The History of Video Tape Recorders before Betamax and VHS
By James Grahame
Richard Diehl has an amazing collection of extinct VTRs and VCRs. His LabGuy virtual museum offers hundreds thousands of photos along with some interesting commentary. I discovered his lair after he left a fantastically informative comment this morning on a Sony CV-2000 reel-to-reel VTR post from last November. It's worth a look.
"A veteran of silicon valley boom years, Labguy has seen the most amazing technology be born, evolve and fade away. Alas it is the way of the magnetic tape. The last magnetic tape manufacture in the USA went out of business in 2005. Hopefully, Labguy will preserve the memory of this now obsolete technology. You youngsters, with you iPods and MP3's know nothing of the joy of digging jammed tapes out of cheap 8 track players or getting tangled up in miles of steel recording wire. Bet you've never even cut your own record!"
LabGuy's World: The History of Video Tape Recorders before Betamax and VHS