While yesterday marked the 43rd anniversary of the death of Dwight D. Eisenhower, here’s one little known fact about the nation’s 34th U.S. President – he was the first Chief Executive to be photographed on videotape; in both black and white, of course, but more interestingly, in color. Charles Ginsburg had led the development of videotape at the Ampex Corporation in 1951. Ampex had been founded two years earlier by Alexander M. Poniatoff, a Russian immigrant. The earliest realistic model of a videotape recorder was called the “Quadruplex” machine, or “Quad.” Some TV stations began utilizing the new technology by 1954, but it was cumbersome and expensive. This is the oldest known color videotape recording, which is highlighted by a speech Eisenhower gave on May 22, 1958 on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.
Chief Writing Wolf 