Sorry to bump an old thread, but I found some interesting information about the plant:
It was originally a DiscoVision plant! According Blam1's DiscoVision history site , it was built from a closed furniture factory. It must have been established around 1977/8, because: [*]MCA was still working on test discs at their Torrance laboratory in early 1977 [*]Universal-Pioneer, which was established in late 1977, used information from an operating Carson plant to establish their Kofu plant. [*]The first commercial discs went on sale in 1978
On January 25th, 1981, DiscoVision Associates announced the plant was to close by the end of February that year ( NY Times & Billboard Magazine ).
DiscoVision, which had 1,000 employees at the time ( LA Times ), did apparently another plant in Costa Mesa where they were headquartered ( New Scientist ). According to the New Scientist article, this was a plant of "appaling" quality, with apparently nine-in-ten discs being faulty.
Starting in February 1981, DiscoVision Associates negotiated a sale of DiscoVision to Pioneer. I say "starting", because the deal as of the Feb 13th Billboard article and the actual deal don't seem to line up. Billboard said "A new Pioneer software plant is being targeted for California next year but not at the Carson site since the physical assets of DVA are not included in the buy." However, the LA Times article said that in 1982 DVA ended up selling everything but the patents. (That article was written in 1989, when IBM and MCA did end up selling DVA to Pioneer; by that time they had just 16 employees left).
Regardless, some way or another, the plants got sold to Pioneer. According to another page on Blam1's site, the Costa Mesa plant was shut down, but the Carson facility went through an extensive re-tooling, and re-opened as the new Pioneer plant, which the magazine shows.
An apparent address of the Carson Pioneer plant was 1041 E 230th St., Carson, CA 90745. (See this website .) I looked in Google earth, and it seems like it was demolished in 2005. Here are some aerial photos of it from Google Earth (it's the bottom building): https://i.imgur.com/s4y71CM.jpg
However, it is possible that building was only some kind of warehouse. In those satellite images, I can't spot the four acrylic silos shown on the first page of the OP's article - nor what look like train tracks. Maybe the plant itself was somewhere else in Carson, and that was a distribution point.
The seller actually has some more for sale that I didn't notice before. I am going and add pictures of each (since the links will eventually die, and somebody in the future might want to know what they looked like).
"NL Mac 12 (Glass Plate No. 74511)" , Phillips label, with Phillips/Eureka "HD Mac Video Disc" sleeve https://i.imgur.com/lCV8jX9.jpg
"NL Mac 5 (Glass Plate 72836)" , text-only label, no sleeve https://i.imgur.com/wTTYd5Q.jpg
"HD MAC 66733" , text-only label, Phillips/Eureka "HD Mac Video Disc" sleeve https://i.imgur.com/q3cvQaL.jpg
"NL Mac 11 (Glass Plate No. 74543)" , Phillips label, Phillips/Eureka "HD Mac Video Disc" sleeve https://i.imgur.com/QlwAlVF.jpg
And lastly, a third 75162: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125379896326
On the wall at my university! “American Government” - an educational documentary? Maybe the professor who is has the disc hanging beside his door was featured on it.
By the way, that website is strange. They claim to a lot of crazy stuff in stock (brand new lasers for the PR-7820, LD-ROM test discs). I wonder if they really do. Also, how do they set those very specific prices?
There also appear to have been a few reference discs sold on eBay in October for $25 each. If you are willing to wait a long time, maybe you'll find one on eBay.
I am reading "Revolutionary Technology: an introduction to the video and digital audio disc" by David K. Matthewson. I was surprised to learn about the following! In the mid-1970s, an American company called I/O Metric Corporation created videodiscs which could be reproduced photographically: iometric1.jpg The author says it demonstrated all of the benefits that laser videodiscs have. However, the I/O Metric system vanished without a trace. I could only find one mention of I/O Metric Corporation on Google. They worked with the US NOAA in 1974 on an atmospheric analysis system. Has anyone heard of I/O Metric before?
Here's an interesting video I stumbled upon. BBC football show Match of the Day used Laserdiscs to record footage from games and used them for action replays!
Well worth a watch to see the kit in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3PdcXNKLTQ It sounds like the HS100! From "Revolutionary Technology" by David Matthewson: ... The result was the broadcast disc player recorder type HS100, of which the BBC Television Centre in London purchased the first example in the UK in autumn 1968. Capable of replaying pictures at any speed between still frame and double speed, the HS100 worked by continuously recording, erasing and recording the last 36 seconds of signal fed to it. Rapid access to any part of the disc was possible, with a maximum access time of about 4½ seconds. The technology which made this possible was about the size of a large filing cabinet and needed a special vibration-free room to stand in — a far cry from a modern Laservision player.
From the technical standpoint the HS100 was based on magnetic recording and playback, the actual recording being made on the four faces of two nickel-cobalt/rhodium alloy discs. These 16-inch (40 cm) diameter discs ran at 3000 rev/min, thus giving one television field per revolution. This is an important point to grasp, as all current domestic disc systems that offer still-picture and fast- and slow-motion effects rely on recording with a discrete number of fields, usually two, per revolution. With the HS100, still frame was produced by continually scanning a signle track, while half speed was obtained by scanning every track for two revolutions of the disc.
I found more information! The creators published an article in the Journal of the SMPTE, 1974. I was able to get a digital copy from a library. Here is what I know:
the master used ordinary silver halide film duplication of the master could be done through simple contact printing multiple layers could be sandwiched together for greater capacity (like DVD/Blu-Ray does)
for playback, the disc could be illuminated by white light (no laser needed) the disc had ~7Mhz bandwidth. The limiting factor was how fast they could modulate their recording laser a video signal could be recorded directly without using a carrier (no FM needed). They called this the "analog mode"
copies: a silver halide copy could be made by use of an internegative alternatively, a diazo copy could be made directly, without an internegative. "diazo materials are significantly less expensive than silver emulsions" such copies were "essentially indistinguishable" from the master
at least 4-layer sandwich discs were possible (an micrograph shows a 4-layer disc) both CAV and CLV recording were possible. One layer held 14.1 minutes of video at CAV. CLV "yields an increase in playing time of about a factor of two". speculation: with four CAV layers, could you fit ~113 minutes on a disc? (14.1 * 2 * 4)
The claimed advantages of the system were "archival image quality, ease of duplication, and low cost". recording.jpg
Thanks list