Ampex
More info
- Creator
- Alexander M. Poniatoff
- Released
- 1944
- Type
- Electronics company
The California company that turned magnetic tape into a working tool for radio, television and computing.
Founded in 1944 in San Carlos by Russian-born engineer Alexander M. Poniatoff; the name is his initials plus "ex" for excellence. The Model 200A recorder of 1948 let Bing Crosby pre-record his radio show, and in 1956 Ampex demonstrated the first practical videotape recorder, the VRX-1000. Television stopped doing everything live almost overnight.
The same know-how ended up in machine rooms as tape drives and core memory. A lesser-known footnote: Larry Ellison worked at Ampex on a CIA-funded database project codenamed Oracle, and kept the name when he went off on his own. Ampex filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and survives in shrunken form as a supplier of rugged storage to the military.