When watching my peers present, one presentation that I found intriguing was the VCR. I knew a little bit about the VCR, and how it was used to record and playback shows and movies, but I never really thought of how much it impacted society.
The VCR was invented by Charles Paulson Ginberg in 1956, he was born in 1920. Charles was known as ”The father of the video of the cassette recorder.” Technology has come so far that we can record anything with our phones and stream them to our TV’s. When you think of a VCR nowadays, you think of a small box that usually goes under or around your tv and costs around $100, but back when it was just made it was a massive box that sat under the television. When VCR’s first came out they were very expensive and the cost was upwards of $1000. Most media companies used the VCR because they could afford them. By 1985 the cost came down around $200 and the average person could afford one. Not only did people play back videos that they made but that is how people watched movies that they rented. Now we have netflix and hulu and can watch it right on our tv without having to rent a movie and put it into the VCR.
Media companies did not end up liking VCRs, because as the peer that presented, they said people could now share things without the company getting a cut of the proceeds. Media companies did feel threatened because the VCR could possibly take them out of business.
My parents have VCR tapes that they used to record us on when we were little. The only way to watch the tapes was on a VCR machine. People ended up raving about the VCR because now they didn't have to leave their house to watch a movie, they pretty much had an at home theater. This VCR really had a huge impact on people back then because they have never had anything technologically advanced as the VCR, and now they have this freedom they thought they would never have.
No one ever thought that today, we are going to be this technologically advanced, but now we have everything right in front of us, and can watch whatever we want, from wherever we want.
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