Back then? [....] Maybe they broadcast TV signals and then recorded them on the other end with a VCR. Oh, wait. [Hadn't been invented yet.][†]
A
Video Tape Recorder was first used commercially and quite publicly, on Nov. 30,
1956 by CBS News, to
time-shift their regularly scheduled program
Douglas Edwards and the News. Recorded during the original CBS Eastern Time broadcast, it was replayed 3 hours later as the CBS Pacific-Time broadcast. Invented by
AMPEX in Redwood City (San Mateo Co., Calif.), work had begun on the project in 1952. Its storage medium was
mag-tape (of course), almost certainly of the
reel-to-reel persuasion.
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Note
†: I trust that I accurately restored the sense of the text that Ladislaus omitted at the end of his posting.