Remember to save this factoid for any future trivia night questions.
Q: "When was the last VCR manufactured?"
A: July 2016.
Funai, a Japanese-based company and last-known makers of the videocassette recorder, announced it will manufacture its final unit this month due to "difficulty acquiring parts." The company released a statement saying "we are the last manufacturer... in all of the world," in which is also reported it sold 750,000 VCR units in 2015, NBC News reports.
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index ... 7/vcr.html
History lesson 101 below.
Once considered revolutionary in the 1950s, the VCR has fallen into the ether after the introduction of DVDs, Netflix, Hulu and other technological advances.
In 1956, AMPEX brought the VRX-1000 National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters to show off what they call the "first practical videotape recorder."
In the coming years, the company won Emmy and Oscar awards for the invention.
Fred Pfost, one of the engineers behind the invention, described the 1956 demonstration at the convention in Chicago in a blog post.
a-new-vcr-1985-c0c6fc310b3e7114.jpg
A vintage Sears advertisement for a new VCR from the 1980s.
File | MLive.com
"After I rewound the tape and pushed the play button for this group of executives they saw the instantaneous replay of the speech," Pfost wrote. "There were about ten seconds of total silence until they suddenly realized just what they were seeing on the twenty video monitors located around the room.
"Pandemonium broke out with wild clapping and cheering for five full minutes."
To read Pftost's full take on the VCR and to check out photos from the past, click here.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, VCRs sold for as high as $50,000 the New York Times reports. In the 1980s, the range had dropped to the $600 to $1,200 range.
By the time the device had become mainstream, the DVD came along in the mid-1990s which eventually led to its demise.
