On March 30, Ampex Corp. filed for Chapter 11. The company, once THE place for audio and video innovation, has been withering away for a long time, surviving in recent years on specialized archival data storage systems and licensing video technology developed in its heyday.
Last week, San Jose Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy declared Friday Ampex Appreciation Day. He reported that Ampex’s headcount is down to 101 from a peak of 12,000. “Watching Ampex,” he wrote, “is like watching some beloved relative stagger and wheeze and shuffle around the house.”
Mike, I have to say, I don’t think the company is going to recover. But I, too, have fond feelings for this venerable corporation. I spend a lot of time interviewing technology’s pioneers, and I’m never surprised to hear when someone’s roots go back to Ampex.
Ray Dolby, founder of Dolby Labs and noise reduction pioneer, started his career at Ampex as a high school student running a movie projector for a meeting, he went on to work on the video recorder project there. Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn, whose company Atari essentially started today’s videogame industry, and other videogame pioneers also started their engineering careers at Ampex.
I visited the Ampex building once, back in 1988 when I was working on an article on invention of the VCR. At that point, Ampex’s past was already more interesting than its present. It was a thrill to be where so many technologies started. Besides video recording, Ampex was responsible for the first tape-delay radio broadcast, the first multitrack tape recorders, the data recorders on U.S. space missions from 1958 forward, video recording, helical scan recording (used in video cassette recorders), slow-motion instant replay, the first commercial video paint system, and the ADO, that enabled television stations to whiz video around on the screen.
The campus I visited disappeared, for the most part, sold in 1996 and replaced with now-empty modern buildings that were once Excite-At-Home and came to represent dot-com boom excess; they’ll soon be converted to a medical clinic. The Ampex sign, however, remains as a part of Silicon Valley history.
Do you remember Ampex? Tell us your Ampex stories in the comments below.
Photo by Keith Graham
