Exhibitions: The archive of pioneer of video era Alexander Ponyatov presented in Moscow

April 11, 2013 at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Abroad in Moscow opened the exhibition “Russian triumph in a foreign land: a pioneer of video era engineer Alexander Ponyatov”.

Alexander Matveevich Ponyatov (1892-1980), a Russian engineer, has become widely known to the world in 1956 as the creator of the world’s first video recorder and the founder of the famous company “Ampex” for half a century held the world technological leadership in the field of magnetic recording apparatus of professional audio, video and many special signals.

During the Civil War in 1918-1920, A. M. Ponyatov served in the White Army, after the defeat of which emigrated to China, and then to America, where in an ordinary garage, he created his famous company “Ampex”, which was engaged in sound recording, and in 1956 designed the world’s first commercial videotape recorder.

Unfortunately, the personal archive of A. M. Ponyatov in the USA has not been preserved, the museum established in his company was disbanded, and many artifacts have disappeared. The materials for this exhibition have been collected for three years. The exhibition for the first time in Russia presents documents and photographs from the collection of House of the Russian Abroad, the Russian State Archive of the Navy, and the Archives at Stanford University.

Special thanks the House of the Russian Abroad expresses to the National Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan.