First Television Station in Baltimore

In 1956, 2” Quad became the first videotape format with commercial success. From that point until the late 1970s, this video format was used to record the vast majority of broadcast television. The playback equipment needed to view 2” Quad tape is extremely expensive to purchase and maintain which makes accessing the analog video signals recorded in this format very difficult. The only effective way to provide access to these unique moving images and recorded sounds is to digitize them.

 

 

The Special Collections Department at the University of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library recently reformatted a part of the local Baltimore television collection, WMAR-TV Collection. The content was stored in its original inaccessible form of 2” Quadruplex open reel videotape (2” Quad), which is the most unstable video format.

 

Local television stations, such as Baltimore’s WMAR, are continuing to cover both regional and national news stories and events. TV came to Baltimore during the post-World War II bang. WMAR-TV was the first television station in Baltimore and one of the first TV stations in America, going on air on October 30, 1947. WMAR is one of the three major Baltimore television stations, which have survived, providing a significant historical video documentation of the region and nation from a Baltimore viewpoint. There are several mentions of national political figures in the 2” Quad from WMAR-TV, such as President Eisenhower, dating from 1965-1969, including “Eisenhower Obituary”, as well as Spiro Agnew, 55^th Governor of Maryland and 39^th Vice President of the United States who resigned after corruption charges. These tapes date from 1968 to 1973. There are several other notable topics in this collection including: the Preakness (1974), “1984 in Maryland: A Birthday Celebration”, and “Sights and Sounds Baltimore City Fair” (1983).

 

If you would like to find out more about what is available in our WMAR-TV Collection, you can browse the complete database here.


“1984 in Maryland: A Birthday Celebration”

 

Be Kind, Rewind: Putting Endangered Collections First

Quad Tape, soon to appear at a nonprofit regional archive near you.

Tick-tock! Time is running out for videophiles to enjoy the glitchy, retro pleasures of analog media. Last year, the last videocassette recorder (VCR) was manufactured in Japan, and preservation experts recommend migrating VHS and other types of analog video to digital formats within 10 to 12 years. Langsdale Special Collections has been caring for two major audiovisual news morgues: the WMAR collection and the WJZ collection, which both consist of raw footage and broadcast materials from the two local network-affiliated television stations. 

The Soul of Baltimore

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the WJZ-TV and WMAR-TV Collections at the Langsdale Library hold approximately three hundred 2-inch Quad reels that are in need of digitization to preserve their unique audiovisual content. One of these reels was digitized recently and uploaded to the Internet Archive. It read on its original label ,“Master: SOUL OF BALTIMORE 27:51”. The term “master” indicates that this is the highest quality version of this content. 

After researching historical newspaper databases, this title was found to potentially be a 1968 WMAR-produced special entitled, “The Soul of Baltimore”. This seemed like a great candidate to digitize as it was about the history of Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue, the center of the city's African American community in the first half of the twentieth century. The special is also narrated by Walter P. Carter, civil rights activist and chairman of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). After digitization, the content on the video reel was found to match the content on the label, as well as having ten minutes at the end of the reel that had not been recorded over or erased. These “extras” included 1960s era broadcast footage of two other WMAR-produced shows, a few commercials, and a few minutes of a nationally syndicated show, “Truth or Consequences”.

"The Soul of Baltimore" is especially powerful to watch in light of the recent uprising and protests surrounding the death of Sandtown-Winchester resident Freddie Gray, as many of these events transpired on or near Pennsylvania Avenue. You can watch the entirety of "The Soul of Baltimore" below.

The Granddaddy of Video

The silver reel you see on your right is an example of the first videotape format ever released into the world (as compared to the size of a standard VHS videocassette tape on the left). The name of this format is 2-inch Quadruplex, also known simply as "Quad". The "2-inch" refers to the size of the width of the tape (please see below the open reel brown 2-inch-wide Quad tape versus the 1/2-inch VHS tape encased in a plastic shell, respectively).

CBS was the first on-air user of the 2” Quad machine, to tape-delay the evening CBS News broadcast with Douglas Edwards on Nov. 30, 1956. From that point until the late 1970s, the vast majority of broadcast television was recorded onto this video format.  

In the WJZ-TV and WMAR-TV Collections at the Langsdale Library Special Collections Department, we hold approximately three hundred 2-inch Quad reels from these local television stations. Highlights from the labels suggest that they are masters of several local television broadcasts and even national broadcast news ranging in date from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. However, we can't be entirely sure of the content until the tapes are digitized--an expensive endeavor due to the professional expertise, time, and obsolete equipment needed. According to an estimate by the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Plan, by approximately 2027 these tapes will no longer be physically able to even undergo digitization! Contact specialcollections@ubalt.edu for more information.