George Atkinson

Who was George Atkinson?

George Atkinson is the father of the storefront video rental store. When the first videocassettes became available for the public, he was already in the movie business. Customers in the form of hotels and pizza parlors would rent movie projectors and public domain 8mm movies, and later U-Matic videotape.

In the fall of 1977, George Atkinson made some extra space in his store and bought one Betamax and one VHS copy of each of the first 50 movie titles from Magnetic Video, which were then being sold to the public by direct mail. Announcing the availability of the videos for rent in a one-column-inch ad in the Los Angeles Times on December 7 1977, Atkinson turned his shop into the first video rental store and renamed it Video Station, a 600 square foot storefront on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. In order to raise capital, Atkinson charged $50 for an "annual membership" and $100 for a "lifetime membership," which provided the opportunity to rent the videos for $10 a day.

Atkinson was soon threatened with a lawsuit for renting the videos, but discovered that U.S. copyright law gave him the right to rent and re-sell videos he owned.