Talk:Portapak

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[edit] Introduced 1967 or 1965?

Every biography on Nam June Paik I read - including the one on wikipedia - states that he recorded his first video with a Portapak as soon as they were available, in 1965, in New York. So either the Sony Portapak was introduced in 1965 (and not 1967 as this article says), or all the biographies are wrong and he used another device? The 1965 date comes from Mark Shapiro's article - the link went dead, but the article is available on the internet archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20061129205222/http://www.internetvideomag.com/articles2002/HistoryofCamcorders.htm . Although Shapiro is a specialist on the matter, the article being an online publication, with maybe little editorial review, i guess it could be a simple mistake.

The 1965 date can be found in many published sources, among others Johanna Branson Gill: VIDEO: STATE OF THE ART, 1976 (Included in the 1992 Eigenwelt der Apparatewelt Ars Electronica Catalogue) and Callie Angell: Doubling the Screen: Andy Warhol's Outer and Inner Space, who writes:

"The summer of 1965 was the time when portable, affordable video equipment designed for the home market first became available to the general public; a number of different companies, including Sony and Matsushida, were developing their own home video recording systems and beginning to market them at prices ranging from $500 to $1000 each. (...) Affordable video equipment became available only in the summer of 1965, and Andy Warhol actually used it before Paik did. Nam June Paik’s first videotape was shot with portable Sony equipment on October 4, 1965 and exhibited the same day at the Café-au-Go-Go, in an exhibition called “Electronic Video Recorder.”

I notice this question is also discussed on the Video_art page, without a satisfying answer. --H9x (talk) 23:52, 7 January 2008 (UTC)