| In the 1950s, long before they were compact and more affordable, the earliest VCRs took up as much space as a piano and cost more than a house. We can trace the technology to engineer Charles Ginsburg, who was hired by electronics company Ampex to work on the development of a new video tape recorder (VTR). The resulting machine, called the Ampex VRX-1000, debuted in 1956 and allowed users to edit and play back recorded video on tape reels. However, these devices were humongous and cost roughly $50,000 (around $580,000 today), making them out of reach for personal use. Instead, Ampex found a market in large television networks such as CBS, which used the VRX-1000 to replace costly live broadcasts with prerecorded, edited content that could be re-aired. The personal VCR market developed further into the 1960s, starting with the work of Sony engineer Nobutoshi Kihara, who unveiled the CV-2000 in 1965. This was a smaller and more affordable device priced at $695 (around $7,000 today), capable of recording and playing back black-and-white images. But the CV-2000 still relied on tape reels; it wasn't until 1971 that the first VCR to use cassettes debuted. This was the Sony VO-1600, which incorporated Sony's new U-matic technology, in which the tape was encased inside a cassette — a direct predecessor to modern VHS tapes. The retail price of the Sony VO-1600 was still in excess of $1,000. But as the technology continued to develop throughout the 1980s, the cost of a new VCR dipped into the low hundreds. | 
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