I had the good fortune to have met him — an honor that I cherish to this day. During the 1970s and 1980s, I also had the good fortune to have worked at the company that he founded — the company that invented videotape recording. At that time, the company was a powerhouse, 6,000 strong and the dominant worldwide force in the AV industry. To this day, the work ethic that was a part of the company’s very name remains a fundamental part of my own ethic. The following condensed biography was written shortly after he passed away in 1980, and I’ve kept a copy in my files for all these years. After many inquiries and many unsuccessful attempts to locate the original author, those that I spoke with were delighted that I would be bringing this story back into print, via the pages of PLSN.
This is the tale of a most remarkable man and his remarkable journey. Yet for those in today’s A/V industry, I’m offering the story not only as a glimpse into history, but more important, to provide some sobering perspective. The next time that you hold a camcorder in your hand, the culmination of over 60 years of brilliant camera engineering, video recording technology and miniaturization, please think back to this story — when once there were giants.
The small boy in turn-of-the-century Russia, dreaming of steam locomotives. The young student in Germany, planning his own factory upon his return to his homeland. Early dreams and plans which were shattered by long years of war and revolution — dreams which then were remolded and aspired to again.
Alexander Mathew Poniatoff was born on March 25, 1892, in the village of Aisha, some 400 miles east of Moscow in the Russian province of Kazan. His father was a prosperous lumberman, whose community status afforded young Alex, his two sisters and brother a comfortable childhood.
At age eight, Alex was sent to the provincial capital of Kazan to attend a special high school. He had displayed an early intelligence and a quick wit so his father encouraged him to pursue studies that were not available in Aisha.
Poniatoff thus planned to become a mechanical engineer, and upon completion of the Kazan high school at age 17, he applied, and was accepted, for study at a technical school in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Alexander Poniatoff arrived in Germany in the autumn of 1910. Though his studies were scheduled to last five years, his impatience and ambition led him to pass an equivalence exam which exempted him from two years of course work. His plan was to acquire as much knowledge and experience as possible — to enable him ultimately to open his own turbine engine factory in Russia, importing the machinery from his contacts in Germany. But his plan was not to be.
Oblivious to the impending hostilities between Germany and Russia, Poniatoff was still in Karlsruhe when World War I began. Suddenly trapped, an alien in an enemy country, he escaped by train across the Belgian border.
It was 1916. Enlisting in the Russian army, Poniatoff received a commission with the coast artillery and was assigned to a military fortress at Reval on the Baltic Sea. There, Poniatoff trained as a pilot — but never had the opportunity to actually fly in combat. Before he could be sent to the front, the Imperial Russian government collapsed, and the great country was torn apart by civil war.
After the war, in 1920, Poniatoff managed to escape into China, where he went to work in Shanghai. At first, he translated Reuters press releases from English into Russian. Then he made deals as a lumber broker. Finally, he landed a job as an electrical designer, working on power stations and sub-stations for the Shanghai Power Company. His multilingual skills paid off, enabling him to speak in German to his Swiss-born supervisor.
Always, though, Poniatoff kept his dream of immigrating to California. In 1927, his American visa was approved, and Alexander Poniatoff, now 35, sailed to San Francisco with a $2,000 bonus from his Shanghai employers.
After three years in New York, with two patents issued in his name and a difficult vacuum circuit assignment successfully completed, Poniatoff revived his dream of going to San Francisco. Despite the status and security of his job with General Electric, Poniatoff sensed that his destiny was indeed in California.
In 1934, he was directed to a gentleman named T. Irving Moseley of the Dalmo-Victor Company, a pioneering Bay Area electronics firm located in San Carlos, on the San Francisco peninsula. Moseley put him right on the job designing, developing and testing temperature control systems. In 1939, Poniatoff left the company for PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric).
He came back to wartime Dalmo-Victor in 1944, asked by Moseley to work on a special project to develop airborne radar scanners for the Navy. A prototype of the scanner had to be completed in 100 days, and Poniatoff’s technical ability was desperately needed.
Two of the components required in the airborne radar system were specialized motors and generators. Moseley, finding it impossible to obtain these components from existing sources, suggested that Poniatoff begin manufacturing the motors and generators himself. It was upon Moseley’s recommendation that Poniatoff founded his own company: Ampex. For the name, he used his initials “AMP” plus “EX” — for “excellence.” The company itself was located in San Carlos, just few miles north of what is now called Silicon Valley.
The story of the company’s growth is intertwined with Poniatoff’s own biography. There was the excitement of the early days, made bittersweet by the war’s end — and the sudden loss of the Navy contracts meant no more business.
In order to keep the company going, the search for a new product began, which would enable Ampex to survive into the post-war era. Through an acquaintance with Dalmo-Victor engineer Harold Lindsay, Poniatoff first learned about the German Magnetophon — the forerunner of high-fidelity tape recorders. Poniatoff decided to invest in the development of these machines, and in 1946, he hired Lindsay to design magnetic recording and playback heads for the proposed Ampex tape recorder.
Ampex thus developed early expertise in tape recorders, and a young singer named Bing Crosby helped to popularize and promote the Ampex tape recorder throughout the audio recording industry. The company’s momentum continued, as Ampex employees Charles Ginsburg, Ray Dolby (yes, the founder of Dolby labs), Charles Anderson, Fred Pfost, Alex Maxey and Shelby Henderson hired on and worked towards the next milestone: the development of a videotape recorder.
The videotape recording success came in 1956, when Ampex unveiled the VR-1000 at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago (the predecessor to today’s NAB). Almost overnight, the company became the innovators of an explosive new industry.
Poniatoff’s quest for excellence became a company philosophy. Ultimately, Ampex established itself as a world manufacturer of professional audio and video recording equipment and related systems, magnetic recording tape and digital and analog data handling and memory products.
Poniatoff served as president until 1955, when he was elected chairman of the board. In 1970, he was named Chairman Emeritus and continued to work with several foundations, undertaking research in health and preventive medicine.
Alexander M. Poniatoff, age 88, died on October 24, 1980, at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto, California. A bronze bas-relief likeness of Poniatoff hangs in Ampex’s executive office building in Redwood City. Inscribed on it are the words: “His character and persistent quest for excellence are forever a part of the company’s heritage.”
His story of dreams belongs to that heritage, too.
Paul Berliner can be reached at pberliner@plsn.com.
