The design team for the Ampex VPR1 Video tape recorder in 1976. This was the first Video tape recorder that would do slow motion. Interviewee is in the front row, third from right.

[I lived in] Oakland and San Jose [State] was close, very inexpensive to go to: $53 a semester.   So I came down and moved in with two friends I’d known since high school.  We all took electronic engineering. We used to play our stereo loud, so loud that you could hear it at the 7 Eleven a block away.  At that time, this was you know 1969, 70s, so it was like Santana, end of the Beatles, […] there was a lot of, you know, Vietnam protest music.

We stayed in that same apartment for four years.  [W]e used to drive the go-cart down the 280 freeway because it wasn’t built yet. The guys next door were mechanical engineers.  So they used surgical tubing and a small plastic dog dish [to] shoot the water balloon one-hundred yards and hit people, or uh, people between Duncan hall and the parking garage that was there.

First job [was] at Lockee. …I didn’t like the job because at that time I couldn’t touch anything but a piece of paper and pencil or pen. So that job lasted about nine months. And I said, no, ya know, I don’t want to do this.  This is ridiculous.

I was fresh out of school and there weren’t anymore jobs; 250 people would show up for one teacher’s job. […] it was worse than it is now. I was lucky to get the job at Ampex–which I always wanted to do, because I was into audio and video anyway as a hobby, from when I was 13 years old.  So what I was doing was checking out and doing final tests on video tape recorder[s].  So this was a big deal.

I had a friend who was a programmer [in the Video File Deapartment], and at that time programmers would come up with the program, they run the program, it didn’t work, they’d have to print out this stuff, [r]eally boring. So he’d come over, and here I am. I got all these toys I’m playing with. And I’m having a great time.  And he gets stuck looking at this paper with all the numbers on it.

Probably just six months before I got there…Noland Buschnell was in that department and working there. Buschnell came up with the whole concept of having a video game. Anyway, so he offered it to Ampex, and they weren’t interested, so he went on his own.

[T]hat Sunnyvale job kinda ended and I transferred to Redwood City, to the main Ampex facility. And I was in a group that developed a one-inch video [VPR1] tape recorder that would do slow-motion and still-frame without picture break up. But this was a big deal.  In ’74, when we went to NAB Show, and this was a big broadcaster show in Las Vegas, there was a big buzz about this machine, cause no one had seen a machine that played slow motion.  And people were guessing, how did Ampex do this thing?

So that was pretty exciting. Fresh outta school… it’s my second job…to be with that.  And one thing about Ampex, it was small enough and engineers were kind enough and willing to talk to you.  So I could just walk down the hall and talk to an experienced engineer and he would explain stuff to me, whatever question I had. So I had all that expertise, just right there. And there were people there who invented the video tape recorder in ’55.  [E]very video tape recorder in the world had to pay royalties to Ampex.

I designed an accessory board for tape recorders.  I had to go to Channel 36 to try out the machine and I think I also went to San Jose State Journalism department, cause they had one of these huge tape recorders that were the size of a Volkswagon [Beetle].  So they bought one of the boards that I designed.  I’m sure that machine is long gone.

I did the test procedure for the Ampex VPR3, which is the best 1-inch video tape recorder ever made.  It got two Emmy awards. It was the first tape recorder that would do animation edits. This is no big deal now, but back then this was hot. So it was fun working at Ampex, cause you were really on the edge of audio video.

I had a friend at Ampex.  He came from […] outside Kansas City, Missouri. So he came out here and he says, this is electronic Disneyland. He said, just coming out here he felt that we were like a couple years ahead of technology.

So Bing Crosby sent this blank check to Ampex to help them perfect the audio tape recorder.  [W]ith the audio tape recorder, it’s so much clearer, plus if [the artist] said a bad word you can edit [it] out and you didn’t have to start all over again.

[W]hen I got laid off at Ampex, I went to Silicon Graphics as a Manufacturer Test Engineer. Lots of people wanted to work there, because they were spending money like crazy.  [N]ow I’m working at Macrovision, which is good.  They’ve been around for 25 years.  Their big thing is copy protection on DVDs. So they send us products before they hit the market.  So like the Apple Air, I got that before they introduced it. But I didn’t realize at the time that that’s what it was because it was in this clear plastic box and I looked at it and [thought], gee this looks thin[.]

[S]o this company is nice. The people are excited about their work and interested in getting their job done, but there isn’t the pressure to be there sixteen hours a day…I have free Coca Cola’s, and um, the CEO says hello to me, he knows my name.  Everyone’s pretty friendly.  I don’t have to worry about taking my job home. I’m always getting new computers and I get to see the latest hot thing. Technology is always changing.

Contributed by Marianna Moles