[NJARC] RE: RCA Selectavision Help

[amagoun]

Thanks to Dave Sica for the technical explanation.  As context for the
project and product, people at the David Sarnoff Research Center had
been working on home video since Sarnoff asked for color video on tape
in 1951 for his 50th anniversary in electronics.  Harry Olson received
several patents for video on phonograph records (at a more sophisticated
level than John L. Baird's of the late 1920s) in the 1950s.  The premise
of cheaply stamping out videodiscs rather than recording programs on
expensive tape (reel to reel or cassette) persisted as many people
improved videotape and another group at the Labs developed and
demonstrated a laser-read, two-dimensional "holotape" cassette of a Get
Smart episode on September 30, 1969.  That technology used frames of
hologram interference patterns impressed with a copper-nickel master
tape onto PVC--the "same plastic you wrap meat in" or words to that
effect.  It was state of the art and would have required massive new
manufacturing investment.

Meanwhile in the early 1970s, home color mag tape continued to be
expensive and the VideoDisc survived five chief executives and a variety
of technology and management problems in a tale well and quickly told in
Margaret Graham's RCA and the VideoDisc, available in paperback.  By the
time the company's staff at multiple divisions sorted all these out, not
only had U-matic and VHS come on the market, but entrepreneurs began the
rental business.  This completely undercut the price advantage of the
discs ($15-20 v. $60-80 for a cassette; $400 player v. $$800-1000), and
the VideoDisc with its 10,000 grooves to the inch, stereo and
interactive capabilities, and laser adaptability went the way of the
dodo.  Labs staff took the interactive capabilities and morphed them
into Digital Video Interactive, the first computer games on a CD, which
Intel bought and marketed in the late 1980s-early 1990s.

We have quite a few discs themselves, but not unfortunately the 250
stereo model's service manual.

Alex

--
Alexander B. Magoun, Ph.D.
Executive Director
David Sarnoff Library
201 Washington Road
Princeton NJ 08540-6449

609-734-2636
amagoun at davidsarnoff.org
(f) 609-734-2339
www.davidsarnoff.org
www.davidsarnoff.blogspot.com