Betamax

Sony's Betamax is the 1/2 inch (12.7 millimeter) home videocassette tape recording format introduced on April 16, 1975 (in market on May 10) and derived from the earlier, professional 3/4 inch (19.05 millimeter) U-matic video cassette format. Like the video home recording system VHS introduced by JVC in 1976, it had no guard band, and used azimuth recording to reduce cross-talk. The "Betamax" name came from a double meaning: beta being the Japanese word used to describe the way signals were recorded onto the tape, and from the fact that when the tape ran through the transport it looked like the Greek letter "Beta" (β). The suffix -max came from "maximum" to suggest greatness. Sanyo marketed a version as Betacord, but this was also referred to casually as "Beta." In addition to Sony and Sanyo, Beta format video recorders were also sold by Toshiba, Pioneer, Aiwa and NEC, and the Zenith Electronics Corporation and WEGA Corporations contracted with Sony to produce VCRs for their product... full article at wikipedia