video- 23 nov
admin November 22nd, 2007
The first video I recall seeing was in 1978 - it must have been during the VHS / Beta wars! The unit was about the size of a small Sherman tank - more like a washing machine- no truly about twice the size of a common audio amplifier - It would have taken a small muscle man from the circus to lift I imagine. I can see the doorway mechanism poking up from the surface of burnished steel, a periscope searching for a video tape. As the door whirs open all manner of mechanical sounds emanate from the machine, and then with the crackling of the video being inserted into its willing sleeve, another round of mechanical twirling and snarling from inside.
Inside the celluloid is wrapped around a shiny cylinder; the scanning head, which is revolving at hundreds of times per minute, one of the good old principles we are familiar with; 30 Frames per second - any slower and we’d perceive it as slow motion, we’d see the flicker, like those old Charlie Chaplain movies or Keystone cops. Some poor sod had to keep a handle turning on the camera to move the film past the eye of the lens. Just like the cylinder is the eye of the video machine many years later.
The buttons on the front are long and rectangular with rounded edges. A sort of statement to the era. The video tapes themselves are a fragile looking black thin plastic, eggshell plastic. I don’t want to drop that on a kitchen floor made of rosy terracotta tiles. This is a strange house - we’re visiting my brother - who’s older than Me- I am 12 or 13. The thing I notice more than the video recorder is the 1/24th scale model of a Harrier jump jet - for years afterward I would fantasise about building a 24th scale model- and now I have one ready to go, but it has sat in the box for nearly 2 years while other stuff happened. The box now has a light covering of dust and the corners have frayed and torn from being moved from one location to another - I hope it’s not feeling too neglected and will build ‘OK’ when I finally get around to it!
I found some videos of the aircraft I am going to build on Various sights - it’s a world war 2 classic fighter and people are now either restoring them or building them from the ground up - quite a liberating thing to see something you have anally researched taking to the skies again.
