Hanging up my Patchcord

Anyone who has worked in the technical side of braodcast for the odd decade or two should recognise this, a 2" VTR tape spool that has been adapted as somewhere to hang the "get out of jail free" patch cords to bypass a piece of faulty equipment or reroute signals to get things working.

Empty spools were used in the apparatus rooms of most TV facilities as they provided a quick neat and largely free solution to keeping the cables handy and not tangled.

Today, I finished my contract, hung up my patch cord and am going back into retirement (though no one seems to believe that I won't be back!)

A historical note - the 2" VTR tape format was developed by a team at Ampex in the USA which incldued a young Ray Dolby, initially to allow programmes to be transmitted at different times in the different time zones across the USA. Ray Dolby went on to become famous for his audio works (noise reduction, and then work for the distribution of 5.1 audio etc.)