The VHS cassette was initially developed in 1971 by engineers working for the JVC corporation. Unlike their old video recording technologies, the nascent VHS machines were given a series of strict mandates by lead engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano, all of them intended to make the new tech as consumer-friendly as possible. The cassettes and players, for instance, had to be compatible with the televisions already owned by the bulk of families. Cassettes needed to be able to hold two hours of recorded material, and the image quality had to be almost as good as broadcast TV. The cassettes needed to be usable in all players, compatible with video cameras, and simple enough that repair wouldn’t be terribly difficult. And, most importantly, they needed to be affordable. 

Shiraishi and Takano began working with their team, but the project immediately stalled when JVC experienced a financial hit, forcing them to cut the budget for their VHS research team. Shiraishi and Takano, however, continued to work on the project in their spare time and invented a VHS prototype by 1973. 

At about the same time, Sony was developing a similar technology called Betamax. In 1975, Betamax was being distributed around the tech world and was catching on with consumers. Sony owned the license to the technology which was, by all measures, visually and aurally superior. At least most consumers felt that way. JVC, however, believed in an open standard philosophy to their VHS tech, that permitted them to share the technology with other companies. Sony was the only company that could make Betamax cassettes, while everyone could get in on the VHS game. 

VHS players were also way cheaper than Betamax players, and VHS started to nose Beta out of the market in the early 1980s. By 1987, VHS controlled 90% of the home video market. 

And what does “VHS” stand for? It stands for Video Home System. No, there are no slashes in the name, like in the eponymous “V/H/S” horror anthology series. 

Gen-Xers will likely get very wistful about VHS. Because the tech was cheap and compact, it was easy to proliferate. The world’s first video rental shop was opened by local businessman Eckhard Baum in Germany in 1975. He would rent out 8mm films at first but moved into video cassettes when the technology began to blossom. Video rental outlets began to pop up all over the world in the early 1980s, usually offering renters both Betamax and VHS formats. 20th Century Fox was the first major studio to license their movies for distribution on home video. Among the first titles available to the public were “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “M*A*S*H,” “Hello, Dolly!,” “Patton,” “The French Connection,” “The King and I,” and “The Sound of Music.” 

One must cast their minds back to understand the glories that VHS offered consumers. Before home video, the only way for people to watch classic movies was either in a truncated format on television or at a repertory movie theater. Sure, people were able to watch their favorite movies repeatedly at such theaters, but the idea of owning a film, having it on hand, and being able to watch it whenever you wanted? That was revolutionary.

All of a sudden, everyone had access to a film school. Video rental outlets allowed film consumption to explode, with some film buffs now able to see multiple films in a week. Heck, in a day. Previously obscure movies became available. The nascent home video industry was certainly helped by the availability of pornography. Porn could now be rented and watched at home in private, a boon for the horny people of the world. 

Some films are still only available on VHS. A whole industry of straight-to-video movies was born. 

Fun trivia: VCRs (or Video Cassette Recorders) were once seen as a threat by major TV studios. Because consumers were now able to tape and keep anything a network might broadcast, the studios — specifically Universal and Disney — were concerned that bootlegging would run rampant, and they would lose money. Indeed, Disney and Universal once sued Sony’s Betamax arm, hoping that they would cease manufacturing the industry-threatening technology. After a few failures and appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court in 1983. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sony, however, largely because Mister Rogers — everyone’s favorite neighbor — explained that his show should be taped and spread around. Some kids, he argued, couldn’t necessarily see his show at the scheduled time, and cassettes would let them watch whenever they could. 

The idea of scheduled TV began to fall away with the advent of the VCR, and piles of blank VHS cassettes were swiftly filled up with reruns. Day shows are now watched at night, and vice versa. Single episodes could be watched multiple times in a week. New details were noticed by viewers upon repeat watchings. Lines were memorized. Movies were seen three, four, five times in a single day. Obsessions grew. The format was fetishized. 

The VCR, and the proliferation of VHS, are the reasons we have geek culture today. It’s easier to obsess and study when a movie or TV episode is right on your home, watchable at a moment’s notice. 

The introduction of DVDs in 1997 more or less sealed the fate of VHS. DVDs were even more popular than VHS cassettes, and the older, inferior format was pushed out. It certainly helped that DVDs could include ancillary materials and that they took up less space on a shelf. The last-known manufacturer of VHS tech, Sanyo, stopped making VCRs in 2016. It was the end of an era.