Ampex machine's high price tag. Ampex sold only about 50 or 60 ATR-124 machines, and withdrew from the professional audio tape recorder market entirely in 1983. By the 1990s, Ampex focused more on video recorders, instrumentation recorders, and data recorders. In 1991, Ampex sold their professional audio recorder line to Sprague Magnetics. The Ampex Recording Media Corporation spun off in 1995 as Quantegy Inc.; that company has ceased producing recording tape. Starting in the early 1950s, RCA, Bing Crosby and others tried to record analog video on very fast-moving magnetic tape. As early as 1952, Ampex developed prototype video tape recorders
Erhard Kietz was mainly achieved through the emerging transistor technology and, only a little later, through integrated circuits with rapidly growing complexity. When one sees the current video recording devices, one cannot even imagine anymore how much signal processing is necessary for video recording and play-back. The first video recorders were housed in several cabinets full of electronics. Television video recording was practically a fall-out of the military application. From the end of the 1960s on into the 1980s, Ampex video tape recorders were utilized in television studios all over the world. During his tenure at Ampex Corporation, Dr. Erhard Kietz developed