A Bit of SMPTE Time Code History

Note: I’m in the process of extracting the Show Control information out of my “big book” Show Networks and Control Systems into a new book. In the process, I’m retiring some of the historical information and instead posting it here so it’s available.

This was originally on page 308 from Chapter 25: SMPTE and MIDI Time Code (MTC) in the second (2017) edition of my book Show Networks and Control Systems:

[1According to EECO, Inc., The Time Code Book, 1983] The development of SMPTE Time Code goes back to 1967, when, to facilitate electronic videotape editing, the California-based company EECO developed a method of encoding video frames with an absolute time and frame number, based on a method used by NASA to synchronize telemetry tapes from its Apollo missions.1 The EECO code was successful in the marketplace, and several other manufacturers developed their own proprietary time-coding methods. As with so many other prestandard-market-situations already discussed, this situation became problematic, as equipment from one manufacturer would not work with gear from another. In 1969, the SMPTE formed a committee to create a standard time-coding scheme, and the result was eventually adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a national standard.

In the early 1980s, personal computer-based audio and music systems started to proliferate, and the only way to get these systems to receive the analog SMPTE time code signal was to get an expensive interface card which could convert it into a digital form easily readable by the computer. MIDI (Chapter 22) offered an inexpensive digital interface widely used in the musical and sound markets, so the logical next step became creating a way to transmit SMPTE data over MIDI. So, in 1986, MIDI Time Code (MTC) was developed by Evan Brooks and Chris Meyer, of the companies Digidesign and Sequential Circuits, respectively.

Update: Not In My Book:

I had 1980s era copies of time code books from EECO and Cipher Digital. I can’t find any current information on either of these companies, so I’m posting PDF scans here from EECO and Cipher Digital here. The EECO book was sent to me I think by Charlie Richmond.

I also wrote an article on Time Code in 1991 in Theatre Crafts.