England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Music video
A music video is a short film that integrates a song with imagery, is produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. There are cases where songs are used in tie-in marketing campaigns that allow them to become more than just a song. Tie-ins and merchandising can be used for food or other products. Although the origins of the music video date back to musical short films that first appeared in the 1920s, they again came into prominence in the 1980s when the channel MTV based their format around the medium. Prior to the 1980s, these kinds of videos were described by various terms including "illustrated song", "filmed insert", "promotional film", "promotional clip", "promotional video", "song video", "song clip" or "film clip". Music videos use a wide range of styles and contemporary video-making techniques, including animation, live action and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film.
Some music videos combine different styles with the music, such as animation and live action. Combining these styles and techniques has become more popular because of the variety for the audience. Many music videos interpret images and scenes from the song's lyrics, while others take a more thematic approach. Other music videos may not have any concept, being a filmed version of the song's live concert performance. In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child". Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances; this would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video. In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts featured many bands and dancers. Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", similar to a modern karaoke machine.
Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live-action segments during the cartoons. The early animated films by Walt Disney, such as the Silly Symphonies shorts and Fantasia, which featured several interpretations of classical pieces, were built around music; the Warner Bros. cartoons today billed as Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, were fashioned around specific songs from upcoming Warner Bros. musical films. Live action musical shorts, featuring such popular performers as Cab Calloway, were distributed to theaters. Blues singer Bessie Smith appeared in a two-reel short film called St. Louis Blues featuring a dramatized performance of the hit song. Numerous other musicians appeared in short musical subjects during this period. Soundies and released from 1940 to 1947, were musical films that included short dance sequences, similar to music videos. In the mid-1940s, musician Louis Jordan made short films for his songs, some of which were spliced together into a feature film, Lookout Sister.
These films were, according to music historian Donald Clarke, the "ancestors" of music video. Musical films were another important precursor to music video, several well-known music videos have imitated the style of classic Hollywood musicals from the 1930s to the 1950s. One of the best-known examples is Madonna's 1985 video for "Material Girl", modelled on Jack Cole's staging of "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Michael Jackson's videos show the unmistakable influence of the dance sequences in classic Hollywood musicals, including the landmark "Thriller" and the Martin Scorsese-directed "Bad", influenced by the stylised dance "fights" in the film version of West Side Story. According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disc jockey–singer J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959. In his autobiography, Tony Bennett claims to have created "...the first music video" when he was filmed walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London in 1956, with the resulting clip being set to his recording of the song "Stranger in Paradise".
The clip was sent to UK and US television stations and aired on shows including Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The oldest example of a promotional music video with similarities to more abstract, modern videos seems to be the Czech "Dáme si do bytu" created in 1958 and directed by Ladislav Rychman. In the late 1950s the Scopitone, a visual jukebox, was invented in France and short films were produced by many French artists, such as Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc, the Belgian Jacques Brel to accompany their songs, its use spread to other countries, similar machines such as the Cinebox in Italy and Color-Sonic in the USA were patented. In 1961, for the Canadian show Singalong Jubilee, Manny Pittson began pre-recording the music audio, went on-location and taped various visuals with the musicians lip-synching edited the audio and video together. Most music numbers were taped in-studio on stage, the location shoot "videos" were to add variety. In 1964, Kenneth Anger's experimental short film, Scorpio Rising used popular songs instead of dialog.
In 1964, The Moody Blues producer, Alex Murray, wanted to promote his version of "Go Now". The short film clip he produced and directed to promote the single has a striking visual style that predates Queen's similar "Bohemian Rhapsody" vid
Kessler Twins
Alice and Ellen Kessler are popular twins in Europe Germany and Italy, from the 1950s and 1960s and until today for their singing and acting. They are credited as the Kessler Twins, remain popular today. In the US, they were not as popular but appeared in the 1963 film Sodom and Gomorrah as dancers and appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in that year, their parents and Elsa, sent them to ballet classes at the age of six, they joined the Leipzig Opera's child ballet program at age 11. When they were 18, their parents used a visitor's visa to escape to West Germany, where they performed at the Palladium in Düsseldorf, they performed at The Lido in Paris between 1955 and 1960, represented West Germany in the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in 8th place with Heute Abend wollen wir tanzen geh'n. They moved to Italy in 1960 and moved to more serious roles. At the age of 40, they agreed to pose on the cover of the Italian edition of Playboy; that issue became the fastest-selling Italian Playboy up until that point.
They moved back to Germany in 1986 and live in Grünwald. They have received two awards from both the German and Italian governments for promoting German-Italian cooperation through their work in show business; the Beggar Student The Count of Luxemburg Gräfin Mariza Les Magiciennes Love and the Frenchwoman Erik the Conqueror The Bird Seller Sodom and Gomorrah Wedding Night in Paradise The Thursday Dead Woman from Beverly Hills Alice Kessler on IMDb Ellen Kessler on IMDb Interviewed by the CBC, ca. 1960 Kessler Sisters on Scopitone
The Carpenters
The Carpenters were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter. They produced a distinct soft musical style, combining Karen's contralto vocals with Richard's arranging and composition skills. During their 14-year career, the Carpenters recorded ten albums, along with numerous singles and several television specials; the siblings were born in New Haven and moved to Downey, California, in 1963. Richard took piano lessons as a child, progressing to California State University, Long Beach, while Karen learned the drums, they first performed together as a duo in 1965 and formed the jazz-oriented Richard Carpenter Trio followed by the middle-of-the-road group Spectrum. Signing as Carpenters to A&M Records in 1969, they achieved major success the following year with the hit singles " Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun". Subsequently, the duo's brand of melodic pop produced a record-breaking run of hit recordings on the American Top 40 and Adult Contemporary charts, they became leading sellers in the soft rock, easy listening and adult contemporary music genres.
The Carpenters had three number-one singles and five number-two singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and fifteen number-one hits on the Adult Contemporary chart, in addition to twelve top-10 singles. They have sold more than 90 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time; the duo toured continually during the 1970s. Their career together ended in 1983 when Karen died from heart failure brought on by complications of anorexia. Extensive news coverage surrounding these circumstances increased public awareness of eating disorders. Though the Carpenters were criticized for their clean-cut and wholesome conservative image in the 1970s, their music has since been re-evaluated, attracting critical acclaim and continued commercial success; the Carpenter siblings were both born at Grace–New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, to Harold Bertram and Agnes Reuwer. Harold was born in Wuzhou, moving to Britain in 1917, the US in 1921, while Agnes was born and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.
They married on April 9, 1935. Richard was a quiet child who spent most of his time at home listening to Rachmaninoff, Red Nichols and Spike Jones, playing the piano. Karen was outgoing, she began ballet and tap classes aged four. Karen and Richard were close, shared a common interest in music. In particular, they became fans of Les Paul and Mary Ford, whose music featured multiple overdubbed voices and instruments. Richard began piano lessons aged eight, but grew frustrated with the formal direction of the lessons and quit after a year, he had begun to teach himself how to play by ear by 11, resumed studying with a different teacher. He took a greater interest in playing this time, would practice at home. By age 14, he was interested in performing professionally, started lessons at Yale School of Music. In June 1963, the Carpenter family moved to the Los Angeles suburb of Downey hoping that it would mean better musical opportunities for Richard, he was asked to be the organist for services at the local Methodist church.
In late 1964, Richard enrolled at California State College at Long Beach where he met future songwriting partner John Bettis, Wesley Jacobs, a friend who played the bass and tuba for the Richard Carpenter Trio, Frank Pooler, with whom Richard would collaborate to create the Christmas standard "Merry Christmas Darling" in 1966. That same year, Karen enrolled at Downey High School, where she found she had a knack for playing the drums, she had tried playing the glockenspiel, but had been inspired by her friend Frankie Chavez, drumming since he was three. She became enthusiastic about the drums, began to learn complex pieces, such as Dave Brubeck's "Take Five". Chavez persuaded her parents to buy a Ludwig drum kit in late 1964, she began lessons with local jazz players, including how to read concert music, she replaced the entry-level kit with a large Ludwig set, a similar set-up to Brubeck's drummer, Joe Morello. Richard and Karen gave their first public performance together in 1965, as part of the pit band for a local production of Guys and Dolls.
By 1965, Karen had been practicing the drums for a year, Richard was refining his piano techniques under Pooler's tuition. Late that year, Richard teamed up with Jacobs, who played stand-up bass. With Karen drumming, the three formed the jazz-oriented Richard Carpenter Trio. Richard led the band and wrote all the arrangements, they began to rehearse daily, he bought a tape recorder, began to make recordings of the group. Neither Karen nor Richard sang. Karen subsequently became more confident in singing, began to take lessons with Frank Pooler, he taught her a mixture of classical and pop singing, but realised she most enjoyed performing Richard's new material. Pooler said, "Karen was a born pop singer". In early 1966, Karen tagged alo
Bar
A bar is a retail business establishment that serves alcoholic beverages, such as beer, liquor and other beverages such as mineral water and soft drinks and sell snack foods such as potato chips or peanuts, for consumption on premises. Some types of bars, such as pubs, may serve food from a restaurant menu; the term "bar" refers to the countertop and area where drinks are served. The term "bar" is derived from the metal or wooden bar, located at feet along the length of the "bar". Bars provide chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Bars that offer entertainment or live music are referred to as music bars, live venues, or nightclubs. Types of bars range from inexpensive dive bars to elegant places of entertainment accompanying restaurants for dining. Many bars have a discount period, designated a "happy hour" or discount of the day to encourage off-peak-time patronage. Bars that fill to capacity sometimes implement a cover charge or a minimum drink purchase requirement during their peak hours.
Bars may have bouncers to ensure patrons are of legal age, to eject drunk or belligerent patrons, to collect cover charges. Such bars feature entertainment, which may be a live band, comedian, or disc jockey playing recorded music. Patrons may be served by the bartender. Depending on the size of a bar and its approach, alcohol may be served at the bar by bartenders, at tables by servers, or by a combination of the two; the "back bar" is a set of shelves of bottles behind that counter. In some establishments, the back bar is elaborately decorated with woodwork, etched glass and lights. There have been many different names for public drinking spaces throughout history. In the colonial era of the United States, taverns were an important meeting place, as most other institutions were weak. During the 19th century saloons were important to the leisure time of the working class. Today when an establishment uses a different name, such as "tavern" or "saloon" or, in the United Kingdom, a "pub", the area of the establishment where the bartender pours or mixes beverages is called "the bar".
The sale and/or consumption of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in the first half of the 20th century in several countries, including Finland, Iceland and the United States. In the United States, illegal bars during Prohibition were called "speakeasies", "blind pigs", "blind tigers". Laws in many jurisdictions prohibit minors from entering a bar. If those under legal drinking age are allowed to enter, as is the case with pubs that serve food, they are not allowed to drink. In some jurisdictions, bars cannot serve a patron, intoxicated. Cities and towns have legal restrictions on where bars may be located and on the types of alcohol they may serve to their customers; some bars may have a license to serve wine, but not hard liquor. In some jurisdictions, patrons buying alcohol must order food. In some jurisdictions, bar owners have a legal liability for the conduct of patrons. Many Islamic countries prohibit bars as well as the possession or sale of alcohol for religious reasons, while others, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, allow bars in some specific areas, but only permit non-Muslims to drink in them.
A bar's owners and managers choose the bar's name, décor, drink menu and other elements which they think will attract a certain kind of patron. However, they have only limited influence over. Thus, a bar intended for one demographic profile can become popular with another. For example, a gay or lesbian bar with a dance or disco floor might, over time, attract an heterosexual clientele. Or a blues bar may become a biker bar. A cocktail lounge is an upscale bar, located within a hotel, restaurant, or airport. A full bar serves liquor, cocktails and beer. A wine bar is a bar that focuses on wine rather than on liquor. Patrons of these bars may taste wines before deciding to buy them; some wine bars serve small plates of food or other snacks. A beer bar focuses on beer craft beer, rather than on wine or liquor. A brew pub serves craft beers. "Fern bar" is an American slang term for an preppy bar. A music bar is a bar. A dive bar referred to as a "dive", is a informal bar which may be considered by some to be disreputable.
A non-alcoholic bar is a bar. A Strip club is a bar with nude entertainers. A bar and grill is a restaurant; some persons may designate either an area of a room as a home bar. Furniture and arrangements vary from efficient to full bars. Bars categorized by the kind of entertainment they offer: Blues bars, specializing in the live blues style of music Comedy bars, specializing in stand-up comedy entertainment Dance bars, which have a dance floor where patrons dance to recorded music. If a venue has a large dance floor, focuses on dancing rather than seated drinking, hires professional DJs, it is considered to be a nightclub or discothèque rather than a bar. Karaoke bars, with nightly karaoke as entertainment Music bars. Piano bars are one example. Drag b
ABBA
ABBA are a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group's name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names, they became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1982. ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 at The Dome in Brighton, UK, giving Sweden its first triumph in the contest, they are the most successful group to have taken part in the competition. Estimates of ABBA's total record sales are around 140 million to 500 million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling music artists of all time. ABBA are the first group from a non-English-speaking country to achieve consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States, they have a joint record eight consecutive number-one albums in the UK. The group enjoyed significant success in Latin America, recorded a collection of their hit songs in Spanish.
During the band's active years, it was composed of two couples: Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered which resulted in the collapse of both marriages; the relationship changes were reflected in the group's music, with latter compositions featuring darker and more introspective lyrics. After ABBA disbanded in January 1983, Andersson and Ulvaeus achieved success writing music for the stage, while Lyngstad and Fältskog pursued solo careers with mixed success. ABBA's music declined in popularity until the purchase of ABBA's catalogue and record company Polar by Polygram in 1989 enabled the groundwork to be laid for an international re-issue of all their original material and a new Greatest Hits collection in September 1992, which became a worldwide bestseller. Several films, notably Muriel's Wedding and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, further revived interest in the group and spawned several tribute bands.
In 1999, ABBA's music was adapted into the successful musical Mamma Mia! that toured worldwide. A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018. ABBA were honoured at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005, when their hit "Waterloo" was chosen as the best song in the competition's history; the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2015, their song "Dancing Queen" was inducted into the Recording Academy's Grammy Hall of Fame. On April 27, 2018, it was announced that the band had recorded two new songs after 35 years of being inactive, named "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don’t Shut Me Down". On September 18, 2018, in an interview, Andersson said that they are still working on the songs, with a third one written. Benny Andersson became a member of a popular Swedish pop-rock group, the Hep Stars, that performed covers, amongst other things, of international hits.
The Hep Stars were known as "the Swedish Beatles". They set up Hep House, their equivalent of Apple Corps. Andersson played the keyboard and started writing original songs for his band, many of which became major hits, including "No Response" that hit number-three in 1965, "Sunny Girl", "Wedding", "Consolation", all of which hit number-one in 1966. Andersson had a fruitful songwriting collaboration with Lasse Berghagen, with whom he wrote his first Svensktoppen entry, "Sagan om lilla Sofie", in 1968. Björn Ulvaeus began his musical career at 18, when he fronted the Hootenanny Singers, a popular Swedish folk–skiffle group. Ulvaeus started writing English-language songs for his group, had a brief solo career alongside; the Hootenanny Singers and the Hep Stars sometimes crossed paths while touring. In June 1966, Ulvaeus and Andersson decided to write a song together, their first attempt was "Isn't It Easy to Say", a song recorded by the Hep Stars. Stig Anderson was founder of the Polar Music label.
He saw potential in the collaboration, encouraged them to write more. The two began playing with the other's bands on stage and on record, although it was not until 1969 that the pair wrote and produced some of their first real hits together: "Ljuva sextital", recorded by Brita Borg, the Hep Stars' 1969 hit "Speleman". Andersson wrote and submitted the song "Hej, Clown" for Melodifestivalen 1969, the national festival to select the Swedish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest; the song re-voting relegated Andersson's song to second place. On that occasion Andersson met his future spouse, singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who participated in the contest. A month the two had become a couple; as their respective bands began to break up during 1969, Andersson and Ulvaeus teamed up and recorded their first album together in 1970, called Lycka, which included original songs sung by both men. Their partners were present in the recording studio, sometimes added backing vocals. Ulvaeus still recorded and performed with the Hootenanny Singers until the middle of 1974, Andersson took part in producing their records.
Agnetha Fältskog sang with a local dance band head
Videotape
Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders or, more videocassette recorders and camcorders. Videotapes are used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram; because video signals have a high bandwidth, stationary heads would require high tape speeds, in most cases, a helical-scan video head rotates against the moving tape to record the data in two dimensions. Tape is a linear method of storing information and thus imposes delays to access a portion of the tape, not under the heads; the early 2000s saw the introduction and rise to prominence of high quality random-access video recording media such as hard disks and flash memory. Since videotape has been relegated to archival and similar uses; the electronics division of entertainer Bing Crosby's production company, Bing Crosby Enterprises, gave the world's first demonstration of a videotape recording in Los Angeles on November 11, 1951.
Developed by John T. Mullin and Wayne R. Johnson since 1950, the device gave what were described as "blurred and indistinct" images using a modified Ampex 200 tape recorder and standard quarter-inch audio tape moving at 360 inches per second. A year an improved version using one-inch magnetic tape was shown to the press, who expressed amazement at the quality of the images although they had a "persistent grainy quality that looked like a worn motion picture". Overall the picture quality was still considered inferior to the best kinescope recordings on film. Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a commercial version available in 1954 but none came forth; the BBC experimented from 1952 to 1958 with a high-speed linear videotape system called VERA, but this was unfeasible. It used half-inch tape on 20-inch reels traveling at 200 inches per second. RCA demonstrated the magnetic tape recording of both black-and-white and color television programs at its Princeton laboratories on December 1, 1953.
The high-speed longitudinal tape system, called Simplex, in development since 1951, could record and play back only a few minutes of a television program. The color system used half-inch tape on 10-1/2 inch reels to record five tracks, one each for red, green and audio; the black-and-white system used quarter-inch tape on 10-1/2 inch reels with two tracks, one for video and one for audio. Both systems ran at 360 inches per second with 2,500 feet on a reel. RCA-owned NBC first used it on The Jonathan Winters Show on October 23, 1956 when a prerecorded song sequence by Dorothy Collins in color was included in the otherwise live television program. In 1953, Dr. Norikazu Sawazaki developed a prototype helical scan video tape recorder. BCE demonstrated a color system in February 1955 using a longitudinal recording on half-inch tape. CBS, RCA's competitor, was about to order BCE machines when Ampex introduced the superior Quadruplex system. BCE was acquired by 3M Company in 1956. In 1959, Toshiba released the first commercial helical scan video tape recorder.
The first commercial professional broadcast quality videotape machines capable of replacing kinescopes were the two-inch quadruplex videotape machines introduced by Ampex on April 14, 1956 at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago. Quad employed a transverse four-head system on a two-inch tape, stationary heads for the sound track. CBS Television first used the Ampex VRX-1000 Mark IV at its Television City studios in Hollywood on November 30, 1956 to play a delayed broadcast of Douglas Edwards and the News from New York City to the Pacific Time Zone. On January 22, 1957, the NBC Television game show Truth or Consequences, produced in Hollywood, became the first program to be broadcast in all time zones from a prerecorded videotape. Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with RCA, whose engineers had developed it from an Ampex black-and-white recorder. NBC's special, An Evening With Fred Astaire, is the oldest surviving television network color videotape, has been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
On December 7, 1963, instant replay was used for the first time during the live transmission of the Army–Navy Game by its inventor, director Tony Verna. Although Quad became the industry standard for thirty years, it has drawbacks such as an inability to freeze pictures, no picture search. In early machines, a tape could reliably be played back using only the same set of hand-made tape heads, which wore out quickly. Despite these problems, Quad is capable of producing excellent images. Subsequent videotape systems have used helical scan, where the video heads record diagonal tracks onto the tape. Many early videotape recordings were not preserved. While much less expensive and more convenient than kinescope, the high cost of 3M Scotch 179 and other early videotapes meant that most broadcasters erased and reused them, regarded videotape as a better and more cost-effective means of time-delaying broadcasts than kinescopes, it was the four time zones of the continental United States which had made the system desirable in the first place.
However, some classic television programs recorded on studio videotape still exist, are available on DVD – among them NBC's Peter Pan with Mary Martin as Peter, several episodes o
