Blockbuster can thank Charles Ginsberg, inventor of the videotape recorder, for its brief but profitable rise, all based upon a simple business model of renting video tapes. Ginsberg, an researcher at Ampex Corporation, invented the videotape recorder in 1951. The contraption worked by taking live images from cameras and converting them into electrical impulses stored on magnetic tape. Ampex sold the first video tape recorder for $50,000 in 1956. By 1971, Sony began marketing the first at-home VCRs. After Ginsberg’s invention broke, nothing was ever the same for the entertainment industry.