And we understand the world's first tape recorder. Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Lieutenant of the White Army

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The unclaimed Pride of Russia became the pride of America, like Zworykin, Sikorsky and many other Russian geniuses... From Wikipedia: “After the war, using the achievements of German engineers in the field of sound recording, namely the tape recorder created by the German AEG in the late 1930s, engineers Ampex
developed the Ampex 200 audio reel-to-reel tape recorder... And a little later they made a technological breakthrough - the method of cross-line video recording was invented, and by the spring of 1956 the company presented what large corporations could not do - its first video recorder...".

The legendary company was known to me, who was involved in sound recording, before, but I only learned about its history now... Originally posted by slavynka88

at Russian emigrant Alexander Ponyatov: creator of the VCR When in 1959 in the USA Khrushchev was presented with a cassette recording of his meeting with Kennedy, he got angry and stamped his feet: it turned out that in the USSR there was no equipment on which this cassette could be viewed. A little later, he was told that in the USA, VCRs and many other radio electronics know-how appeared thanks to

Russian emigrant Alexander Ponyatov. — "For Americans Ponyatov — saint, — Nikolai Komissarov, grandnephew of A. Ponyatov, tells the story. — All TV — both commercial and government channels idolize him. IN educational institutions

, where there are departments of physics or radio electronics, they talk about him in superlatives. But in his homeland he was still known only to specialists.”

After graduating from a real school in Kazan, A. Ponyatov entered the mathematical department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kazan University. The young man dreams of connecting his life with aviation, therefore, after studying in Kazan for a year, he transferred to the Moscow Imperial Technical School (now MVTU). Then he leaves to study in Germany. When in 1913 his parents sent him a summons for military service, he returned to Russia. During the Civil War, Lieutenant Ponyatov fought on the side of the White Army. Then he comes to China through Siberia and leaves for America in the late 20s. There, in 1944, A. Ponyatov created the company Ampex, the name of which, among other options, stands for: “Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov — excellence" (in translation from English - "highest quality").

With the end of the war, for the company that produced components for radars, difficult times, she is losing orders and is on the verge of closing. In order to survive, A. Ponyatov takes on an extremely daring task: to put captured magnetic recording technologies exported from defeated Germany on an industrial basis. By the way, at first this work was offered to the RCA company, but specialists led by David Sarnov and Vladimir Zvorykin refused: “It’s impossible to do!”

It took Poniatov 8 years to create the first video recorder. As they wrote then, several companies were involved in the development of tape recorders after the war, but Ampex always remained a leader, having laid down from the very beginning — and this served as a source of special pride for Poniatov — very high quality standards in magnetic recording technology. In addition, the company created essential component all post-war technology: the memory of the first computers was based on the principle of magnetic recording. Ampex special equipment was used in medicine, aviation, and astronautics. The same company brought to television color.

In the 50s and 60s, the now famous Sony could only dream of such fame and the level of technology that Ampex possessed. In 10-15 years, Poniatov’s company has gone from an unknown group of enthusiasts to a world leader, an industry giant. In the 60s, about 12 thousand people worked at its factories. She owes this success largely to her leader.

“Ponyatov compared favorably with the closed American top managers,” says Nikolai Komissarov. “He set tasks for his subordinates, inspired them, and led them. He was always at the center of events. Spirituality and a tendency towards goodness are inherent, first of all, in the Russian character.”

Alexander Ponyatov was always proud of his origins. Russian birch trees were a fixture in his offices, he supported a Russian convent, and he founded the St. Vladimir Home for the Aged in San Francisco. He helped many Russians simply by hiring them to work for the company.

At the end of his life, Alexander Ponyatov admitted: “I have achieved everything, I have a wonderful company. But I have no children, there is no one to continue my work... I would pass on everything to my country, all my experience! But this is impossible. Even a branch of my company in Russia is not allowed to create...” The great engineer died on October 24, 1980 in the state of California, and his company is still operating.

Rules of success by A. Poniatov
. Study all your life. (Alexander Matveevich had a habit of tearing the right book into parts of 10-12 pages, carry in your pocket and read whenever possible.)
. Do not consider anything as dogma.
. Try to do a little more than your boss expects from you.
. Avoid any conflicts, since your probability of being right is no more than 50%.

Russian and American engineer, who introduced a number of innovations in the field of magnetic sound and video recording, television and radio broadcasting, was born on March 25, 1892.

Under his leadership of the company he created, Ampex, the first commercial video recorder was released in 1956.

Creator of the VCR

A.M. Ponyatov

Alexander Ponyatov was born in 1892 in the village of Russkaya Aisha, in the Kazan province. His father was a merchant - a former peasant who became rich in logging. As is typical for such people, the father spared no expense on his son’s education, and Alexander Ponyatov studied not only in Kazan (at the university’s Faculty of Mathematics) and at the Imperial Moscow Technical School (the future Bauman Moscow State Technical University), but also at Friederitsian, the oldest technical university Germany. Ponyatov’s hobby was aircraft engineering: he studied it in Moscow and Karlsruhe, where he went on the recommendation of the founder of aerodynamics, Nikolai Zhukovsky. In Germany, Ponyatov allegedly hid from possible persecution for participating in student societies, but in 1913, having received a summons, he returned to Russian Empire, graduated from pilot school and served as a seaplane pilot until he was wounded.

During the Civil War, Ponyatov enlisted in the White Army, then fled to Shanghai, where he first became involved in the energy sector, working for the Shanghai Power Company. Then, through Paris, he went to the USA, where electrical engineers were especially in demand; he worked for General Electric, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Dalmo-Victor before founding his own company, Ampex, in 1944. AMP in the name stood for Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov, and EX for excellence; according to legend, this meant not only “superiority” (in terms of the quality of goods), but also “Excellence”: Poniatov was a colonel in the tsarist army. However, the version about the word experimental, “experimental”, seems more plausible. By the way, it was at Ampex that 16-year-old Ray Dolby, the future inventor of the famous sound system, began his career.

During the war, Poniatov's company was engaged in radar antennas, and after that it reoriented itself to magnetic sound recording equipment - also thanks to the war. American recording pioneer Jack Mullin transported captured German tape recorders from AEG to America. Mullin, Ponyatov and the latter's colleague Harold Lindsay began to study the achievements of German sound recording and soon succeeded in developing their own tape recorder - from the late 1940s the company produced one popular model after another. Ampex's success, in particular, was facilitated by a skillful marketing campaign - the company signed a contract with singer and actor Bing Crosby. The main radio star of those times, he was an enthusiast of new technologies and it was not for nothing that he put Poniatov on the company: the first recorded radio broadcast (1948) became a real breakthrough in broadcasting.

Poniatov began thinking about the production of devices that reproduce not only sound, but also moving images, in the early 1950s. He wasn’t the only one thinking: RCA, the corporation of television pioneers Vladimir Zvorykin and David Sarnov, also began to work on video. However, Ponyatov managed to overtake Zvorykin: together with Lindsay, Dolby and the head of the design team, Charles Ginzburg, he developed the world's first reel-to-reel video recorder using the cross-line recording method. The massive VRX-1000 (it could only be used in a studio) and its film were presented in Chicago on March 14, 1956 at the National Broadcasters Conference. And six months later - on November 30, 1956 - with the help of a new device, the CBS channel broadcast a recorded television program (it was an evening news broadcast).

For the Ampex video recorder, he immediately received an Emmy Award, and a little later, an Oscar. In 1958, NASA began using Ampex VCRs. Later, Poniatov's company invented electronic editing, mastered color video, created a slow-motion signal playback device (necessary for sports television and the filming of music videos and advertising), developed a video graphics system and became a pioneer of special effects. Just as photocopying technology is often called photocopying, video recording has long been called “ampexing.”

Ponyatov died on October 24, 1980, by which time he had long since retired, holding the position of honorary chairman of the board of directors of Ampex. He remembered his Russian origin and, according to legend, ordered birch trees to be planted in front of the offices of his company in different countries. In the fall of 1959, Ponyatov met with Khrushchev. He undoubtedly had something to tell the leader of the country he left 40 years ago, and Khrushchev knew about it: shortly before the meeting, the Soviet leader received a recording of his own conversation with Nixon, made using Ampex technology. However, Khrushchev could not watch it - there was simply nothing to watch.

White Guard electronic engineer
How Russian emigrant Alexander Ponyatov created the first American tape recorder and the world's first video recorder / Made by Russians

Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov born on March 25, 1892 in the village of Russkaya Aisha near Kazan in the family of a merchant who traded timber. As a child, I dreamed of building steam locomotives. The father, who saw his son's technical inclinations, decided to give him a good education. After real school, Alexander entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kazan University. More

Alexander Ponyatov with an Ampex studio video recorder

Despite the fact that Kazan University was then considered one of the best in the country, the young man studied there for a year, and then transferred to the Imperial Moscow Technical School (the current Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School). He studied with the famous founder of aerodynamics, Nikolai Zhukovsky, under whose influence he decided to study aircraft. But fate decreed otherwise. After participating in student unrest, Ponyatov decided to live abroad for some time and transferred to the Polytechnic in German city Karlsruhe, beloved by Russian emigrants. Here the young man had the idea of ​​opening a turbine production plant upon his return to his homeland. However, he did not return under the circumstances for which he had expected. The First World War began, and Ponyatov was drafted into active army. He graduated from pilot school and served as an aviation officer. Having survived a plane crash, he underwent treatment for a long time. During the Civil War he fought in the ranks of the Whites, after the end of the war he lived for some time in Russia, then emigrated to China. There he worked for the Shanghai Power Company until he decided to emigrate to the United States in 1927.

Very little is known about the first years of his life on the American continent. It seems that he worked as a pilot, and during World War II, when American corporations began to receive huge orders for construction military equipment and electrical equipment, his dizzying career began. First Ponyatova invited General Electric, then the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and, finally, Dalmo-Victor Westinghouse, where he developed engines and generators for radars. In a word, nothing foreshadowed that Ponyatov would be interested in recording sound. But this career allowed him to save capital to open his own company. It was founded in 1944 under the name AmpexElectric and Manufacturing Company, hiding the White Guard background of the founder. The fact is that the colonel of the tsarist army was addressed as “Your Excellency,” and “excellency” in English is excellence. The name of the company was an abbreviation of the words “Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov, Excellency”: AMPex - A.M.Poniatoff EXcellence. IN last years War, the company located in Redwood (California) was a small manufacturer of high quality electric motors and generators used to produce the same military radars. When the war ended, orders for military equipment quickly began to dwindle, and the company's management began to think about a new field of activity.

A happy accident helped: one of the future inventors of the tape recorder, Major Jack Mullin, by order of the military command, was studying the experience of German engineers in the field of radio electronics. Among the devices he became acquainted with were amazing tape recorders capable of recording sound with great accuracy. Mullin brought two such tape recorders to the Institute of Radio Engineering (San Francisco), where they were disassembled and carefully studied. Ponyatov, who happened to take part in the study of these models, was able to see the prospects of this technology. By the way, it was overlooked even by such recording giants of the time as Radio Corporation of America, which spent millions of dollars on the development of mechanical recording. However, vinyl records were good for recording and selling songs or radio plays, but were not a convenient means for quickly recording radio broadcasts.

Alexander Ponyatov

Recording on tape immediately aroused the keen interest of pop performers: the radio show star of those times, Bing Crosby, who worked for ABC, considered live broadcasting evil and dreamed of being able to record programs in advance, in a comfortable studio. Mullin demonstrated to him the somewhat improved German technology. Crosby immediately saw her potential and commissioned Mullin to record his new show. The recording was made using a prototype tape recorder developed by Ampex engineers called the Model 200. It turned out to be so good that Crosby immediately offered Mullin a position as chief engineer at the ABC recording studio he opened and ordered several Model 200s from Ampex for $50,000.

This gave a powerful impetus to the development of the company, which was in dire need of money. At that time, only 6 people worked there, one of whom was Ponyatov himself. Crosby Enterprises, the studio founded by Crosby, advertised Ampex equipment everywhere. The first American tape recorders were in demand by large radio companies, but Ampex quickly mastered other market segments: in two years it developed tape recorders capable of recording huge amounts of information on magnetic tape. They were no longer used for sound, but for recording encoded information. Such tape recorders were used by scientific laboratories and airlines. Soon, the military also became interested in the technology, who needed reliable equipment for multi-channel recording of telemetry signals when testing complex military equipment - primarily missiles and nuclear weapons. Magnetic recording was useful here like nothing else. Having started with equipment for radio studios, the company quickly switched to expensive orders for instrumental recording equipment.

In 1951, Poniatov came up with an idea - if magnetic tape allows you to record potentially any information, is it possible to store video images on it? He hired several leading American electronics engineers of the time, led by Charles Ginsburg. The team was forced to compete with other companies - the idea of ​​a VCR, as it turned out, was already in the air: television, which was rapidly replacing radio, needed its own recording means. Don't forget that by 1952 the vast majority of US households had black and white televisions. However, the task was difficult: the television signal occupies a frequency band 500 times wider than the sound one. To record and read such a signal, it would be necessary to rewind the tape at an incredible speed - 50 meters per second, at which, of course, it would simply break. Some companies almost simultaneously found a way out by resorting to recording on multiple tracks.

Ampex achieved its goal first: in 1956, at the National Association of Broadcasters conference, it introduced the first VTR video recorder. It implemented a cross-line recording method on a wide two-inch tape with four rotating heads. It allowed the tape to be pulled at a normal speed of 38 cm/s, but each head “drew” transverse lines on it at a speed of more than 40 m/s, removing information from magnetic tracks, each of which contained 16 television lines. This world's first video recording standard, designated "Q", was used for almost 20 years. For TV channels, the new product turned out to be even more useful than the tape recorder for radio stations had been in its time: for example, it made it possible to record the same programs for different time zones and significantly saved money. The invention immediately made the company famous throughout America: promising young researchers flocked to Ampex who wanted to develop technologies for recording and demonstrating sound and video. Among them was, for example, student Ray Dolby, the founder of a well-known company named after him.

Over the next 30 years, Ponyatov managed to turn the technology developed by his company into a whole series of popular and relatively budget products. For example, a portable video recorder released in 1971 cost only fifteen hundred dollars. Throughout all this time, the company he created maintained the world technical leadership in the field of equipment for professional magnetic recording of sound and image. She owned dozens of patents, without which the largest electronics companies Sony, Philips, JVC, and Toshiba could not operate. It is curious that the term “ampexing” has been used for quite a long time to refer to the process of video recording in different countries. Ponyatov’s merits were recognized even at home: in 1974, a delegation from the USSR State Television and Radio went to California, visited Ampex and talked with its founder. Its participants recalled Poniatov’s words about his brainchild: “If my colleagues and I had imagined in advance all the difficulties that had to be overcome when creating a video recorder, we would never have taken on this work! For 7 years, only God was ahead of us in this matter!”

In the late 70s, the USSR State Television and Radio invited Poniatov to visit his homeland, but he was already unwell and avoided flying. He died in 1980, and the company he created survived him by only 15 years - its success depended too much on the personality of its creator. He remained in the memory of the Russian diaspora in California not only as a talented inventor, but also as a person always ready to help his compatriots who found themselves in exile. He willingly hired Russians and helped create an Orthodox convent and a shelter for the elderly in the state.

We hardly discussed in this blog the Russian engineers who emigrated to the USA in the 20th century and became the founders of entire industries there. The most famous names are probably Sikorsky, Zvorykin, and, well, Brin. Today we will talk about a person who is less exposed, although specialists certainly know his name. We are interested in him not only as an inventor, but also as a businessman who founded an extremely successful company overseas.

We will talk about Alexander Matveyevich Ponyatov, who became widely known to the world in 1956 as the creator of the world's first video recorder and the founder of the famous Ampex company, which for half a century held the world technical leadership in the field of equipment for professional magnetic recording of sound, images and many special signals.

A.M. Ponyatov (1892-1980)

Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov was born on March 25, 1892 in the village of Russkaya Aisha, Chepchugov volost, Kazan province, 40 km away. northeast of Kazan in big family a peasant who took up trade (according to other sources, when Alexander became a student, his father was already a merchant of the 1st guild, the largest Kazan timber merchant). The archives preserve documents about his baptism, about studying at the 2nd real school in Kazan, about passing an additional exam in Latin (without it it was impossible to enter the University after real school), about military duty since 1913, etc. In 1909, he entered and studied for one year at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the then famous Kazan University in Russia, but in 1910 he decided to continue his studies in the capitals. I asked the rector’s office to send their documents first to St. Petersburg University, then to Moscow University, but in the end
For unknown reasons, I entered the Faculty of Mechanics at Moscow Higher Technical University. He said that he considered himself a student of Professor N.E. Zhukovsky and, under his influence, became ill with aviation. However, already in 1911, Poniatov, fearing punishment for participating in student unrest, left with recommendations from N.E. Zhukovsky continued his education in Germany at the Polytechnic of Karlsruhe.

Since A. M. Ponyatov was subject to conscription Russian army in 1913, then, apparently, he returned to Russia this year. According to his American relatives and company employees, he was in the First world war was drafted into the army from Kazan, graduated from pilot school and served as an aviation officer, had a serious accident and underwent long-term treatment.

Speaking once to employees of his company, Ponyatov said that in 1918 - 1920 he “served in the White Army and fought with the communists,” and until 1927 he worked in Shanghai, in the electric power industry. Lived briefly in France, moved to the USA. There is information that he worked for some time as a pilot for civil airlines and flew seaplanes.

He worked at the New York Research Institute of the General Electric Corporation, then again in the electric power industry, but in the suburbs of San Francisco. Married an American. But he could not forget aviation and went to a subsidiary of the Westinghouse Corporation. The company developed on-board electrical equipment for aircraft, just as the first radars appeared. Poniatov was then a specialist in servo electric drives. In 1944, he founded his own company for the development of electromechanical devices and became a subcontractor for Westinghouse.

The abbreviation of the company name consisted of the initials of the founder and the first letters of the proud word “exellent” - incomparable, excellent. The Ampex company was founded in the early 1940s in California in Redwood City (about 200 km south of San Francisco). She began her work, as often happens, in an old garage and at first produced selsyns - electromechanical devices for the precise tracking drive of aircraft radar antennas. The first employees of the company were three young engineers C. Andersen, C. Ginzburg and S. Henderson. Ponyatov knew how to choose his employees! He managed to assemble a very strong team, which was later, in 1952, joined by a very young student and the now famous Ray Dolby (the author of a unique sound system for film screening, which is equipped in the world's leading cinemas).

Workers of A.M. Ponyatov (from left to right): Charles Anderson, Shelby Henderson, Alex Maxey, Ray Dolby, Fred Pfost, Charles Ginzburg

At the end of the war, defense production in the United States was curtailed, the Ampex company was left without orders and began to look for “new bread,” as Poniatov himself put it. A new direction in the company's work was suggested by captured German technology for magnetic recording of electrical signals. The American radio-electronic giants, and above all RCA, neglected this technology, which was very capricious at that time - they invested too much money in the dissemination and improvement of mechanical sound recording technologies. By this time I was already prepared mass release professional and household equipment for operational mechanical sound recording on a disk made of thick plastic film. Poniatov’s team had nothing to lose; Ampex was the first company in the United States to develop magnetic sound recording equipment. The new direction in the company's activities brought success, although not immediately. The first professional tape recorders for radio broadcasting in the United States did not find demand for a long time, which very often happens with products that are fundamentally new to the market.

The first Ampex tape recorder

Help unexpectedly came from the famous pop singer Bing Crosby, who was also a passionate radio amateur. For some reason, B. Crosby was pathologically afraid of the microphone in an empty studio during live broadcasts of concerts. He happily jumped on the technical innovation and quickly appreciated the benefits of recording and broadcasting his concerts from magnetic tape. His first large order provided a good start for new Ampex products, and the pop superstar's concerts using tape recorders provided excellent advertising.

Bing Crosby in front of the microphone

Soon, no broadcasting company in the United States could operate without tape recorders. The company began to grow quickly, especially after it launched the production of magnetic tape with its own brand. Quite quickly, old connections with military customers were restored, who needed reliable equipment for multi-channel recording of telemetry signals during testing of complex military equipment, and above all missiles and nuclear weapons. Magnetic recording methods turned out to be unrivaled here. German rocketry specialists brought to the United States already had experience working with magnetic recording of telemetry during testing, and their opinion was taken into account in the first post-war years. Starting with broadcast tape recorders, the Ampex company very soon, at the behest of the times, focused on a more profitable special technology, having mastered the methods and equipment of precise, instrumental magnetic recording.

For almost half a century (from 1946 to 1995), Ampex held the world scientific and technical leadership in professional magnetic recording equipment for broadcast and special signals. She also held patents on many fundamental methods and devices in this field, which helped her for decades to fend off persistent attempts by American, European and Japanese competitors to break up the firm and buy it piecemeal. However, the truly stellar achievement of the company and its founder was the creation of the world's first professional broadcast video recorder.

Television broadcasting in the United States developed explosively after the war. The American radio-electronic industry, which created enormous production capacity during the war and was left without orders in 1945, found work in the country's telecommunications industry. As a result, by 1952 the American market was completely saturated with black and white televisions, and in 1953 the practical introduction of color television broadcasting began according to the quickly developed
NTSC system. American broadcasters who have already tasted the delights new technology sound broadcasting with magnetic recording and editing of program materials, now literally required the creation of equipment for working with a television signal. Many companies have tried and failed to solve this puzzlingly complex problem - after all, a television signal occupies a frequency band 500 times wider than broadcast audio. With such a stripe, the magnetic tape must “fly” past the magnetic head at a speed of at least 50 meters per second. The most obvious way to reduce this speed is through multi-track recording. But the great RCA, which developed a multi-track device with frequency division of the video signal spectrum, failed to cope with this task; The famous Bing Crosby, who led and financed the development of a multi-track time division device, also failed.

In 1956, the ambitious youth team at the Ampex company, led by 64-year-old Ponyatov, solved the problem of magnetic video recording better than anyone else in the world, making their company, as well as its founder and owner, famous throughout the world. They came up with a cross-line method of recording on a relatively wide tape (50.8 mm, i.e. two inches) with four rotating heads. At the same time, a compromise was reached: the tape was pulled in the apparatus at the usual speed of 38 cm/sec., but the head “drew” transverse lines on it at a speed of more than 40 m/sec., and each magnetic line contained 16 television lines. This world's first video recording standard, known as "Q", was used for almost 20 years and was replaced by the "C" standard (for one-inch tape), developed by the same Ampex. By the way, we note that in a number of countries the term “ampexing” was used for some time for the process of video recording on magnetic tape.

You must understand that the VCR itself is only the top of the technological pyramid, and at that time there were not enough “bricks” to create it. It was not easy to make an apparatus for magnetic recording of sound, but it turned out that creating a video recorder was tens and hundreds of times more difficult. The video recorder, by all accounts, turned out to be the most complex serial radio engineering device of that time, and in order to develop and organize the production of the device itself, video tape, new components and materials in a small company and with limited funds from Ponyatov and his team, it took a combination of heroic organizational efforts with brilliant scientific -technical solutions. Ponyatov himself understood this well and formulated it this way: “ For seven years, only God was ahead of us in this matter!».

On March 14, 1956, at the National Association of Radio-Television Journalists in Chicago, A. Ponyatov’s company first demonstrated its creation - the VRX-1000 video recorder (later renamed “Model-IV”). And six months later, on November 30, 1956, CBS used Ampex for the first time to broadcast its “Evening News” program with host Douglas Edwards. Since that time, Ampex has become a leading developer of video tape recorders.

In 1958, the American space agency NASA chose Ampex video recorders to service space flights and has not yet changed this principle.

Two years later, the American Film Academy awarded the Ponyatov company an Oscar for technical achievements.

With the help of Ampex's developments, the process of video recording with mechanical fixation and reproduction of images and sound became controllable already in 1963, that is, electronic editing appeared. Having gone through the stage of mastering the recording of color images (1964), the company in 1967 created the Ampex HS-100 slow-motion signal playback device, which completes the revolution primarily in lighting sports competitions, and then is widely “promoted” when creating music videos and advertising.

It is difficult to list everything done by the Poniatov company. Let's name two more innovations of Ampex: in 1978, it developed a video graphics system, and three years later it mastered digital special effects.

Ampex's creation of videotape made a very strong impression on television program makers. For many years, photographs of A. Ponyatov hung in video recording rooms all over the world, and the recording process itself was called “ampexing” for a long time (as the name of the Xerox company, which became the developer of the method and equipment for photographic copying of copies of text on paper, this process is called "photocopying").

World electronic giants - Sony, Matsushita, JVC, Philips, Toshiba, etc. for decades, they could not take a step in the production of household video equipment without the patents he owned. He lived for 88 years and was awarded in the USA and a number of other countries every honor imaginable for a scientist and businessman. The Russian diaspora in northern California reveres him almost like a saint - he gave jobs to thousands of Russians, helped create an Orthodox convent, a shelter for the elderly, and spared no expense in charity.

Ponyatov did not hide his nostalgia. However, after a tough exchange of views with N. Khrushchev, who was visiting the USA, he believed that the road to the USSR was closed to him. There is a legend that in the branches of his company around the world, Poniatov ordered to plant two birch trees at the entrance. Birch trees did not grow in Africa, so we had to make special glass covers with a microclimate.

Ponyatov Alexander Matveevich Kazarnovsky, Ponyatov Alexander Matveevich Peshkovsky
March 25, 1892(1892-03-25)

Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov(English Alexander Matveevich Poniatoff, March 25, 1892 - October 24, 1980) - electrical engineer (originally from the Russian Empire), who introduced a number of innovations in the field of magnetic sound and video recording, television and radio broadcasting. Under his leadership of the company he created, Ampex, the first commercial video recorder was released in 1956.

• 1 Biography
  • 1.1 Early years
  • 1.2 Working in the USA
• 2 Recognition and memory
• 3 Interesting facts
• 4 Notes
• 5 Literature
• 6 Links

Biography

early years

Alexander Ponyatov was born on March 25, 1892 in the village of Russkaya Aisha, Kazan district, Kazan province (now the village of Russko-Tatarskaya Aisha, Vysokogorsk district of Tatarstan) into a wealthy family. His father, Matvey Ponyatov, came from peasants, but after taking up the timber trade, he became a merchant of the first guild. The Ponyatovs owned warehouses made of natural stone, a house, an apiary, and a mill.

After graduating from the First Real School in Kazan, A. M. Ponyatov studied at the Imperial Kazan University in the mathematical department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in 1909-1910. Then he transferred to the Imperial Moscow Technical School, perhaps due to his passion for aircraft technology.

Fearing persecution by the authorities for participating in student gatherings in Moscow, A. M. Ponyatov moved to study in Karlsruhe, where he received his education at the Higher Technical School. He left to study in Germany with the recommendations of Professor N. E. Zhukovsky.

When in 1913 his parents sent him a summons for military service, A. M. Ponyatov returned to the Russian Empire. On the eve of the First World War, he managed to graduate from pilot school and served for some time as a military seaplane pilot; however, after the accident he was seriously injured and underwent long treatment.

During the Civil War in 1918-1920, A. M. Ponyatov served in the White Army, after the defeat of which he emigrated to China, where until 1927 he worked for an electric power company in Shanghai. After that, he lived for some time in France, after which he moved to the United States.

Work in the USA

At the end of the 1920s, A. M. Ponyatov arrived in the United States, and in 1932 he received American citizenship.

At first he worked in the research and development department of General Electric in New York.

After moving to California, A. M. Ponyatov married an American woman, Hazel, and lived in the San Francisco suburb of Atherton, where he worked as an engineer at Pacific Gas and Electric. Then Ponyatov moved to the Dalmo-Victor Westinghouse company, which developed electrical equipment for aircraft.

A. M. Ponyatov also experimented with electronics in his own garage. There, in 1944, he established his own company, Ampex (until 1946 - Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company, until 1953 - Ampex Electric Corporation, after - Ampex Corporation). The name of the company is an acronym formed from the first letters of the creator’s name and the word “experimental” - Alexander M. Poniatoff EXperimental. Subsequently, the ending “ex” in the name of the company began to be interpreted as an abbreviation for the word “excellent” (English excellence), meaning high quality products manufactured by the company.

Ampex manufactured electromechanical devices for precision tracking of radar antennas. During World War II, the company supplied electric motors for the electric drives of aircraft radars manufactured by Dalmo-Victor.

After the war, the company's activities were reoriented to a promising direction - the development of magnetic sound recording devices. This was facilitated by Poniatov’s meeting with Harold Lindsay (H. W. Lindsay, 1909-1982), who spoke about the captured German AEG tape recorder used by Jack Mullin (1913-1999) to demonstrate the advantages of magnetic sound recording in San Francisco on May 16, 1946. G. Lindsay became the chief designer of the first Ampex tape recorder. Work to improve magnetic tape was carried out under the supervision of D. Mullin.

In 1947, a prototype audio recorder, the Model 200A, was created and demonstrated in Hollywood. In the same year, Ampex managed to attract investments from the famous artist Bing Crosby in the amount of $50,000. The following year, Ampex produced several studio tape recorders, which began to be used by broadcasting companies to broadcast a signal with a delay (broadcast delay). On April 25, 1948, ABC began regular professional use of tape recordings with the Model 200A.

Subsequently, Poniatov's company produces a range of successful models tape recorders: in 1949 - Model 300; in 1950 - Model 400 (low cost for independent radio stations); since 1953 - Model 350 and Model 400; in 1954 - Model 600 (portable). The Poniatovs invited promising specialists to the company, for example, 16-year-old Ray Dolby (1933-2013).

Scheme of cross-line video recording (Quadruplex system) Studio video recorder Ampex VR-1000A

In 1951, 59-year-old Ponyatov and his chief technical advisers Charles Ginzburg (1920-1992), Weiter Selsted and Myron Stolaroff (1920-2013) decided to develop a video recording device using the principle of cross-line recording with rotating heads (this method allowed combine the high speed of movement of the magnetic head relative to the tape, necessary for recording the frequency band of a television signal (several MHz), with the low speed of movement of the tape itself, necessary for an acceptable recording duration on one roll).

On April 14, 1956, Ampex demonstrated in Chicago at the NAB convention the first commercial video recorder (videotape recorder) VR-1000, using Q-format magnetic tape to record a video signal. Soon the first recorded programs went on air in the United States (November 30, 1956, CBS broadcasts a video recording “ Doug Edwards and the News"; On October 13, 1957, “The Edsel Show” was videotaped for rebroadcast in the western part of the country).

Until 1955, A. M. Ponyatov served as director of Ampex, and after that he was elected chairman of the board of directors. The company he headed was for a long time a leading manufacturer of VCR equipment.

When A. M. Ponyatov retired in 1970, he retained the position of honorary chairman of the board of directors. He died in 1980.

Recognition and memory

The merits of A. M. Ponyatov were recognized by a number of awards, including medals of the American Electronics Association (AeA) (“For Achievement,” 1968), the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) (“Pioneer of the Creative Industry”) and honorary membership of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) . He was also elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

In 1961, AMPEX and its leader received an Academy Award for their contributions to technology.

The developments of his company have been awarded numerous Emmy Awards awarded by the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

After Poniatov's death, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development of television technology, the American Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) established in 1982 " Gold medal them. Poniatoff" (SMPTE Poniatoff Gold Medal), awarded for achievements in the field of magnetic recording of electrical signals.

A museum of magnetic recording (Ampex Museum of Magnetic Recording) has been opened at Stanford University with materials dedicated to Poniatov and his company.

The name of Alexander Ponyatov was little known in the USSR. One of the first in the Russian mass press to talk about A. M. Ponyatov was V. G. Makoveev, Soviet and Russian figure television and radio broadcasting, who conducted research in the archives of Kazan and Moscow. In 1993, he also helped M. A. Taratuta produce the TV show “America with Mikhail Taratuta,” dedicated to Ponyatov.

On April 9, 2012, the Museum of History of Kazan University hosted events related to the celebration of the 120th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov: the opening of an exhibition, speeches by physicists and relatives of A. M. Ponyatov.

• Ampex's main competitor in the development of video recording devices at first was David Sarnoff's (1891-1971) RCA company, which produced television cameras. RCA released its first commercial video recorder (TRT-1A) a year later (in 1957) and called it “Television Tape Recorder”, since the word “videotape” (Russian videotape, videotape) was registered by Ampex as a trademark.
• In the summer of 1959, the VRX-1000 video recorder was demonstrated at the American exhibition in Sokolniki. On it, the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N. S. Khrushchev was presented with an Ampex video tape with a recording of his meeting with US Vice President R. M. Nixon. The video recording was sent to the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Sound Recording (VNAIZ, now VNIITR), but there was nothing to play it on.
• In the fall of 1959, during N. S. Khrushchev’s visit to the USA, he met with A. M. Ponyatov.
• At the main entrance of Ampex offices in various countries, by order of A. M. Ponyatov, birch trees were planted.

Notes

1. 1 2 3 4 The inventor of video recording studied at Kazan University // Kazan Gazette. - April 7, 2012.
2. Olga Lyubimova. Valuable video // “Arguments and Facts - Kazan”. - No. 16. - April 13, 2012.
3. 1 2 3 4 5
4. Ampex History. www.ampex.com. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
5. 1 2 3 4 5 6
6. Makoveev V.G. Genius from the village of Russian Aisha! // Project “TVMUSEUM.RU” - Museum of Radio and Television on the Internet.
7. Today at KFU they will honor the memory of the inventor of the video recorder, a native of the Kazan province // “Arguments and Facts - Kazan”. - April 9, 2012.

Literature

• In Memoriam Alexander M. Poniatoff // Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. - 1981. - Vol. 2: No. 3, March. - P. 221.
• Dunaevskaya N.V., Urvalov V.A., Shulman M.G. Contributions of Boris Rcheulov and Alexander Ponyatov (From the history of magnetic video recording) // Electrosvyaz. - 1999. - No. 12. - P. 46-49.
• Makoveev V. G. Alexander Ponyatov - creator of the video recorder. 110 years since birth // Broadcasting. Television and radio broadcasting. - 2002. - No. 1. - P. 86-90.
• Afanasyev A.V. The first video was invented by Russian // “Russiandigital”. - 2002. - August-September.
• Leites L. S. Developers of the first professional video recorders // Cinema and television technology. - 2003. - No. 1. - P. 84-87.
• Samokhin V.P. Alexander Ponyatov and his Ampex // Sound engineer. - 2008. - No. 4. - P. 75-79.
• Leites L. S. Contribution of Alexander Ponyatov to the creation of the first professional tape recorders and video recording formats // Magazine “625”. - 2009. - No. 1 (45). - P. 72.
• Patrick Seitz. Alexander Poniatoff Made Tape Recorders Roll // Investor’s Business Daily. - 2009, September 9.
• Piero Scaruffi. Alexander Poniatoff // A History of Silicon Valley. - 2011. - 537 p. - ISBN 978-0-9765531-8-2
• Samokhin V.P. Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov (120th birthday) // “Science and education: electronic scientific and technical publication.” - 2012. - No. 4.

Links

• History of the Early Days of Ampex Corporation. As Remembered by John Leslie and Ross Snyder - a brochure about the early years of Ampex

Ponyatov Alexander Matveevich Kazarnovsky, Ponyatov Alexander Matveevich Peshkovsky