Alexander M. Poniatoff, a Russian immigrant to the United States, founded Ampex in San Carlos in 1944 after he and his colleagues recognized the commercial potential of German recording technology encountered during World War II. Named from Poniatoff’s initials, AMP, plus “Excellence,” the company moved in 1954 to Redwood City, where it eventually became the city’s largest employer, with 13,000 workers in 22 buildings, before moving its headquarters to Hayward in 2005. Ampex created the first U.S.-built audiotape recording system and the first commercially successful videorecording system, advances that transformed the entertainment and broadcast industries. Its other innovations in data recording, handling, and storage included the first instant replay videodisc recorder for sports programs on commercial television and Videofile, which Scotland Yard used to electronically store and retrieve fingerprints. In 2019, three Ampex video tapes of the first lunar landing were sold at auction for $1.8 million; they are the only surviving first-generation recordings of the historic 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, and had been purchased by a NASA intern at a 1976 government surplus auction for $217.