Jewish Invention Myths: The Video Cassette Recorder (VCR)

Our next jewish invention myth is the claim that jews invented the Video Cassette Recorder (or VCR for short) which if you grew up anytime before circa 2010 you’ll probably somewhat remember.

For those who don’t know what a VCR is then think of it as the precursor to the DVD/Blu-Ray player which used tapes rather than DVDs/Blu-Ray discs. It was how people bought, watched and recorded films, television programs and home movies before circa 2000.

Predictably jews claim they invented the VCR with ‘MNews’ asserting that:

‘Jerome Lemelson – VCR, fax machine, and more

Overall, an independent inventor Jerome Lemelson received 605 patents. He patented an automated warehouse, industrial robots, a talking thermometer, a cordless telephone, an advanced fax machine, and a video cassette recorder. Lemelson's inventions were acquired by at least 700 companies around the world.’ (1)

Kathyrn Bernheimer at ‘Boulder Jewish News’ seems to somewhat agree when she claims jews invented ‘videotape’ (the tapes used in VCRs) which isn’t true either and with which I will deal with separately.

What is the truth?

The world’s first commercially available VCR was the VRX-1000 which was debuted on 14th April 1956 and produced by the Ampex Corporation (3) which was founded by 1944 by Russian émigré Alexander Poniatoff and largely funded by Hollywood star Bing Crosby. The team at Ampex that created the VRX-1000 was led by Charles Ginsburg and included Ray Dolby (who later founded Dolby Laboratories). Ginsburg was the only jew on the team I can locate.

This might look like a solid a case for some jewish priority in the development of the VCR, but the devil is in the historical detail as Crosby’s close associate at MGM studios (and member of the US Army Signal Corps) John ‘Jack’ Mullin bought German magnetic tape recorders back to the United States which the US army had begun to capture in 1944 and 1945.

The tape recorders the US army were capturing were in fact a 1935 German invention called the ‘Magnetophon’ (originally called the ‘K1’) by Fritz Pfleumer that was unveiled to the world at the Berlin Radio Show in 1935 (4) then licensed to German company AEG based on Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen’s pioneering work on magnetic tape recording in 1898. (5) The Magnetophon was widely used by Adolf Hitler to give pre-recorded speeches in different cities that seemed like they were live broadcasts. (6)

Indeed, the US Army Signal Corps was shocked at the quality of the German broadcasts made by Radio Frankfurt using the Magnetophon. (7) Mullin naturally lugged two captured AEG Magnetophons and 50 reals of I.G. high-quality magnetic recording tape back to California where he began trying to interest companies in the commercial opportunity presented by them. (8)

In June 1947 Mullin demonstrated the AEG Magnetophon to Bing Crosby who invested $50,000 into Ampex and ordered them to produce an American version of the captured AEG Magnetophons. (9) This then became Ampex’s VRX-1000 in April 1956. (10)

Therefore, we can see that there is no jewish priority whatsoever in the invention of the VCR as it was actually a German invention used extensively in the Third Reich.

But what of Jerome Lemelson?

By all accounts he only fiddled about with VCR technology in the 1950s (long after it was invented and in the United States via Jack Mullin among others) and his ‘inventions’ were just improvements on the original design that he successfully licensed to Sony in 1974. (11)

So therefore, we can see that not only did jews not create the first VCR but rather they stole a German concept that was in wide use based on a Danish invention.

Go figure.

References

(1) https://mnews.world/en/news/the-great-jews-and-their-inventions

(2) https://boulderjewishnews.org/2009/an-informal-list-of-jewish-inventions-innovations-and-radical-ideas/

(3) https://www.cedmagic.com/history/ampex-commercial-vtr-1956.html

(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20130208162634/http://mixonline.com/TECnology-Hall-of-Fame/aeg-magnetophone-recorder-090106/

(5) https://web.archive.org/web/20080509130422/http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/tape.html

(6) https://books.google.com/books?id=6idhDboGmZoC&pg=PA45&redir_esc=y

(7) Richard James Burgess, 2014, ‘The History of Music Production’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 45

(8) Ibid.; John Leslie, Ross Synder, 2010, ‘History of The Early Days of Ampex Corporation’, AES Historical Committee, pp. 2-3

(9) https://www.mixonline.com/recording/john-t-mullin-man-who-put-bing-crosby-tape-373927

(10) https://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/ampex200a/200a-at-stanford-library.html

(11) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson#Biography