 1955, and while Dolby's modulator was used, Anderson became known as the "father of the FM quad Video. 

A year later... the project was even further along, but the equipment looked very crude. Thoughts about a surprise demonstration at the upcoming National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters convention were being entertained.

Ginsburg recounted that "it was suggested that we should package our efforts more attractively, since this was going to be a very expensive machine."

Anderson was drafted to design the packaging, and the Mark IV console and two closed racks were the result.



At the time, all the focus was on making pictures, as we learn from "History of The Early Days of Ampex Corporation"  as recalled by John Leslie and Ross Snyder:
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/company.histories/ampex/leslie_snyder_early-days-of-ampex.pdf

"One bit of comedy occurred when the (Mark III) prototype was demonstrated to the Ampex Board of Directors in early 1956. 

Charlie Ginsburg and his team of six gave a wonderful showing of video on tape and everyone was impressed—until one of the directors asked “Where’s the sound?” Charlie G and his team had forgotten about that trivial thing called “audio”. Everyone had a good laugh. A few days later, Charlie A borrowed the circuitry from the Ampex Model 350 to use for audio recording along one edge of the tape. The other edge was used for a control track."

The success of the machine brought a stream of visitors to the Ampex facilities.  Sworn to secrecy, they viewed what the team of six men had accomplished.  

CBS Vice President Bill Lodge (on left behind the Mark IV with Ampex President George Long) 

generated a big surprise at the CBS Affiliates annual meeting on Saturday, the day before NARTB kicked off.  

Anderson recalled the scene 50 years later for Television Technology editor James O'Neal:
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/the-videotape-recorder-turns-/184554

"The (CBS) affiliates meeting was in the Normandie Lounge, the foyer of a ballroom. We were in an alcove there with the machine, behind a curtain. No one knew we were there. CBS had cameras and monitors scattered around the lounge, but that was nothing unusual.

As Lodge made his "state of the company" address, a television camera displayed his image on three monitors. Fred Pfost and the Mark IV were behind the curtain, with the machine recording Lodge's remarks. As Leslie and Snyder relate: 

He mentioned a rumor that many had heard——that Ampex was working on a videotape recorder——and said that he had visited Ampex and was impressed with their development project, and had given them a small contract to help finance their development efforts.

Then, Bill Lodge opened the session to questions and answers. That was the signal for Fred Pfost to rewind the tape. When Bill received the signal that the tape was ready to play, he concluded his presentation with much applause. 

Pfost hit play.  Anderson recalls,

"All of a sudden, there was a deafening silence.  Did we screw up somehow?
Then came a roar. The curtain was opened and people started to swarm back around the machine. Before we knew it, we were knee deep in people."

"That machine was demo-ed a lot. It was a very successful show for the network. That night, Ginsburg and I went out with Blair Benson from CBS to the Blue Angel to celebrate. Ginsburg was dancing on the tabletop."

Ampex execs quickly arranged hotel rooms for demos of the Mark IV, and the engineers moved the transport and two racks, and the machine was back in action.

As Charles Ginsburg related to an audience during the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers convention in October 1957:

From the time of the CBS Affiliates meeting on Saturday morning, through the NARTB demonstrations which extended until the following Thursday afternoon, the Mark IV machine performed better than we had any right to expect. And in Redwood City, the performance, for the press, was sensational, exciting, and satisfying.

Shortly, Ampex had orders for 45 machines at $45,000 each. CBS contracted for modified prototypes—what became the VRX-1000—to be delivered as soon as possible.  The VRX machines were custom for CBS and cost more.

The first use on air was Nov. 30, 1956 to record the 15 minute live feed from New York of Douglas Edwards and the News. 

(CBS Engineer John Radis operates the VRX-1000.  Ampex/CBS photo)

Two hours later, the VRX-1000 in Television City played it back from Hollywood to the CBS west coast affiliates. Television hasn't been the same since.

In March of 1957, Ampex was presented an EMMY award for development of what became the VR-1000 Videotape recorder, just four months after the first use of Videotape on air.



Charles Anderson remained involved with Ampex's VTR developments including  automatic time base correctors and the high-band tape FM recording system introduced in 1964. Anderson's name is on six patents awarded between 1955 and 1961.

The AVR-2 power supply was Charlie Anderson's last circuit design for Ampex.  In 1973, he assumed the position of product planner and rose to the level of Vice President. 

Ampex honored Anderson with the very first annual Alexander M.Poniatoff Gold Medal for Technical Excellence (cash and a gold medal) for proposing in late 1954 and creating in January, 1955, the original FM video recording system used in development of the Quad video recorder.

He was honored with the award again in 1986.

After leaving Ampex, Anderson became managing partner, Monaco Video, a branch of San Francisco's Monaco film lab, and continued an active role in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

A member since 1957, Anderson is an elected Fellow, and became President of the society after four terms as a regional governor. An original member of the Society's Video Tape Recording Committee, Anderson chaired the Standards Committee between 1974 and 1977.

Anderson and Quad VTR collector Tim Stoffel became acquainted when Stoffel took the Assistant Chief Engineer position at KNPB in August 2000. Anderson was working full-time at the station and had an apartment in Reno which he kept until the job became part-time.

His residence is in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Amador County east of Stockton. It takes several hours to drive up the Sierra's west slope on Hwy. 88, over the Sierra crest, across the California/Nevada border and then into Reno.

At KNPB, Anderson kept a range of VTR's humming, although none were Quad. Until a few years ago, Sony BVH-2000's could be found in the racks, along with Panasonic AU65 MII format component cassette machines. 

"Believe it or not, MII is one of Charlie Anderson's favorite formats!" Stoffel advised in an e-mail. One is still in service to replay legacy material.  BetacamSP and the D-9 "Digital S" format populate the racks even as the station migrated most airplay to servers.

While he is best known for conceiving the idea of using Frequency Modulation to apply an analog video signal to magnetic tape, Anderson was firmly in the digital age as the century turned.

As 2000 ticked away, Anderson was well into helping the station make the DTV transition. 

During the last week of September, Anderson, KNPB Chief Engineer Fred Ihlow and Stoffel prepared a small, digital television transmitter tucked into a corner of the KNPB transmitter building at Red Peak northeast of downtown Reno.



At 3pm, September 29, Anderson pushed the button to bring Digital Public Television to Reno, the 22nd station of more than 300 PBS member stations that were on the air at the time.

"At the time, KNPB was the smallest PBS station in the country to be transmitting a Digital TV signal. Were were also the fourth smallest station of all TV stations in the country to be transmitting a Digital TV signal!" Stoffel wrote on his webpage documenting the sign-on.

On February 20, 2009, Anderson tripped the breakers on KNPB's Channel 5 analog transmitter on Red Peak, and ended the station's analog transmissions.  A day later, Anderson's going away party marked the end of his time at KNPB.

The call of Quad assembled the living members of the Ampex team in 2005. 

They were honored in Princeton, New Jersey by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the very first Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award in the area of Technology and Engineering.

Click on these links:
http://www.bryan-brown.com/emmy05tech/portraits/pages/2040_1116_lr.htm
http://www.bryan-brown.com/emmy05tech/candids/index.htm

 link to see the copyrighted pictures of the four team members who attended and Alex Maxey's daughter who accepted for her late father.  Charlie G was likely there in spirit, having passed away April 9, 1992 at age 71 in his Eugene, Oregon home.

Anderson was hospitalized briefly in February of 2010, but maintained a chipper attitude during a visit Tim and I made.

Friends of Charlie are welcome to e-mail or call me for information if they want to visit Charlie. We'll post occasional updates.

Thank you for your kind thoughts and prayers.

Ted

Ted Langdell
ted at quadvideotapegroup.com
Secretary for the  QuadVideotapeGroup.com: 
Preserving Tape, Equipment and the Knowledge to use them, in conjunction with the Library of Congress

Fifth Annual Quad Videotape Group Lunch at NAB
12:30pm, Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Lower South Hall REAR food concession area

See us at NAB 2012, April 16-19 in Booth SL-9607
Use code LV2864 for your free NAB Exhibits Pass

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