The Ampex Video Cruiser

Robert W. Day:
Growing up in Depression-weary Oakland, California, Bob Day worked a variety of jobs to help the family, but he soon found he had an unusual gift for radio. Even as a young man, his rich bass voice commanded attention and his ability to "rip-and-read" with ease moved him ahead of more senior announcers.

A familiar figure in Bay Area radio during the 1950s, he hosted KGO-TV's "San Francisco Sketchbook," and later the popular "Success Story" series on live television. After that show's Ampex episode, he was lured away from broadcasting to introduce the video tape recorder with a nationwide tour in the "Ampex Video Cruiser," a 40-ft custom bus with cameras, the video tape machine, a crew of ten people and five-thousand vacuum tubes.

As the voice of Ampex, Bob Day continued as corporate story-teller, using television produced on video tape -"teleproduction"- on and off the Ampex campus for the next 35 years. Many of today's production techniques were pioneered a quarter-century ago by Day trying to tell a fresh story in the competition- charged cauldron of NAB's four-day grind. Techniques such as interactive video, quick-cut editing, synchronized multi-screen presentations... were pioneered in analog with just a typewriter, a stopwatch and what George Bush would later call "the vision thing!"

His brand of story-telling, which began on radio as just a voice in the dark, went on to illuminate television's transition from "staged" to "stored" images. It is widely acknowledged that Bob Day's work influenced other creative minds to enrich the vocabulary of video production.

On June 28, 1994, he died peacefully in his sleep. He was a loyal friend, a good guy who suffered fools with compassion. He never missed a cue and he always knew his lines.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Robert
• Day
• Ampex
• Redwood
• City
• videotape
• cruiser
• quadruplex
• mobile
• video
• NAB

[websuspect]

The first portable video camcorder. 10 tons of rca shit in a GMC shit van.

[FamiliaFrk]

The first GO pro

[Superskunk1954]

WOW

[FORRESTJASPER]

Why only 58 sec. ? Is there anymore available?

[Superedit]

Yes! Time to hit the road!

[phoxetis]

thanks

[antiochus66]

fantastic...

i want that cruiser,but i need the pal version : )

[typicalaussiebloke]

That's where I first saw the footage too, I watched the program when doing a TV/VCR course at college, very good show too.

[pvx]

I was wondering the exact same thing (the origin of this footage), thanks to etihwr, 'tis now confirmed...! :)

That was a nifty idea on Ampex's behalf, "touring" the VR-1000 to TV stations to demonstrate.

I remember first seeing this clip quite a few years ago in an episode of "The Secret Life Of Machines" (the VCR episode), they featured a clip fo this footage (as well as a short clip from teh Nixon-Khruschev "kitchen" debate, another very early quad recording).

[typicalaussiebloke]

Thank you so much for identifying that piece of early video footage by sharing this fantastic video and posting it in response to my video, I've been wondering for a while where that footage came from n the year it was recorded.