FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Hollywood’s Fort Knox is Iron Mountain. Its latest restored treasure: Bee Gees footage [Los Angeles Times :: BC-MUS-IRON-MOUNTAIN:LA]
It’s been several decades since a TV show was recorded on a 2-inch Quadruplex videotape machine. Kurt Spada, lead encode operator for Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, remembers working on one early in his career as a TV technician.
Fortunately, he still knows his way around the piece of equipment, which was first used during the advent of videotape in 1956 and now looks like a set piece from a vintage “Star Trek” episode. On a November afternoon in the Moonachie, New Jersey, facility, he was transferring tapes of programming from the 1960s into a software system that converted them into digital files.