Between 2001 and 2005 Gino Mancini created a website to document some of the professional sound and video recording equipment produced during the 1960's to the 1990's. Gino managed to acquire a number of examples of this equipment when they were pensioned off by their former owners. The website gives an interesting insight into the rapid evolution of recording technology during those years, and the marked contrast with 21st century equipment.
Some years ago I was asked to migrate the website developed on to a more stable platform, and chose Google Site on the basis that it was free, and that Google was unlikely to disappear. The structure of the new site was different but Gino's text and photos survived. Several years later the original website was deleted; this resulted in the loss of all the images which had been accessed by pointing to the original website rather than loading directly into the Google site, a most regrettable design fault on my part. In 2021 Google terminated their 'classic' sites, and any surviving pages had to use their 'new' system. A migration path was offered, though the result is patchy.
Despite the lack of photos I hope you find the website to be of interest.
Nick Thompson 13 May 2021
Sadly Gino died in 2012, however his widow and his friends would like to preserve the website in his memory, and as a resource for those interested in such technology in the future.
The starting point has been to transfer the original "freeserve" site into a Google site, which is simpler to maintain and more future-proof - or so we thought at the time.
Please note, this is an unofficial site, not connected with any of the manufacturers of the equipment described. If you have any comments or suggestions please email us.
This is Gino's introduction to his website:
Commander Rupert T. Gould wrote in the preface to his great work: The Marine Chronometer its history and development. There is I believe an Arab saying, which runs, "Because I have been athirst, I have dug a well, that others may drink"
So welcome to my little web site in which you will find information about a few items of obsolete technology that I have enjoyed and found interesting over the years. But what is the significance of all this stuff you might ask, and who actually cares about a load of old television and audio junk anyway?
Well I suppose a few of us do with perhaps the possible excuse that many of the quaint and aged machines on this site did once actually represent some of the most advanced and clever technology on the planet. We might also like to remind ourselves that there was sophisticated technology built and used successfully long before the current fashion for 'digital' everything.
I read on another web site a while back that they (an educational establishment I think) had an old television camera that was once considered 'good'. This was written with a sense of toleration, inferring that (yawn) only the latest technology was of any use. Ha! I found myself thinking 'well sunshine all and every one of your new wizzy toys will very soon be just as obsolete and as amusing as my old shiny toys are'!
The sublime Ampex / Nagra VPR-5 video tape recorder does of course take up much of the space on this site and has its own section here. But over the last few of years I have happily 'bolted on' various other items. There is an equipment gallery, a portable audio recorder area and a site Annex as well. There are also a few ramblings about Ampex as well as a section about the Decca Recording Company's digital audio mastering system.
For my own part I have found these various devices interesting and have tried here to illustrate them both in terms of words and pictures that a non-specialists person with similar inclinations might also find interesting.
This is I suppose because we all like to share our enthusiasms with hopefully appreciative others. There also seems to be very little in-depth information about this recently old technology on the web (or indeed anywhere else for that matter), so I am trying to redress the balance a little bit. It would have been nice to wrap things all up in a book to make a little money, but who am I kidding? (a CD version of the site can be supplied at a modest cost.)
The more knowledgeable visitor will I trust excuse any minor errors or misconceptions. While never having been a club person, or indeed thought of myself as an 'anorak' (who does?), I do though incline towards technical things and items that might need a little specialist knowledge to be able to appreciate properly. Over the years, as with most people, I have worked my way through various interests and hobbies and I suppose I am at heart just a frustrated engineer. But never having had the will-power until later in life to study for a degree, I found myself mostly chained to the unrewarding, poorly paid and frustrating tedium of an office desk.
I was though a 'tape-op' in a second rate recording studio for a short while long ago, but soon got bored with making tea and clearing up after the clients, and indeed they got bored with me (I did enjoy the bacon sandwiches though). Time passed and with some irony the ongoing 'Digital Revolution'
Time passed, and with some irony the on-going Digital Revolution was eventually to present me with a number of happy opportunities to get my hands on some newly discarded items that I could only have once dreamed about. My only slight problem is that of a continuing sense of chagrin that so few 'normal' people seem to appreciate these old bits of machinery (er, fine engineering) that I find are much to my taste.
I continue therefore, to ponder why a moderately sane (?) person such as myself would wish to provide a home for such useless junk, particularly as I also have a taste for much of the new (and still often unless) junk as well. But of course everything becomes junk in varying lengths of time. I am also slightly troubled by the realization that most of the items on this site, of which many are still working or have been 'lovingly restored', in reality have a very uncertain future. How long can a private un-sponsored web site last? How long will I be able to spare the space or continue my interest (or to be able) to keep most of this stuff? And most importantly;
Why are there no 'real' museums or even wealthy individuals 'out there' willing to preserve and display these fine examples of skill and ingenuity?
Oh well, until The Science Museum gives me a call to become curator of 'Media Technology' I suppose private collections and the few web sites such as this will have to do some of their work for them.
It also occurs to me that those of us who appreciate this type fine old technology are probably rather different animals to the usual anally retentive collector of 'stuff', as I can see very little worth in many of the so called collectibles that are 'rare and sought after' these days. I am thinking here of things such as old dolls, postage stamps, teddy bears, tin-plate toys, bits of china, and other sorts of tat.
Actually I am often rendered speechless while some self-assured TV pundit extols the virtues (and monetary value) of some crummy bent tin toy, which was cheap and fairly naff when new, and is now just rusty scrap. But there again some people do collect and value rusty scrap, or phone cards and who knows what else. Just look on any Internet auction site and marvel at the prices that to my mind rather misguided people are willing to pay for such things. But what about those items that did once represent very real intellectual, engineering and technological achievement?
Are they not worth some appreciation at all for what they once represented? Sadly apparently not. The herd instinct of which one aspect we call 'fashion' has no respect for true and deep creativity and those with disposable incomes have little empathy for things of an engineering nature, and so most of the intelligent but unseen cog wheels of our modern society are just dumped in land fill at the end of their working lives.
But perhaps this is all of no importance anyway, and I probably need to get out more...
However, if you have got this far please do enjoy some of the eclectic stuff I have got here. And also possibly reflect that these quaint bits of bygone technology represent a time before the PC, when machines made of metal were engineered to do specific things, and didn't need a nasty qwerty keyboard to make them work.
Gino Mancini May 2005