Richard Elkus discusses developing first VCR at 2010 SVEC Banquet

Richard Elkus spent the first decade of his career at Ampex Corporation. As manager of the Educational and Industrial Products Division he wrote the original product plan for the home video recorder and headed the team that introduced the VCR to the world in 1970.

In 2010 he was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame and gave this brief talk. Elkus discussed development of a video cassette recorder, what could have been and what resulted nearly four decades later. Audio is little distorted but Richard Elkus gives interesting insight, you must pay attention to what he says in regards to the "next killer app."

This clip is part of the 2010 Engineers Week Banquet held at Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, CA on Feb 18, 2010.

Elkus authored the book, "Winner Take All: How Competitiveness Shapes the Fate of Nations" which is available from Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Competitiveness-Nations/dp/B002KAOSPG/r...

More of Richard Elkus at
http://svec.org/hall-of-fame-2010.html

Interview with Elkus from 2009 by syndicated TV show "Tech Closeup" and SEMI at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUcQEHUEji8

The Communicators: Globalization & Technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfqKZlMfnX4
Elkus argues that America has ceded its strength in the technology industry to other countries.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Richard
• Elkus
• SVEC
• Silicon
• Valley
• Engineering
• Council
• Hall
• of
• Fame
• Ampex
• videotape
• recorder