text:
Mackenzie River

The Mackenzie River (French: Fleuve (de) Mackenzie; Slavey: Deh-Cho [tèh tʃʰò], literally big river; Inuvialuktun: Kuukpak [kuːkpɑk], literally great river) is a river in the Canadian boreal forest. It forms, along with the Slave, Peace, and Finlay, the longest river system in Canada, and includes the second largest drainage basin of any North American river after the Mississippi.

The Mackenzie River flows through a vast, thinly populated region of forest and tundra entirely within the Northwest Territories in Canada, although its many tributaries reach into five other Canadian provinces and territories. The river's main stem is 1738 km long, flowing north-northwest from Great Slave Lake into the Arctic Ocean, where it forms a large delta at its mouth. Its extensive watershed drains about 20 percent of Canada. It is the largest river flowing into the Arctic from North America, and including its tributaries has a total length of 4241 km, making it the thirteenth longest river system in the world.

The ultimate source of the Mackenzie River is Thutade Lake, in the Northern Interior of British Columbia. The Mackenzie valley is believed to have been the path taken by prehistoric peoples during the initial human migration from Asia to North America over 10,000 years ago, despite sparse evidence. The Inuvialuit, Gwich'in and other Indigenous peoples lived along the river for thousands of years. The river provided the major route into Canada's northern interior for early European explorers.

Economic development remains limited along the river. During the 19th century, fur trading became a lucrative business, but this was affected by harsh weather conditions. The discovery of oil at Norman Wells in the 1920s began a period of industrialization in the Mackenzie valley. Metallic minerals have been found along the eastern and southern edges of the basin; these include uranium, gold, lead, and zinc. Agriculture remains prevalent along the south, particularly in the Peace River area. Various tributaries and headwaters of the river have been developed for hydroelectricity production, flood control and irrigation.

Headwaters
Through its many tributaries, the Mackenzie River basin   covers portions of five Canadian provinces and territories – British Columbia (BC), Alberta, Saskatchewan, Yukon, and Northwest Territories. Thutade Lake, in the Northern Interior of BC, is the ultimate source of the Mackenzie River via the Finlay–Peace River system, which stretches 1923 km through BC and Alberta. The 1231 km Athabasca River originates further south, in Jasper National Park in southwest Alberta. Together, the Peace and Athabasca rivers drain a significant portion of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and the central Alberta prairie. The Peace contributes the majority of the water, about 66 km3 (54 million acre-feet) per year, and the Athabasca contributes 25 km3 (20 million acre-feet).

The Peace and Athabasca meet at the Peace-Athabasca Delta, a vast inland delta at the western end of Lake Athabasca, which also takes runoff from the northern third of Saskatchewan. The Slave River is formed by the confluence of the two rivers and flows 415 km due north into Great Slave Lake, at Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories. The Slave is by far the largest river flowing into the lake, with an annual flow of 108 km3 (87 million acre-feet). It contributes about 77% of the overall inflow, and forms a large delta where it enters the lake. Other rivers entering Great Slave Lake are the Taltson, Lockhart and Hay Rivers, the latter of which also extends into Alberta and BC.

Main stem
The Mackenzie River issues from the western end of Great Slave Lake about 150 km south-west of Yellowknife. The channel is initially several kilometres wide but narrows to about 800 m at Fort Providence, which was historically an important ferry crossing in the summer, and used as an ice bridge in the winter for traffic along the Yellowknife Highway. In 2012 the Deh Cho Bridge was completed at a point about 10 km upstream, providing a safer permanent crossing. It is the only bridge across the main stem of the Mackenzie. West of Fort Providence the Mackenzie widens considerably, resembling a shallow, swampy lake more than a river; one large widening here is known as Mills Lake. After heading west for about 100 km the Mackenzie narrows and turns northwest through a long stretch of fast water and rapids, past the village of Jean Marie River. At Fort Simpson it is joined by the Liard River, its biggest direct tributary, from the west. The Liard drains a large area in the southern Yukon and northern BC and carries a large amount of sediment during the summer melt – which does not fully mix with the clear water in the Mackenzie for almost 500 km downstream, with the resulting phenomenon of a clear current on the east bank and muddy water on the west bank.

The river continues west-northwest until its confluence with the North Nahanni River, where it turns north towards the Arctic. It flows through open taiga with its wide valley bounded, on the west, by the Mackenzie Mountains and to the east by low hills of the Canadian Shield. This mostly uninhabited area is called the Mackenzie Lowlands; although partly forested, it is mostly covered by large areas of muskeg, swamps and many small lakes. A number of major tributaries join from the west, including the Root River, Redstone River and Keele River. Below the Keele River, the Mackenzie River flows north along the western base of the Franklin Mountains before turning northwest, and receives the Great Bear River, the outflow of Great Bear Lake at Tulita.

The Mackenzie widens considerably to about 6 to 7 km at Norman Wells, a major center of oil production. There is a narrows at the Mountain River confluence called the Sans Sault Rapids, where the Mackenzie falls about 6 m. Below the Mountain River the Mackenzie flows due north until reaching The Ramparts, a limestone gorge barely 500 m wide and up to 45 m deep. Below The Ramparts is the village of Fort Good Hope, where the Mackenzie turns northwest again, soon crossing the Arctic Circle. The Mackenzie here flows slightly lower in elevation than the surrounding tundra, as a braided river between low bluffs about 3 to 5 km apart. It receives the Arctic Red River from the southwest at Tsiigehtchic, where traffic on the Dempster Highway crosses via ferry/ice bridge.

About 30 km northwest of Tsiigehtchic is Point Separation, the head of the vast Mackenzie River Delta, whose branching channels, ponds and wetlands spread across more than 12000 km2 of the coastal plain. The delta is nearly 210 km from north to south, and ranges in width from 50 to 80 km. It is the second biggest Arctic delta in the world, after the Lena River delta in Russia. Most land in the Mackenzie delta consists of permafrost, with great depths to bedrock. A characteristic feature of the delta is its numerous pingos, or hills of earth-covered-ice – some 1,400 of them. The Peel River, carrying much of the runoff from the northern Yukon, joins in the delta at a point northeast of Fort McPherson. Below there, the Mackenzie diverges into several large channels with the largest heading north-northeast, emptying into the Beaufort Sea west of Tuktoyaktuk. The Mackenzie Delta contains a logjam with 400,000 caches of wood, which stores 3.4 million tons of carbon, equivalent to a year's emissions from 2.5 million cars.

Drainage basin
At 1805000 km2, the Mackenzie River drainage basin encompasses nearly 20 percent of Canada. About 980000 km2, or 54 percent of the basin, lies above Great Slave Lake. Permafrost underlies about three-quarters of the watershed, reaching up to 100 m deep in the Mackenzie Delta. As a whole, the Mackenzie basin receives only meager to moderate rainfall, averaging 410 mm over the entire basin, though mountain areas experience much higher precipitation, and areas near and north of the Arctic Circle receive much lower precipitation.

The Mackenzie drainage basin is bordered by multiple major North American watersheds. Much of the western edge of the Mackenzie basin runs along the Continental Divide. The divide separates the Mackenzie watershed from that of the Yukon River, which flows to the Bering Strait; and the Fraser River and Columbia River systems, both of which empty into the Pacific Ocean. Lowland divides in the north separate the Mackenzie basin from the Arctic Ocean watersheds of the Anderson, Horton, Coppermine and Back Rivers. In the east, the Mackenzie borders on the Hudson Bay watersheds of the Thelon and Churchill Rivers, and to the south it is bordered by the Saskatchewan–Nelson River system, which also empties into Hudson Bay. The Mackenzie system is hydrologically connected to the Hudson Bay watershed via Wollaston Lake, which is not only the source of the Fond du Lac tributary of Lake Athabasca, but also of the Cochrane River, which flows east into the Churchill River.

The eastern portion of the Mackenzie basin is dominated by vast reaches of lake-studded boreal forest and includes many of the largest lakes in North America. By both volume and surface area, Great Bear Lake is the biggest in the watershed and third largest on the continent, with a surface area of 31153 km2 and a volume of 2236 km3. Great Slave Lake is slightly smaller, with an area of 28568 km2 and containing 2088 km3 of water, although it is significantly deeper than Great Bear. The third major lake, Athabasca, is less than a third that size with an area of 7800 km2. Six other lakes in the watershed cover more than 1000 km2, including the Williston Lake reservoir, the second-largest artificial lake in North America, on the Peace River.

Flow characteristics
The river discharges more than 325 km3 of water each year, accounting for roughly 11% of the total river flow into the Arctic Ocean. The river is frozen for most of the year, with the ice typically breaking up by early to mid-May in the south, and late May-early June in the north. Ice breaks up earlier on the tributaries, sometimes causing ice jams and flooding where they meet the Mackenzie. In the middle of the larger lakes, such as Great Slave, ice can persist as late as mid-June. The river typically freezes by late October or November, starting in the north. Year round, the Mackenzie's outflow has a major stabilizing effect in the local climate above the Arctic Ocean with large amounts of warmer fresh water mixing with the cold seawater.

The average flow rate at the mouth is 9910 m3/s, the second largest in Canada after the St Lawrence, and the fourteenth largest in the world. About 60 percent of the water comes from the western half of the basin, which includes the Rocky, Selwyn, and Mackenzie mountain ranges out of which spring major tributaries such as the Peace and Liard Rivers, which contribute 23 and 27 percent of the total flow, respectively. In contrast the eastern half, despite being dominated by marshland and large lakes, provides only about 25 percent of the Mackenzie's discharge.

During peak flow in the spring, the difference in discharge between the two halves of the watershed becomes even more marked. While large amounts of snow and glacial melt dramatically drive up water levels in the Mackenzie's western tributaries, large lakes to the east retard springtime discharges. Spring floods from the Peace-Athabasca system are significantly slowed by the delta area at the western end of Lake Athabasca causing the lake to rise, and the excess water can only flow out after the rivers have receded. The same phenomenon occurs at Great Slave Lake, which naturally regulates the flow from the Slave River into the Mackenzie.

There are river gauges at several upstream points along the Mackenzie River. The average flow rate at the outlet of Great Slave Lake is 4269 m3/s. At Fort Simpson, below the Liard River, it is 6769 m3/s. At Norman Wells it is 8446 m3/s, and at the Arctic Red confluence it is 8926 m3/s.

Mackenzie monthly mean discharge at Arctic Red River (m3/s)

Geology
As recently as the last glacial maximum about 30,000 years ago, the majority of northern Canada was buried under the enormous continental Laurentide Ice Sheet. The tremendous erosive powers of the Laurentide and its predecessors, at maximum extent, completely buried what is now the Mackenzie watershed under thousands of metres of ice and flattened the eastern portions of the watershed. When the ice sheet receded for the last time, it left a 1100 km long postglacial lake, Lake McConnell, of which Great Bear, Great Slave and Athabasca Lakes are remnants.

Today's Mackenzie River is very young in geologic terms – its channel formed over a period of no more than several thousand years as the ice sheet retreated. Prior to the ice ages, only the Peel River tributary flowed through what is now the Mackenzie Delta into the Arctic Ocean. The other tributaries of the Mackenzie combined into the "Bell River" which flowed east into Hudson Bay. During glaciation the weight of the ice sheet depressed northern Canada's terrain to such an extent that when the ice retreated, the Mackenzie system was captured to lower elevations in the northwest, establishing the present flow direction to the Arctic.

Fluvial deposits and other erosional evidence indicate that around the end of the Pleistocene, about 13,000 years ago, the Mackenzie channel was scoured by one or more massive glacial lake outburst floods unleashed from Lake Agassiz, formed by melting ice west of the present-day Great Lakes. At its peak, Agassiz had a greater volume than all present-day freshwater lakes combined. This is believed to have disrupted currents in the Arctic Ocean and led to an abrupt 1,300-year-long cold temperature shift called the Younger Dryas.

The Mackenzie carries a very large sediment load, transporting about 128 million tonnes each year to its delta. The Liard River alone accounts for 32 percent of the total, and the Peel River about 20 percent. Essentially all of the sediment is contributed by areas downstream of Fort Providence, since upstream sediment is trapped in Great Slave Lake.

Ecology
The Mackenzie River's watershed is considered one of the largest and most intact ecosystems in North America, especially the northern half. Approximately 63% of the drainage basin, or 1137000 km2, is forested (mostly boreal forest). Wetlands comprise about 18%, or about 324900 km2, of the basin. More than 93% of forested areas are virgin old-growth forest. However, human activities such as oil extraction have threatened water quality in the headwaters of the Mackenzie River. In addition, a warming climate in northern parts of the watershed is melting permafrost and destabilizing soil through erosion.

Most of the taiga consists of black spruce, aspen and poplar forest. In the north, the river's shores are lined with sparse vegetation like dwarf birch and willows, as well as extensive areas of muskeg and peat bogs. South of Great Slave Lake, there are much larger reaches of temperate and alpine forest, prairie, and fertile floodplain and riparian habitat.

There are 53 fish species in the basin, none of them endemic. The Mackenzie River has a similar range of fish fauna to the Mississippi River system. It is believed that the two river systems were connected during the Ice Ages by meltwater lakes and channels, allowing fish in the two rivers to interbreed. Fish in the Mackenzie River proper include the northern pike, several minnow species, and lake whitefish. Fish in the southern half of the watershed are genetically isolated from those of the northern half due to large rapids on the Slave River preventing fish from swimming upstream.

Migratory birds use the three major deltas in the Mackenzie River basin – the Mackenzie Delta and the inland Slave and Peace-Athabasca Deltas – as resting and breeding areas. The latter is located at the convergence of four major North American migratory routes, or flyways. As recently as the mid-twentieth century, more than 400,000 birds passed through during the spring and up to a million in autumn. Some 215 bird species in total have been catalogued in the delta, including species such as the whooping crane, peregrine falcon and bald eagle. The construction of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River has reduced the seasonal variations of water levels in the delta, causing damage to its ecosystem. Bird populations have seen a steady decline since the 1960s.

Water mammals such as beavers and muskrats are extremely common in the Mackenzie Delta and surrounding areas of muskeg. The Mackenzie estuary is also a calving area for beluga whales.

History
The Mackenzie valley is believed to have been the path taken by prehistoric peoples during the initial human migration from Asia to North America more than 10,000 years ago. However, archaeological evidence of human habitation along the Mackenzie is scant, despite the efforts of many researchers. Many archaeological sites have probably been destroyed by flooding, freeze-thaw and erosion. The Inuvialuit, Gwich'in and other Indigenous peoples have lived along the river for thousands of years; however, the oldest evidence of continuous occupation stretches back only about 1300–1400 years, at the Gwich'in community of Tsiigehtchic.

The Mackenzie provided the major route into Canada's northern interior for European explorers as early as the late 18th century. Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie travelled the river in the hope it would lead to the Pacific Ocean, but instead reached its mouth on the Arctic Ocean on 14 July 1789. There is a story, likely apocryphal, that he named it "Disappointment River", but eventually it was named after him. No European reached its mouth again until Sir John Franklin on 16 August 1825 during the 1825–1827 Mackenzie River expedition. The following year he traced the coast west until blocked by ice while John Richardson followed the coast east to the Coppermine River. In 1849 William Pullen reached the Mackenzie from the Bering Strait.

In the following decades the North West Company established forts on the river, the precursors of present-day settlements such as Fort Simpson (formerly Fort of the Forks). A lucrative fur trade was carried out, as the Mackenzie basin teemed with beaver and muskrat. However, the short summer and harsh winter conditions limited trappers' activities. During the late 19th century Fort Simpson was regional headquarters for the Hudson's Bay Company. The first fur trappers were native, but starting in the 1920s increasing numbers of European trappers entered the region. Beaver and muskrat populations were heavily depleted, especially in areas around and south of Great Slave Lake.

Catholic missionary Henri Grollier founded missions at Fort Simpson, Fort Norman and Fort Good Hope between 1858 and 1859.

During the late 19th century and early 20th century epidemics of introduced European diseases swept through Indigenous communities along the river, and thousands of native people lost their lives. One particularly severe influenza in 1928 killed as many as one in ten native people along the Mackenzie River. Fort Providence lost 20 percent of its population, and some smaller villages and camps were completely wiped out.

Steamboat service on the Mackenzie River began in the 1880s, and the number of vessels surged in the early 1900s as the Klondike Gold Rush brought a wave of prospectors to the Yukon. The Mackenzie River was one of the main routes into the northern interior, with sternwheelers transporting passengers, domestic supplies and industrial goods from as far upstream as the Athabasca River all the way to the delta, though with several areas such as the huge rapids on the Slave River requiring portages. The route taken by gold seekers started in Edmonton and followed the Athabasca, Slave and Mackenzie Rivers as far as the Peel River, then up the Peel and its tributary the Rat River to the headwaters of the Porcupine River, which flows to the Yukon River. Many who attempted the 3200 km journey died along the way or turned back before reaching the Yukon.

Oil was discovered at Norman Wells in the 1920s, beginning a period of industrialization in the Mackenzie valley. Oil was initially shipped out by steamboats, supplying mines and towns across the NWT. This demand grew when gold was discovered on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, leading to the settlement of Yellowknife and the opening of several mines in the area. By the 1940s steamboats had been replaced by modern gas and diesel-powered craft, which continue to serve the river today. During World War II oil pumped in Norman Wells was shipped to Fairbanks, Alaska via the 1000 km Canol pipeline. The pipeline was considered a "fiasco", going five times over budget and losing as much as 20 percent of the oil due to poor construction. It only operated for thirteen months, shutting down in 1945. Much abandoned equipment remains along the corridor today; part of the pipeline route has been designated the Canol Heritage Trail. In 1964 the Mackenzie Northern Railway (now a subsidiary of CN) reached the shore of Great Slave Lake, to serve the new Pine Point zinc mine near Hay River. Although the mine shut down in 1988, the railroad remains an important transportation link between the Mackenzie River waterway and the rest of Canada.

In the 1950s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), a vast series of dams, tunnels and reservoirs designed to move 150 km3 of water from northern Canada to southern Canada, the western United States and Mexico. The system would involve building massive dams on the Liard, Mackenzie, Peace, Columbia, and Fraser river systems and pumping water into a 650 km long reservoir in the Rocky Mountain Trench. The water would then flow by gravity to irrigate more than 220000 km2 in the three countries and generate more than 50,000 MW of surplus energy. The projects were never built due to the massive cost and environmental impact.

The Royal Canadian Mint honoured the 200th anniversary of the naming of the Mackenzie River with the issue of a silver commemorative dollar in 1989.

In 1997, a cultural landscape along the section of the Mackenzie River at Tsiigehtchic was designated the Nagwichoonjik (Mackenzie River) National Historic Site of Canada due to its cultural, social and spiritual significance to the Gwichya Gwich'in.

In 2008, Canadian and Japanese researchers extracted a constant stream of natural gas from a test project at the Mallik methane hydrate field in the Mackenzie Delta. This was the second such drilling at Mallik: the first took place in 2002 and used heat to release methane. In the 2008 experiment, researchers were able to extract gas by lowering the pressure, without heating, requiring significantly less energy. The Mallik gas hydrate field was first discovered by Imperial Oil in 1971–1972.

Human use
As of 2001, approximately 400,000 people lived in the Mackenzie River basin – representing only one percent of Canada's population. Ninety percent of the population lived in the Peace and Athabasca River basins, mostly in Alberta. The cold northern permafrost regions beyond the Arctic Circle are very sparsely populated, mainly by Indigenous peoples. Most of the Mackenzie watershed is unbroken wilderness and human activities have little influence on the overall water quality, although there are some localized impacts.

Natural resources
Some parts of the Mackenzie basin are rich in natural resources – oil and gas in the Northwest Territories and in central Alberta, lumber in the Peace River headwaters, uranium in Saskatchewan, gold and zinc in the Great Slave Lake area and tungsten in the Yukon. As of 2003 there were two operational gold mines in Yellowknife, and many more abandoned mines dot the region. Communities along the Mackenzie River depend on subsistence fishing, although there is also some commercial fishing on the river.

Agriculture in the Mackenzie River basin is mainly concentrated in the Peace and Athabasca valleys to the south. The valley of the former river is considered to be some of the best northern farmland in Canada, due to the high concentration of minerals found in the soil. These conditions are expected to be improved even more by trends in climate change, such as warmer temperatures and a longer growing season. According to the British Columbia Environmental Network, "there is enough agricultural capability in the Peace River Valley to provide vegetables to all of northern Canada".

The only functioning oil pipeline in the Mackenzie basin connects Norman Wells with Zama City, Alberta. Norman Wells was the main oil-producing area on the Mackenzie River until the 1970s, when new oil fields were discovered further north in the Mackenzie delta and the surrounding coastline. As of 2016, there were an estimated 166 billion barrels of oil reserves in this region. There is a proposal for a Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, which has not been built due to environmental concerns and falling oil and gas prices.

Transportation
During the ice-free season, the Mackenzie is a major transportation link through the vast wilderness of northern Canada, linking the many isolated communities along its course. Wide, calm sections of the river are frequently used to land seaplanes in the ice-free season. Canada's northernmost major railhead is located at the town of Hay River, on the south shore of Great Slave Lake. Goods shipped there by train and truck are loaded onto barges of the government-owned Marine Transportation Services. In 2016, Northern Transportation Company went bankrupt, and its assets were bought by the government of Northwest Territories.

Barge traffic travels the entire length of the Mackenzie in long "trains" of up to fifteen shallow-draft vessels pulled by tugboats. Goods are shipped as far as the port of Tuktoyaktuk on the eastern end of the Mackenzie Delta, where they are transferred to oceangoing vessels and delivered to communities along Canada's Arctic coast and the numerous islands to the north. In winter, the frozen channel of the Mackenzie River, especially in the delta region, is used as an ice road, firm enough to support large trucks, although travel between northern communities is mostly by dog sleds and snowmobiles.

Although the Mackenzie River is wide and deep, navigation is "notoriously difficult" due to the locations of sandbars and shallows changing from year to year. In some narrower parts of the river, barges must be uncoupled and towed one by one through hazardous stretches, despite attempts to widen and deepening the channel by blasting.

Hydroelectricity
Although there are no dams along the main stem of the Mackenzie, many of its tributaries and headwaters have been developed for hydroelectricity production, flood control and irrigation. The W.A.C. Bennett and Peace Canyon hydroelectric dams on the upper Peace River were completed in 1968 and 1980 by BC Hydro. They have a combined capacity of more than 3,600 megawatts (MW). The reservoir of W.A.C. Bennett, Williston Lake, is the largest body of fresh water in BC and the ninth largest man-made lake in the world, with a volume of 70.3 km3. Other smaller hydroelectric plants are located along the Snare and Taltson River tributaries, providing power to mines in the Great Slave Lake region.

By acting as a massive stabilizer on the water flow of the Peace River, Williston Lake reduces flood crests on the Peace, Slave and Mackenzie rivers as far downstream as Fort Good Hope. This has made the Peace Valley more suitable for farming, but has had significant impacts on downstream wildlife and riparian communities. The more stable annual flow slows down the spread of essential nutrients which builds up in the form of sediments, thus causing the river to become more polluted.

There have been many proposals to dam the tributaries of the Mackenzie River which would lead to further impacts on water quality and seasonal flow patterns. A potential US$1 billion, 1350 MW hydro plant on the Slave River was canceled in 2010 after an agreement could not be reached with First Nations people in the area to be flooded by the reservoir. The Site C Dam on the Peace River, which would generate enough power for about 460,000 households, has been controversial since the 1970s. As of April 2019, despite multiple legal challenges by First Nations and environmental groups the dam was under construction, with a completion date scheduled for 2024.

title: Mackenzie River


text:
Ampex

Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence. Ampex operates as Ampex Data Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Delta Information Systems, and consists of two business units. The Silicon Valley unit, known internally as Ampex Data Systems (ADS), manufactures digital data storage systems capable of functioning in harsh environments. The Colorado Springs, Colorado, unit, referred to as Ampex Intelligent Systems (AIS), serves as a laboratory and hub for the company's line of industrial control systems, cyber security products and services and its artificial intelligence/machine learning technology.

Ampex's first great success was a line of reel-to-reel tape recorders developed from the German wartime Magnetophon system at the behest of Bing Crosby. Ampex quickly became a leader in audio tape technology, developing many of the analog recording formats for both music and movies that remained in use into the 1990s. Starting in the 1950s, the company began developing video tape recorders, and later introduced the helical scan concept that made home video players possible. They also introduced multi-track recording, slow-motion and instant playback television, and a host of other advances. Ampex's tape business was rendered obsolete during the 1990s, and the company turned to digital storage products.

Ampex moved into digital storage for DoD Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI) with the introduction of the first, true all digital flight test recorder. Ampex supports numerous major DoD programs with the US Air Force, US Army, US Marines, US Navy and other government entities (NASA, DHS and national labs). Ampex also works with all major DoD primes and integrators including Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon and many others.

Currently, Ampex is attempting to do more with the data stored on its network attached storage (NAS) devices. This includes adding encryption for secure data storage; algorithms focused on control system cyber security for infrastructure and aerospace platforms; and artificial intelligence/machine learning for automated entity identification and data analytics.

Origin
Russian–American inventor Alexander Matthew Poniatoff established the company in San Carlos, California, in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The company name came from his initials plus "ex" to avoid using the name AMP already in use (by Aircraft and Marine Products). During World War II, Ampex was a subcontractor to Dalmo-Victor, manufacturing high quality electric motors and generators for radars that used alnico 5 magnets from General Electric. Ampex was initially set up in an abandoned loft-space above the Dalmo-Victor plant; eventually they would have offices at 1313 Laurel Street, San Carlos, California (at the intersection of Howard Avenue and Laurel Street).

Near the end of the war, while serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Major Jack Mullin was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics experiments. He discovered the Magnetophons with AC biasing on a trip to Radio Frankfurt. The device produced much better fidelity than shellac records. The technological processes in tape recording and equipment developed by German companies before and during the 1939–1945 war were subject to patents which were effectively voided after Germany's 1945 surrender and defeat. Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of BASF Type L tape, and brought them to America, where he produced modified versions. He demonstrated them to the Institute of Radio Engineers in San Francisco on May 16, 1946.

Bing Crosby, a big star on radio at the time, was receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs. He disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. He had already asked the NBC network to let him pre-record his 1944–45 series on transcription discs, but the network refused; so Crosby had withdrawn from live radio for a year and returned (this time to the recently created ABC) for the 1946–47 season, only reluctantly.

In June 1947, Mullin, who was pitching the technology to the major Hollywood movie studios, got the chance to demonstrate his modified tape recorders to Crosby. When Crosby heard a demonstration of Mullin's tape recorders, he immediately saw the potential of the new technology and commissioned Mullin to prepare a test recording of his radio show. Ampex was finishing its prototype of the Model 200 tape recorder, and Mullin used the first two models as soon as they were built. After a successful test broadcast, ABC agreed to allow Crosby to pre-record his shows on tape. Crosby immediately appointed Mullin as his chief engineer and placed an order for $50,000 worth of the new recorders so that Ampex (then a small six-man concern) could develop a commercial production model from the prototypes.

Crosby Enterprises was Ampex's West Coast representative until 1957.

Early tape recorders

The company's first tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200A, was first shipped in April 1948. The first two units, serial numbers 1 and 2, were used to record Bing Crosby's show. The American Broadcasting Company used these recorders along with 3M Scotch 111 gamma ferric oxide coated acetate tape for the first-ever U.S. delayed radio broadcast of Bing Crosby's Philco Radio Time. Ampex tape recorders revolutionized the radio and recording industries because of their superior audio quality and ease of operation over audio disk cutting lathes.

The firm's earliest production of multichannel machines wasn't aimed at music recording; it noted in 1953–54 that "Ampex began the commercial production of multitrack tape recorders about four years ago for those interested in telemetered information from guided missiles and the like. These equipments provided any number of simultaneous channels up to 14. It was a simple step, therefore, to make stereophonic tape recorders with two or more channels."

During the early 1950s, Ampex began marketing one- and two-track machines using 1/4 in tape. In May 1953 the firm announced production of two- and three-track machines on 1/4 inch tape. The line soon expanded into three- and four-track models using 1/2 in tape. In the early 1950s, Ampex moved to Redwood City, California. Ampex acquired Orradio Industries in 1959, which became the Ampex Magnetic Tape Division, headquartered in Opelika, Alabama. This made Ampex a manufacturer of both recorders and tape. By the end of that decade Ampex products were much in demand by top recording studios worldwide.

In 1952, movie producer Mike Todd asked Ampex to develop a high-fidelity movie sound system using sound magnetically recorded on the film itself, as contrasted with the technology of the time, which used magnetic tracks on a separate celluloid base film (later commonly known as mag stock). The result of this development was the CinemaScope/Todd-AO motion picture sound system, which was first used in movies such as The Robe (1953) in 35mm and Oklahoma (1955) in 70mm (and also in 35mm). In 1960, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ampex an Oscar for technical achievement as a result of this development.

Les Paul, a friend of Crosby and a regular guest on his shows, had already been experimenting with overdubbed recordings on disc. He received an early portable Ampex Model 300 from Crosby. Using this machine, Les Paul invented "Sound on Sound" recording technology. He placed an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Paul to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track. This was a destructive process because the original recording was recorded over.

Professional 8-track recorders
Ampex built a handful of multitrack machines during the late 1950s that could record as many as eight tracks on 1 in tape. The project was overseen by Ross Snyder, Ampex manager of special products. To make the multitrack recorder work, Snyder invented the Sel-Sync process, which used some tracks on the head for playback and other tracks on the head for recording. This made the newly recorded material be in sync with the existing recorded tracks. The first of these machines cost $10,000 and was installed in Les Paul's home recording studio by David Sarser.

In 1967, Ampex responded to demand by stepping up production of their 8-track machines with the production model MM 1000. Like earlier 8-track machines of this era, it used 1-inch tape.

16 and 24-track recorders
In 1966, Ampex built their first 16-track recorder, the model AG-1000, at the request of Mirasound Studios in New York City. In 1967, Ampex introduced a 16-track version of the MM 1000 which was the world's first 16-track professional tape recorder put into mass-production. Both used a 2 in tape transport design adapted from the video recording division. The 16-track MM-1000 quickly became legendary for its tremendous flexibility, reliability and outstanding sound quality. This brought about the "golden age" of large format analog multitrack recorders which would last into the mid-1990s. MCI built the first 24-track recorder (using 2-inch tape) in 1968 which was installed at TTG Studios in Los Angeles. Later machines built by Ampex starting in 1969 would have as many as 24 tracks on 2 inch tape. In addition to this, the introduction of SMPTE time code allowed studios to run multiple machines in perfect synchronization, making the number of available tracks virtually unlimited.

By the 1970s, Ampex faced tough competition from the Swiss company Studer and Japanese manufacturers such as Otari and Sony (who also purchased the MCI brand in 1982). In 1979, Ampex introduced their most advanced 24-track recorder, the model ATR-124. The ATR-124 was ruggedly constructed and had audio specifications that nearly rivaled the first digital recording machines. However, sales of the ATR-124 were slow due to the machine's high price tag. Ampex sold only about 50 or 60 ATR-124 machines and withdrew from the professional audio tape recorder market entirely in 1983.

The 1990s
By the 1990s Ampex focused more on video recorders, instrumentation recorders, and data recorders. In 1991, Ampex sold their professional audio recorder line to Sprague Magnetics. The Ampex Recording Media Corporation spun off in 1995 as Quantegy Inc.; that company has ceased producing recording tape.

Video processing
While AMPEX are well recognized for their contribution to magnetic tape recording, they also had a huge impact on developments the whole video signal chain. They did rebadge some specialist low-volume OEM products to complete the package, but their in-house teams developed industry leading products in the following categories:

Digital optics
ADO – Ampex Digital Optics provided comprehensive frame manipulation in 2 and 3 dimensions. Adjusting the aspect, size, and rotation of the image was performed continuously in real-time. An optional digital 'combiner' was available to perform the foreground layering and priority switching – to reduce the burden on the vision mixer with multi-channel effects.

Video switching and effects
AVC – The AVC range of vision mixers ranged from small, single buss devices up to the high-end Century Series, with multiple Mix/Effect busses, infinite re-entry and powerful keying and control software.

Editing controllers
The product line evolved quickly from manual editing on the actual VTRs themselves to incorporate SMPTE timecode providing advanced timeline control. The RA-4000 and EDM-1 were fully functional early products, but soon evolved to the extremely powerful ACE family to compete with CMX and other edit controller brands.

Quadruplex two-inch tape
Starting in the early 1950s, RCA, Bing Crosby and others tried to record analog video on very fast-moving magnetic tape. As early as 1952, Ampex developed prototype video tape recorders that used a spinning head and relatively slow-moving tape. In early 1956, a team produced the first videotape recorder. A young, 19-year-old engineer Ray Dolby was also part of the team. Ampex demonstrated the VR-1000, which was the first of Ampex's line of 2-inch Quadruplex videotape recorders on April 14, 1956, at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. The first magnetically recorded time-delayed television network program using the new Ampex Quadruplex recording system was CBS's Douglas Edwards and the News on November 30, 1956.

The "Quad" head assembly rotates at 14,400 rpm (NTSC). The four head pieces (quad) are switched successively so that recorded stripes cross the video portion (most of the tape middle, audio is on one edge, control track is on the other) so that head to tape write speed is well in excess of the 15 in/s physical motion. They wrote the video vertically across the width of a tape that was 2 in wide and ran at 15 in per second. This allowed hour-long television programs to be recorded on one reel of tape. In 1956, one reel of tape cost $300; and Ampex advertised the cost of the recorder as $45,000. A 7.5 in/s version was released later, and this required a new, narrower headwheel. This vertical writing facilitated mechanical editing, once the control track was developed to display the pulse that indicates where a frame ends and the next one begins. Later, Ampex developed electronic editing.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Ampex its first Emmy in 1957 for this development. Ampex received a total of 12 Emmys for its technical video achievements.

In 1959, Richard Nixon, then Vice President, and Nikita Khrushchev held discussions at the Moscow Trade Fair, which became known as the "Kitchen Debate" because they were mostly held in the kitchen of a suburban model house. These discussions were recorded on an Ampex color videotape recorder, and during the debate Nixon pointed this out as one of the many American technological advances.

In 1967, Ampex introduced the Ampex VR-3000 portable broadcast video recorder, which revolutionized the recording of broadcast quality television in the field without the need for long cables and large support vehicles. Broadcast quality images could now be shot anywhere, including from airplanes, helicopters and boats.

The Quadruplex format dominated the broadcast industry for a quarter of a century. The format was licensed to RCA for use in their "television tape recorders." Ampex's invention revolutionized the television production industry by eliminating the kinescope process of time-shifting television programs, which required the use of motion picture film. For archival purposes, the kinescope method continued to be used for some years; film was still preferred by archivists. The Ampex broadcast video tape recorder facilitated time-zone broadcast delay so that networks could air programming at the same hour in various time zones. Ampex had trademarked the name "video tape", so competitor RCA called the medium "TV tape" or "television tape". The terms eventually became genericized, and "videotape" is commonly used today.

While the quadruplex recording system per se is no longer in use, the principle evolved into the helical scanning technique used in virtually all video tape machines, such as those using the consumer formats of VHS, Sony Betamax and Video 2000. Sony Betacam was successful as a professional format but operated with a different recording system and faster tape speed than Betamax.

One of the key engineers in the development of the Quadruplex video recorder for Ampex was Ray Dolby, who worked under Charlie Ginsburg and went on to form Dolby Laboratories, a pioneer in audio noise reduction systems. Dolby's contribution to the videotape system was limited to the mathematics behind the reactance tube FM modulator, as videotape then used FM modulation for the video portion. Another contributor designed the FM modulator itself. Dolby left Ampex to seek a PhD in physics in England, which is where Dolby Labs was later founded, before moving back to San Francisco. Dolby's brother Dale was also an engineer at Ampex.

VR-5000 and VR-8000
In 1961, Ampex introduced the first 1-inch helical scan video recorders, the Ampex 2-inch helical VTRs, which recorded video using helical scan recording technology on tape.

Ampex 2-inch helical VTR
Ampex 2 inch helical VTRs were manufactured from 1963 to 1970. Model VR-1500 for home. The VR-660 for Broadcast television systems, industrial companies, educational institutions, and a few for In-flight entertainment. The VR-1500 and VR-660 found service at educational institutions especially due to their relatively low cost vs. 2 in quadruplex VTRs. These machines were simple to operate, reliable, small in size—and produced, for their time, very good video without the complexity of the larger and much more complex 2" Quad machines.

HS-100 and HS-200 "slo-mo" disc recorder
In March 1967, Ampex introduced the HS-100 video disc recorder. The system was developed by Ampex at the request of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) for a variety of sports broadcast uses. It was first demonstrated on the air on March 18, 1967, when ABC's Wide World of Sports televised the "World Series of Skiing" from Vail, Colorado. The video was recorded on analog magnetic disc. The disc weighed 5 lb and rotated at 60 rps, 3600 rpm (50 rps in PAL). One NTSC unit could record 30 seconds of video, PAL units 36 seconds. The video could then be played back in slow motion, stop action to freeze frame.

A more deluxe version, the HS-200, was introduced in April 1968, and provided a large control console with variable speed playback. This made it ideal for instant replay for sports events and precise timing control in post-production service. CBS-TV was the first to use the technique during live sportscasts, though it was quickly adopted by all American TV networks. The HS-200, which was an HS-100 connected to a control console, had greater precise frame and timing control capability, lending itself to post-production applications like special effects and titles. The HS-200 had a frame accurate timing computer that enabled frame-accurate cuts and dissolve transitions by way of a two-input video switcher. Slow-motion sequences could likewise be programmed and could be "triggered" to begin via an external control pulse such as might come from an external VTR editor like the Ampex VR-2000 VTR with Editec. The HS-200 was the first system capable of single-frame video animation recording, using magnetic discs as opposed to videotape. The HS-200 also provided a readout with specific frame numbers showing from the 900 frames available (NTSC version). Sequences could be triggered to start from any of these 900 frames with frame-accurate repeatability for creative fine tuning of sequence start and end points.

Type A
1 inch type A videotape (designated Type A by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, SMPTE) was an open-reel helical scan videotape format developed by Ampex in 1965, one of the first standardized open-reel videotape formats in the 1 in width; most others of that size at that time were proprietary.

Type C
1 inch type C videotape (designated Type C by SMPTE) was a professional open-reel videotape format co-developed and introduced by Ampex and Sony in 1976. It became the replacement in the professional video and television broadcast industries for the then-incumbent Quadruplex.

D2
D2 is a digital video tape format created by Ampex and other manufacturers (through a standards group of SMPTE) and introduced at the 1988 NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention as a lower-cost alternative to the D-1 format. Like D-1, D-2 video is uncompressed; however, it saves bandwidth and other costs by sampling a fully encoded NTSC or PAL composite video signal, and storing it directly to magnetic tape, rather than sampling component video. This is known as digital composite.

DCT and DST
Digital Component Technology (DCT) and Data Storage Technology (DST) are VTR and data storage devices respectively, created by Ampex in 1992. Both were similar to the D1 and D2 VTR formats, using a 19 mm width, with the DCT format using DCT (discrete cosine transform) video compression, also its namesake.

The DCT and DST formats yielded relatively high capacity and speed for data and video. Double-density DST data storage was introduced in 1996. The final generation of these products were quad density, introduced in 2000, resulting in a large cartridge holding 660GB of data.

Milestones

 * In 1948, the first tape-delayed U.S. radio program was broadcast by using an Ampex Model 200 tape recorder.
 * In May 1949 Model 300 introduced improvements in audio head, tape drive and tape path.
 * In 1950, Model 400 introduced lower cost professional quality audio recorder, soon to be replaced by the Model 400A, which was the logical precursor of the Model 350.
 * In 1950, Ampex introduced the first "dedicated" instrumentation recorder, Model 500, built for the U.S. Navy.
 * In April 1953 Model 350 introduced audio recorder to replace the Model 400/Model 400A. The Model 350 had more simplicity and durability. Ampex released the 35 mm four-track CinemaScope stereo reproduction system.
 * In May 1954 Model 600 introduced mastering quality audio portable recorder. Models 3200-3300 high-speed duplicators also introduced.
 * In 1954, in a recording studio equipped with an Ampex reel-to-reel audio tape recording machine, an unknown truck driver named Elvis Presley recorded his historic first single, "That's All Right" at Sun Studios in Memphis. Also that year, Ampex introduced the first multi-track audio recorder derived from multi-track data recording technology.
 * In 1955, Ampex released the 70 mm and 35 mm six-track and four-track Todd-AO system, and an improved 35mm four-track system.
 * On March 14, 1956, The Ampex VRX-1000 (later renamed the Mark IV) videotape recorder is introduced at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. This is the first practical videotape recorder and is hailed as a major technological breakthrough. CBS goes on air with the first videotape delayed broadcast, Douglas Edwards and The News, on November 30, 1956, from Los Angeles, California, using the Ampex Mark IV.
 * In March 1957, Ampex won an Emmy award for the invention of the Video Tape Recorder (VTR).
 * In 1958, NASA selected Ampex data recorders and magnetic tape. It has been used for virtually all U.S. space missions since.
 * In 1959, the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate was recorded on Ampex videotape. The fact that the debate was being videotaped was mentioned by Nixon as an example of American technological development.
 * In 1960, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Ampex with an Oscar for technical achievement.
 * January 1961 Helical scan recording was invented by Ampex. The technology behind the worldwide consumer video revolution, it is used in all home video tape recorders.
 * In 1963, Ampex technology was used to show replays of the live assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald.
 * In 1963, Ampex introduced EDITEC, electronic video editing, allowing broadcast television editors frame-by-frame recording control, simplifying tape editing and the ability to make animation effects possible. This was the basis for all subsequent editing systems.
 * On December 7, 1963 – Instant Replay is used for the first time during the live transmission of the Army Navy Game by its inventor, director, Tony Verna.
 * In April 1964, Ampex introduced the VR-2000 high band videotape recorder, the first ever to be capable of color fidelity required for high quality color broadcasting.
 * February 1965 – introduced VR-303 and VR-7000 closed-circuit video tape recorder.
 * May 1965 – introduced AG-350 first all-transistorized audio recorder.
 * July 1965 – introduced VR-660B VTR advanced version of VR-660; replaces VR-660 and VR-1500.
 * November 1965 – introduced VR-7000 compact portable closed circuit video tape recorder.
 * During 1966–1967, Ampex FR-900 data drives were used to record the first images of the Earth from the Moon, as part of the Lunar Orbiter program. Two drives were refurbished to recover the images as part of the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP).

 * In 1967, ABC used the Ampex HS-100 disk recorder for slow-motion playback of downhill skiing on the program World Series of Skiing in Vail, Colorado. This was the first use of slow-motion instant replay in sporting events.
 * In 1968, the introduction of the Ampex VR-3000 revolutionizes video recording: the first truly portable VTR. It is used at the '68 Summer Olympics in Mexico City to follow the world's cross-country runners for the first time in Broadcast history.
 * In 1969, Ampex introduced Videofile, still in use at Scotland Yard for the electronic storage and retrieval of fingerprints.
 * In 1972, Ampex introduced the ACR-25, the first automated robotic library system for the recording and playback of television commercials. Each commercial was recorded on an individual cartridge. These cartridges were then loaded into a large rotating carousel. Using sophisticated mechanics and vacuum pneumatics, the "carts" were loaded into and extracted from the machine with an 8-second cycle time for spots under 61 seconds. This freed TV stations from loading individual machines with spots in real time, or preparing spot reels in advance of a broadcast. The TV newsroom also began to use the ACR-25 to run news stories because of its random-access capability. The ACR-25 used AVR-1 signal, servo, and timebase systems, and a machine-programming control bay designed by Ampex engineer E. Stanley Busby. Both machines had a lockup time of 200 milliseconds, as distinct from the industry standard 5 second pre-roll. This was accomplished with optical-vacuum reel servos providing the vacuum capstan negligible inertial mass to control, and predictive digital servos that could re-frame vertically at horizontal rate, as well as timebase correction with a window exceeding 64 microseconds (compared to the VR-2000's window of less than 5 microseconds).
 * Also in 1970, Ampex started its own record label, Ampex Records. Its biggest hit was "We Gotta Get You A Woman" by Todd Rundgren (as "Runt"), reaching No. 20 on the charts in 1970.
 * In 1978, the Ampex Video Art (AVA) video graphics system is used by artist LeRoy Neiman on air during Super Bowl XII. AVA, the first video paint system, allows the graphic artist, using an electronic pen, to illustrate in a new medium, video. This innovation paved the way for high quality electronic graphics, such as those used in video games.
 * In 1982, Ampex introduced DST (high-performance computer mass storage products able to store half the Library of Congress in 21 sqft of floor space) and DCT, the first digital component postproduction system using image compression technology to produce high quality images.
 * In 1983, Ampex introduced the DCRS digital cassette recorder, offering compact cassette storage with the equivalent of 16 digital or 8 DDR instrumentation reels on one cassette. Also, Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML) data decoding technology has its first use in Ampex's DCRsi recorders. This technology is commonly used in high performance computer disk drives and other high density magnetic data storage devices.
 * In 1985, Ampex introduced the DIS 120i and DIS 160i dual port, data/instrumentation recorders. These made it possible for the first time to capture real time instrumentation data and then utilize the same recorder to process the data in a computer environment through its second port using SCSI-2 protocol.
 * In 2005, Ampex received its 12th Emmy award for its invention of slow-motion color recording and playback. Also honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards were the members of the engineering team that created the videotape recorder when they worked for Ampex: Charles Andersen, Ray Dolby, Shelby Henderson, Fred Pfost, and the late Charles Ginsburg and Alex Maxey.

Sticky-shed syndrome
Some master tapes and other recordings predominantly from the 1970s and 1980s have degraded due to the so-called sticky-shed syndrome. When sticky-shed syndrome occurs, the binding agent deteriorates, resulting in the magnetic coating coming off the base and either sticking to the backing of the tape layer wound on top of it (resulting in dropout), or being scraped off and deposited on the tape heads while lifting the head off the tape, degrading the treble.

The problem has been reported on a number of makes of tape (usually back-coated tapes), including Ampex tapes.

Ampex filed for a baking process ("A typical temperature used is 54 °C and a typical time is 16 hours") to attempt to recover such tapes, allowing them to be played once more and the recordings transferred to new media. The problems have been reported on tapes of type 406/407, 456/457, 2020/373.

Branding

 * In 1959, Ampex acquired Orradio Industries and it became the Ampex Magnetic Tape Division.
 * In 1995, Ampex divested this division, then called the Ampex Recording Media Corporation. This became Quantegy, Inc., which later changed its name to the current Quantegy Recording Solutions.
 * In January 2005, having previously filed for bankruptcy protection, Quantegy closed its manufacturing facility in Opelika.
 * In October 2014, Ampex Data Systems Corporation was sold to Delta Information Systems, but retains the rights to the Ampex name.
 * In 2017, Ampex established a second business unit, Ampex Intelligent Systems (AIS), in Colorado Springs Colorado, and branded its Silicon Valley business unit Ampex Data Systems (ADS).

Record labels
Ampex Records was started in 1970. Its biggest hit was "We Gotta Get You A Woman" by Todd Rundgren (as "Runt"), reaching No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1970. Ampex also originated three subsidiary labels: Bearsville, Big Tree, and Lizard. Ampex Records ceased operations around 1973; Bearsville and Big Tree switched distribution respectively to Warner Bros. Records and Bell Records, and Lizard became an independent entity. Later on, Big Tree was picked up by Atlantic Records.

Legal history
In 2005, iNEXTV, a wholly owned subsidiary of respondent Ampex Corporation, brought a defamation lawsuit against a poster on an Internet message board who posted messages critical of them (Ampex Corp. v. Cargle (2005), Cal.App.4th). The poster, a former employee, responded with an anti-SLAPP suit and eventually recovered his attorney fees. The case was unique in that it involved the legality of speech in an electronic public forum.

Present Day -- Since 2014
After becoming part of Delta Information Systems in 2014, two former subsidiaries of Ampex Corporation continued business as part of the Ampex legacy. Ampex Data Systems Corporation (ADSC) headquartered in Silicon Valley, and its subsidiary, Ampex Japan Ltd. are the only two Ampex businesses that still trade as more than "in name only" entities.

Ampex Data Systems operates out of main three locations in the USA: the headquarters in Hayward, CA (about a dozen miles from the Redwood City location in Silicon Valley), a program office in Colorado Springs, CO and an engineering center in Las Cruces, NM, as well as from the main Delta HQ in Horsham, PA. Ampex continues to produce rugged data storage products used by government, military and commercial customers world-wide.

Since joining Delta, Ampex has grown in revenue and headcount, employing significantly more people in 2023 than were employed under the previous management structure.

Legacy and Archives
The Ampex video system is obsolete, but many thousands of quadruplex videotape recordings remain. Machines that survive are used to transfer archival recordings to modern digital video formats.

Ampex Corporation supported the Ampex Museum of Magnetic Recording, started by Peter Hammar in 1982.

The contents of that museum were donated to Stanford in 2001. A project is underway to curate Ampex artifacts in physical and digital form. This project will find a permanent home in Redwood City for the Ampex Museum and digital artifacts will be curated at AmpexMuseum.org This project is being funded by contributions from former Ampex employees.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ampex


text:
Treap

In computer science, the treap and the randomized binary search tree are two closely related forms of binary search tree data structures that maintain a dynamic set of ordered keys and allow binary searches among the keys. After any sequence of insertions and deletions of keys, the shape of the tree is a random variable with the same probability distribution as a random binary tree; in particular, with high probability its height is proportional to the logarithm of the number of keys, so that each search, insertion, or deletion operation takes logarithmic time to perform.

Description
The treap was first described by Raimund Seidel and Cecilia R. Aragon in 1989; its name is a portmanteau of tree and heap. It is a Cartesian tree in which each key is given a (randomly chosen) numeric priority. As with any binary search tree, the inorder traversal order of the nodes is the same as the sorted order of the keys. The structure of the tree is determined by the requirement that it be heap-ordered: that is, the priority number for any non-leaf node must be greater than or equal to the priority of its children. Thus, as with Cartesian trees more generally, the root node is the maximum-priority node, and its left and right subtrees are formed in the same manner from the subsequences of the sorted order to the left and right of that node.

An equivalent way of describing the treap is that it could be formed by inserting the nodes highest priority-first into a binary search tree without doing any rebalancing. Therefore, if the priorities are independent random numbers (from a distribution over a large enough space of possible priorities to ensure that two nodes are very unlikely to have the same priority) then the shape of a treap has the same probability distribution as the shape of a random binary search tree, a search tree formed by inserting the nodes without rebalancing in a randomly chosen insertion order. Because random binary search trees are known to have logarithmic height with high probability, the same is true for treaps. This mirrors the binary search tree argument that quicksort runs in expected $$O(n \log n)$$ time. If binary search trees are solutions to the dynamic problem version of sorting, then Treaps correspond specifically to dynamic quicksort where priorities guide pivot choices.

Aragon and Seidel also suggest assigning higher priorities to frequently accessed nodes, for instance by a process that, on each access, chooses a random number and replaces the priority of the node with that number if it is higher than the previous priority. This modification would cause the tree to lose its random shape; instead, frequently accessed nodes would be more likely to be near the root of the tree, causing searches for them to be faster.

Naor and Nissim describe an application in maintaining authorization certificates in public-key cryptosystems.

Basic operations
Treaps support the following basic operations:

 * To search for a given key value, apply a standard binary search algorithm in a binary search tree, ignoring the priorities.
 * To insert a new key x into the treap, generate a random priority y for x. Binary search for x in the tree, and create a new node at the leaf position where the binary search determines a node for x should exist. Then, as long as x is not the root of the tree and has a larger priority number than its parent z, perform a tree rotation that reverses the parent-child relation between x and z.
 * To delete a node x from the treap, if x is a leaf of the tree, simply remove it. If x has a single child z, remove x from the tree and make z be the child of the parent of x (or make z the root of the tree if x had no parent). Finally, if x has two children, swap its position in the tree with the position of its immediate successor z in the sorted order, resulting in one of the previous cases. In this final case, the swap may violate the heap-ordering property for z, so additional rotations may need to be performed to restore this property.

Building a treap

 * To build a treap we can simply insert n values in the treap where each takes $$O(\log n)$$ time. Therefore a treap can be built in $$O(n \log n)$$ time from a list values.

Bulk operations
In addition to the single-element insert, delete and lookup operations, several fast "bulk" operations have been defined on treaps: union, intersection and set difference. These rely on two helper operations, split and join.

The join algorithm is as follows:
 * To split a treap into two smaller treaps, those smaller than key x, and those larger than key x, insert x into the treap with maximum priority—larger than the priority of any node in the treap. After this insertion, x will be the root node of the treap, all values less than x will be found in the left subtreap, and all values greater than x will be found in the right subtreap. This costs as much as a single insertion into the treap.
 * Joining two treaps that are the product of a former split, one can safely assume that the greatest value in the first treap is less than the smallest value in the second treap. Create a new node with value x, such that x is larger than this max-value in the first treap and smaller than the min-value in the second treap, assign it the minimum priority, then set its left child to the first heap and its right child to the second heap. Rotate as necessary to fix the heap order. After that, it will be a leaf node, and can easily be deleted. The result is one treap merged from the two original treaps. This is effectively "undoing" a split, and costs the same. More generally, the join operation can work on two treaps and a key with arbitrary priority (i.e., not necessary to be the highest).

function join(L, k, R)    if prior(k, k(L)) and prior(k, k(R)) return Node(L, k, R)     if prior(k(L), k(R)) return Node(left(L), k(L), join(right(L), k, R)) return Node(join(L, k, left(R)), k(R), right(R)) The split algorithm is as follows:

function split(T, k)    if (T = nil) return (nil, false, nil) (L, (m, c), R) = expose(T) if (k = m) return (L, true, R)    if (k < m)          (L', b, R') = split(L, k)         return (L', b, join(R', m, R)) if (k > m)         (L', b, R') = split(R, k)         return (join(L, m, L'), b, R'))

The union of two treaps $t_{1}$ and $t_{2}$, representing sets $A$ and $B$ is a treap $t$ that represents $A ∪ B$. The following recursive algorithm computes the union:

function union(t1, t2): if t1 = nil: return t2    if t2 = nil: return t1    if priority(t1) < priority(t2): swap t1 and t2    t<, t> ← split t2 on key(t1) return join(union(left(t1), t<), key(t1),                    union(right(t1), t>))

Here, split is presumed to return two trees: one holding the keys less than its input key, one holding the greater keys. (The algorithm is non-destructive, but an in-place destructive version exists as well.)

The algorithm for intersection is similar, but requires the join helper routine. The complexity of each of union, intersection and difference is $O(m log n⁄m)$ for treaps of sizes $m$ and $n$, with $m ≤ n$. Moreover, since the recursive calls to union are independent of each other, they can be executed in parallel.

Split and Union call Join but do not deal with the balancing criteria of treaps directly, such an implementation is usually called the "join-based" implementation.

Note that if hash values of keys are used as priorities and structurally equal nodes are merged already at construction, then each merged node will be a unique representation of a set of keys. Provided that there can only be one simultaneous root node representing a given set of keys, two sets can be tested for equality by pointer comparison, which is constant in time.

This technique can be used to enhance the merge algorithms to perform fast also when the difference between two sets is small. If input sets are equal, the union and intersection functions could break immediately returning one of the input sets as result, while the difference function should return the empty set.

Let $d$ be the size of the symmetric difference. The modified merge algorithms will then also be bounded by $O(d log n⁄d)$.

Randomized binary search tree
The randomized binary search tree, introduced by Martínez and Roura subsequently to the work of Aragon and Seidel on treaps, stores the same nodes with the same random distribution of tree shape, but maintains different information within the nodes of the tree in order to maintain its randomized structure.

Rather than storing random priorities on each node, the randomized binary search tree stores a small integer at each node, the number of its descendants (counting itself as one); these numbers may be maintained during tree rotation operations at only a constant additional amount of time per rotation. When a key x is to be inserted into a tree that already has n nodes, the insertion algorithm chooses with probability 1/(n + 1) to place x as the new root of the tree, and otherwise, it calls the insertion procedure recursively to insert x within the left or right subtree (depending on whether its key is less than or greater than the root). The numbers of descendants are used by the algorithm to calculate the necessary probabilities for the random choices at each step. Placing x at the root of a subtree may be performed either as in the treap by inserting it at a leaf and then rotating it upwards, or by an alternative algorithm described by Martínez and Roura that splits the subtree into two pieces to be used as the left and right children of the new node.

The deletion procedure for a randomized binary search tree uses the same information per node as the insertion procedure, but unlike the insertion procedure, it only needs on average O(1) random decisions to join the two subtrees descending from the left and right children of the deleted node into a single tree. That is because the subtrees to be joined are on average at depth Θ(log n); joining two trees of size n and m needs Θ(log(n+m)) random choices on average. If the left or right subtree of the node to be deleted is empty, the join operation is trivial; otherwise, the left or right child of the deleted node is selected as the new subtree root with probability proportional to its number of descendants, and the join proceeds recursively.

Comparison
The information stored per node in the randomized binary tree is simpler than in a treap (a small integer rather than a high-precision random number), but it makes a greater number of calls to the random number generator (O(log n) calls per insertion or deletion rather than one call per insertion) and the insertion procedure is slightly more complicated due to the need to update the numbers of descendants per node. A minor technical difference is that, in a treap, there is a small probability of a collision (two keys getting the same priority), and in both cases, there will be statistical differences between a true random number generator and the pseudo-random number generator typically used on digital computers. However, in any case, the differences between the theoretical model of perfect random choices used to design the algorithm and the capabilities of actual random number generators are vanishingly small.

Although the treap and the randomized binary search tree both have the same random distribution of tree shapes after each update, the history of modifications to the trees performed by these two data structures over a sequence of insertion and deletion operations may be different. For instance, in a treap, if the three numbers 1, 2, and 3 are inserted in the order 1, 3, 2, and then the number 2 is deleted, the remaining two nodes will have the same parent-child relationship that they did prior to the insertion of the middle number. In a randomized binary search tree, the tree after the deletion is equally likely to be either of the two possible trees on its two nodes, independently of what the tree looked like prior to the insertion of the middle number.

Implicit treap
An implicit treap is a simple variation of an ordinary treap which can be viewed as a dynamic array that supports the following operations in $$O(\log n)$$:

 * Inserting an element in any position
 * Removing an element from any position
 * Finding sum, minimum or maximum element in a given range.
 * Addition, painting in a given range
 * Reversing elements in a given range

The idea behind an implicit treap is to use the array index as a key, but to not store it explicitly. Otherwise, an update (insertion/deletion) would result in changes of the keys in $$O(n)$$ nodes of the tree.

The key value (implicit key) of a node T is the number of nodes less than that node plus one. Note that such nodes can be present not only in its left subtree but also in left subtrees of its ancestors P, if T is in the right subtree of P.

Therefore we can quickly calculate the implicit key of the current node as we perform an operation by accumulating the sum of all nodes as we descend the tree. Note that this sum does not change when we visit the left subtree but it will increase by $$cnt (T\rightarrow L)+1$$ when we visit the right subtree.

The join algorithm for an implicit treap is as follows:

The split algorithm for an implicit treap is as follows:

Insert element
To insert an element at position pos we divide the array into two subsections [0...pos-1] and [pos..sz] by calling the split function and we get two trees $$T1$$ and $$T2 $$ . Then we merge $$T1$$ with the new node by calling the join function. Finally we call the join function to merge $$T1$$ and $$T2 $$.

Delete element
We find the element to be deleted and perform a join on its children L and R. We then replace the element to be deleted with the tree that resulted from the join operation.

Find sum, minimum or maximum in a given range
To perform this calculation we will proceed as follows:

$$, $$T2 $$ which contains $$\{A..B\} $$, and $$T3$$ which contains $$\{B+1..n\} $$. After the query is answered we will call the join function twice to restore the original treap.
 * First we will create an additional field F to store the value of the target function for the range represented by that node. we will create a function that calculates the value F based on the values of the L and R children of the node. We will call this target function at the end of all functions that modify the tree, i.e., split and join.
 * Second we need to process a query for a given range [A..B]: We will call the split function twice and split the treap into $$T1$$ which contains $$\{1..A-1\}

Addition/painting in a given range
To perform this operation we will proceed as follows:

 * We will create an extra field D which will contain the added value for the subtree. We will create a function push which will be used to propagate this change from a node to its children. We will call this function at the beginning of all functions which modify the tree, i.e., split and join so that after any changes made to the tree the information will not be lost.

Reverse in a given range
To show that the subtree of a given node needs to be reversed for each node we will create an extra boolean field R and set its value to true. To propagate this change we will swap the children of the node and set R to true for all of them.

title: Treap


text:
User:Jasonr

test

Jason Richey has helped Wikipedia to fix some major system errors.

Contributions to Wikipedia

 * Rectifying the April 5, 2003 server crash that lasted for several hours.
 * He also went out of his way, I think, to fix a crash in early September 2003.
 * Lot of stuff to do with hardware
 * Handled melting servers with his bare hands!

title: User:Jasonr


text:
Tying (commerce)

Tying (informally, product tying) is the practice of selling one product or service as a mandatory addition to the purchase of a different product or service. In legal terms, a tying sale makes the sale of one good (the tying good) to the de facto customer (or de jure customer) conditional on the purchase of a second distinctive good (the tied good). Tying is often illegal when the products are not naturally related. It is related to but distinct from freebie marketing, a common (and legal) method of giving away (or selling at a substantial discount) one item to ensure a continual flow of sales of another related item.

Some kinds of tying, especially by contract, have historically been regarded as anti-competitive practices. The basic idea is that consumers are harmed by being forced to buy an undesired good (the tied good) in order to purchase a good they actually want (the tying good), and so would prefer that the goods be sold separately. The company doing this bundling may have a significantly large market share so that it may impose the tie on consumers, despite the forces of market competition. The tie may also harm other companies in the market for the tied good, or who sell only single components.

One effect of tying can be that low quality products achieve a higher market share than would otherwise be the case.

Tying may also be a form of price discrimination: people who use more razor blades, for example, pay more than those who just need a one-time shave. Though this may improve overall welfare, by giving more consumers access to the market, such price discrimination can also transfer consumer surpluses to the producer. Tying may also be used with or in place of patents or copyrights to help protect entry into a market, discouraging innovation.

Tying is often used when the supplier makes one product that is critical to many customers. By threatening to withhold that key product unless others are also purchased, the supplier can increase sales of less necessary products.

In the United States, most states have laws against tying, which are enforced by state governments. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal laws against tying through its Antitrust Division.

Types
Horizontal tying is the practice of requiring consumers to pay for an unrelated product or service together with the desired one. A hypothetical example would be for Bic to sell its pens only with Bic lighters. (However, a company may offer a limited free item with another purchase as a promotion.)

Vertical tying is the practice of requiring customers to purchase related products or services together, from the same company. For example, a company might mandate that its automobiles could only be serviced by its own dealers. In an effort to curb this, many jurisdictions require that warranties not be voided by outside servicing; for example, see the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in the United States.

In United States law
Certain tying arrangements are illegal in the United States under both the Sherman Antitrust Act, and Section 3 of the Clayton Act. A tying arrangement is defined as "an agreement by a party to sell one product but only on the condition that the buyer also purchases a different (or tied) product, or at least agrees he will not purchase the product from any other supplier." Tying may be the action of several companies as well as the work of just one firm. Success on a tying claim typically requires proof of four elements: (1) two separate products or services are involved; (2) the purchase of the tying product is conditioned on the additional purchase of the tied product; (3) the seller has sufficient market power in the market for the tying product; (4) a not insubstantial amount of interstate commerce in the tied product market is affected.

For at least three decades, the Supreme Court defined the required "economic power" to include just about any departure from perfect competition, going so far as to hold that possession of a copyright or even the existence of a tie itself gave rise to a presumption of economic power. The Supreme Court has since held that a plaintiff must establish the sort of market power necessary for other antitrust violations in order to prove sufficient "economic power" necessary to establish a per se tie. More recently, the Court has eliminated any presumption of market power based solely on the fact that the tying product is patented or copyrighted.

In recent years, changing business practices surrounding new technologies have put the legality of tying arrangements to the test. Although the Supreme Court still considers some tying arrangements as per se illegal, the Court actually uses a rule-of-reason analysis, requiring an analysis of foreclosure effects and an affirmative defense of efficiency justifications.

Apple products
The tying of Apple products is an example of commercial tying that has caused recent controversy. When Apple initially released the iPhone on June 29, 2007, it was sold exclusively with AT&T (formerly Cingular) contracts in the United States. To enforce this exclusivity, Apple employed a type of software lock that ensured the phone would not work on any network besides AT&T's. Related to the concept of bricking, any user who tried to unlock or otherwise tamper with the locking software ran the risk of rendering their iPhone permanently inoperable. This caused complaints among many consumers, as they were forced to pay an additional early termination fee of $175 if they wanted to unlock the device safely for use on a different carrier. Other companies such as Google complained that tying encourages a more closed-access-based wireless service. Many questioned the legality of the arrangement, and in October 2007 a class-action lawsuit was filed against Apple, claiming that its exclusive agreement with AT&T violates California antitrust law. The suit was filed by the Law Office of Damian R. Fernandez on behalf of California resident Timothy P. Smith, and ultimately sought to have an injunction issued against Apple to prevent it from selling iPhones with any kind of software lock.

In July 2010, federal regulators clarified the issue when they determined it was lawful to unlock (or in other terms, "jail break") the iPhone, declaring that there was no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model. Jail breaking is removing operating system or hardware restrictions imposed on an iPhone (or other device). If done successfully, this allows one to run any application on the phone they choose, including applications not authorized by Apple. Apple told regulators that modifying the iPhone operating system leads to the creation of an infringing derivative work that is protected by copyright law. This means that the license on the operating system forbids software modification. However, regulators agreed that modifying an iPhone's firmware/operating system to enable it to run an application that Apple has not approved fits comfortably within the four corners of fair use.

Microsoft products
Another prominent case involving a tying claim was United States v. Microsoft. By some accounts, Microsoft ties together Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Outlook Express and Microsoft Office. The United States claimed that the bundling of Internet Explorer (IE) to sales of Windows 98, making IE difficult to remove from Windows 98 (e.g., not putting it on the "Remove Programs" list), and designing Windows 98 to work "unpleasantly" with Netscape Navigator constituted an illegal tying of Windows 98 and IE. Microsoft's counterargument was that a web browser and a mail reader are simply part of an operating system, included with other personal computer operating systems, and the integration of the products was technologically justified. Just as the definition of a car has changed to include things that used to be separate products, such as speedometers and radios, Microsoft claimed the definition of an operating system has changed to include their formerly separate products. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Microsoft's claim that Internet Explorer was simply one facet of its operating system, but the court held that the tie between Windows and Internet Explorer should be analyzed deferentially under the Rule of Reason. The U.S. government claim settled before reaching final resolution.

As to the tying of Office, parallel cases against Microsoft brought by State Attorneys General included a claim for harm in the market for office productivity applications. The Attorneys General abandoned this claim when filing an amended complaint. The claim was revived by Novell where they alleged that manufacturers of computers ("OEMs") were charged less for their Windows bulk purchases if they agreed to bundle Office with every PC sold than if they gave computer purchasers the choice whether or not to buy Office along with their machines — making their computer prices less competitive in the market. The Novell litigation has since settled.

Microsoft has also tied its software to the third-party Android mobile operating system, by requiring manufacturers that license patents it claims covers the OS and smartphones to ship Microsoft Office Mobile and Skype applications on the devices.

Anti-tying provision of the Bank Holding Company Act
In 1970, Congress enacted section 106 of the Bank Holding Company Act Amendments of 1970 (BHCA), the anti-tying provision, which is codified at 12 U.S.C. § 1972. The statute was designed to prevent banks, whether large or small, state or federal, from imposing anticompetitive conditions on their customers. Tying is an antitrust violation, but the Sherman and Clayton Acts did not adequately protect borrowers from being required to accept conditions to loans issued by banks, and section 106 was specifically designed to apply to and remedy such bank misconduct.

Banks are allowed to take measures to protect their loans and to safeguard the value of their investments, such as requiring security or guaranties from borrowers. The statute exempts so-called “traditional banking practices” from its per se illegality, and thus its purpose is not so much to limit banks' lending practices, as it is to ensure that the practices used are fair and competitive. A majority of claims brought under the BHCA are denied. Banks still have quite a bit of leeway in fashioning loan agreements, but when a bank clearly steps over the bounds of propriety, the plaintiff is compensated with treble damages.

At least four regulatory agencies including the Federal Reserve Board oversee the activities of banks, their holding companies, and other related depository institutions. While each type of depository institution has a “primary regulator”, the nation's “dual banking” system allows concurrent jurisdiction among the different regulatory agencies. With respect to the anti-tying provision, the Fed takes the preeminent role in relation to the other financial institution regulatory agencies, which reflects that it was considered the least biased (in favor of banks) of the regulatory agencies when section 106 was enacted.

In European Law
Tying is the "practice of a supplier of one product, the tying product, requiring a buyer also to buy a second product, the tied product". The tying of a product can take various forms, that of contractual tying where a contract binds the buyer to purchase both products together, refusal to supply until the buyer agrees to purchase both products, withdrawal or withholding of a guarantee where the dominant seller will not provide the benefit of guarantee until the seller accepts to purchase that party's product, technical tying occurs when the products of the dominant party are physically integrated and making impossible to buy the one without the other and bundling where two products are sold in the same package with one price. These practises are prohibited under Article 101(1)(e) and Article 102(2)(d) and may amount to an infringement of the statute if other conditions are satisfied. However, it is noteworthy that the Court is willing to find an infringement beyond those listed in Article 102(2)(d), see Tetra Pak v Commission.

Enforcement under European Law
The Guidance on Article 102 Enforcement Priorities sets out in which circumstances it will be appropriate taking actions against tying practices. First, it must be established whether the accused undertaking has a dominant position in the tying or tied product market. Subsequently, the next step is to determine whether the dominant undertaking tied two distinct products. This is important as two identical products cannot be considered tied under Article 102(2)(d) formulation that states products will be considered tied if they have no connects ‘by their nature or commercial usage’. This arises problems in the legal definition of what will amount to tying in scenarios of selling cars with tires or selling a car with a radio. Hence, the Commission provides guidance on this issue by citing the judgement in Microsoft and states that "two products are distinct if, in the absence of tying or bundling, a substantial number of customers would purchase or would have purchased the tying product without also buying the tied product from the same supplier, thereby allowing stand-alone production for both the tying and the tied product". Next issue is whether the customer was coerced to purchase both the tying and the tied products as Article 102(2)(d) suggests: ‘making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations’. In situations of contractual stipulation, it is clear that the test will be satisfied; for an example of a non-contractual tying see Microsoft. Furthermore, for an undertaking to be deemed anti-competitive is whether the tie is capable of having foreclosure effect. Some examples of tying practices having an anti-competitive foreclosure effect in case law are the IBM, Eurofix-Bauco v Hilti, Telemarketing v CLT, British Sugar and Microsoft. Subsequently, the defence available for the dominant undertaking is that it can provide that tying is objectively justified or enhances efficiency and the commission is willing to consider claims that are tying may result in economic efficiency in production or distribution that will bring benefit to the consumers.

title: Tying (commerce)