Video (electronic medium)
Video, an electronic medium, captures and broadcasts moving images, fundamentally transforming entertainment, communication, and information dissemination. Its origins date back to the 1870s with early experiments in motion photography, such as Edweard Muybridge’s sequential horse photographs and Étienne-Jules Marey's motion picture camera. Over the decades, significant advancements led to the invention of the first television systems in the 1920s and the introduction of magnetic videotape in the 1950s, which became a standard for recording video. The home video revolution began with the launch of the videocassette recorder (VCR) in the 1970s, allowing consumers to record and watch television programs.
As technology evolved, digital formats emerged, leading to DVDs in the 1990s and Blu-Ray in the 2000s. The rise of the internet transformed video accessibility, notably with YouTube's launch in 2005, which democratized video sharing and consumption. By the mid-2020s, the integration of video capabilities into smartphones and computers has made video recording and streaming ubiquitous. Overall, video technology continues to evolve, influencing various aspects of modern life, including entertainment, education, and social interaction.
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Video (electronic medium)
Video is an electronic medium that records and broadcasts moving pictures. Video technology has its origins in the 1870s, when inventors used the existing technology of cameras to invent motion picture cameras to make films. The advent of television, videocassette recorders (VCRs), and camcorders followed in the twentieth century. Into the twenty-first century, new technology continued to be developed, replacing older technology and allowing videos to be recorded and played on a variety of devices, including computers and smartphones.
History
In the 1870s, inventor Edweard Muybridge set up two dozen still cameras along a racetrack to photograph a horse running. A photo was snapped as the horse tripped each successive wire on the track. When viewed in succession, the images appeared to move like a motion picture. Around 1882, French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey developed the first motion picture camera using a modified rifle to study and track the movement of birds. It could shoot twelve pictures per second, and the images were recorded on round discs.
Two years later, George Eastman, who later founded the Eastman Kodak Company, developed the first flexible photographic film, and American inventor Thomas Edison created the kinetograph, which was modeled after early techniques of still photography. The aptly named kinetograph combined the words kineto, which means "to move," and graph" which means "to write." The kinetograph took pictures in rapid succession—as many as forty-six pictures in one second—and reproduced them on Edison's sister invention, the kinetoscope. The images were then played back at a speed fast enough to create the illusion of motion. The motorized kinetograph used the flexible film developed by Easton and could run nonstop for thirty minutes. When used in conjunction with a sound-recording device, such as a phonograph, the resulting product could synchronize the sound with the motion. This led to the development of movies that included sound.
In the years that followed, Edison continued to develop this technology and finally was able to coordinate movies with sound, which became known as "talkies." He received a patent for them in 1923, and in 1927, The Jazz Singer, the first movie that included sound, was released. By this time, several inventors had been working on developing both mechanical and electronic television sets, and in 1927, American inventor Philo Taylor Farnsworth developed the first television tube that could pick up an image to transmit. About a year later, the first American television station began broadcasting on July 2, 1928. Farnsworth later became known as the father of modern television.
Video continued to be developed in the years that followed. However, the high cost of film prompted the development of magnetic videotape, which became industry standard in the 1950s. Early videotape had to move very fast past stationary heads, and despite the recorders being the size of two washing machines, they could only record fifteen minutes of tape at a time. The American company Ampex improved the design and developed rotating tape heads that could scan video information at a slower pace. The system required far less tape and could record video at the same speed as a professional audio recording. As technological advancements made videotape recorders more portable, they began to be marketed for home use. Sony introduced the first videocassette recorder (VCR), in 1970, and by the mid-1980s the devices became a fixture in nearly every home. Videotape remained the television industry standard until newer technology began to replace it in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. For example, Sanyo announced in early 2017 that it was going to discontinue production of VCRs—although the devices had been nearly obsolete for about a decade prior to this time.
Camcorders, which combined a video camera and recorder, also became the must-have audio/visual devices during the 1980s. However, new video-recording technology quickly replaced the camcorder. Sony was the first company to get a digital video camera to the market when it released its D1 camera in 1986. The device's video files, however, could not be compressed, so only a limited amount of video could fit on each tape. Ampex released a compressed video camera in 1993, called DCT, and like the analog camcorders that preceded it, each tape could record hours of video. In the years that followed, Sony, Panasonic, and other electronics companies continued to release smaller cameras with vastly improved picture quality. In 2000, Sony developed its first high-definition video camera. The technology was improved upon in 2003, when the tapeless digital recorder was released. Without tapes, video cameras became much smaller. This opened the floodgates for even smaller video-recording devices, and soon video cameras could be found everywhere.
Impact
Since television first became commercially viable in the 1950s, a steady stream of updates and improvements were made to video technology, resulting in new products. At first, it took some time for new technologies to become commercially available and affordable. In the 1970s, Betamax and Video Home System (VHS) VCRs were released but did not become mainstays in until about a decade later. The VHS format was popular for personal use, while Betamax technology became preferred in professional settings.
In the 1990s, the digital video disc, or DVD, was introduced along with DVD players, quickly replacing VHS tapes and VCRs. Blu-Ray discs and players, which provided better video and audio quality, followed in the 2000s.
The most explosive growth, however, occurred in the digital video realm. While early online video had been available since 1994, it took about a decade to perfect the technology. With the launch of the online video site YouTube in 2005, the concept of video forever changed. Time reported in 2010 that more amateur video was uploaded to YouTube in sixty days than the professional television networks created in sixty years. Video continued to change with the introduction of video streaming devices and services such as Netflix. By the mid-2020s, nearly every device, from computers to tablets to smartphones, came with built-in video cameras.
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