When was the personal camcorder invented

Video cameras designed for personal use, now called camcorders, became available to the general public in the s. These machines were bulky, heavy, and expensive, but proved to be efficient.

Building upon technology that had been developed for years, major electronics companies such as Sony and JVC began developing new technology. These companies invented the video camera as it is now known, and the devices were capable of capturing images, sound, and recording to a storage device all in one machine. In the late s and early s, those same companies who had invented the camcorder began to miniaturize and digitize their machines. At the time, that was miraculous!

The only home made movies I had seen prior to that were on cine film, which had to be sent away for processing before they could be viewed — it took a week or so before you could actually see the images after the exposure of the film in the movie camera. When we returned home I set about learning all that I could about this new technology. There was no internet, of course, so the only way was to get hold of trade magazines from the major manufacturers — Sony, Panasonic, JVC etc etc — all big name Japanese companies.

It all made very interesting reading! It was almost like doing a crash course in a curriculum in the cutting edge of this technology, for which university or college courses had not yet been established. We purchased two Panasonic video cameras and two portable video recorders which recorded in a format called U-Matic, which was the broadcast standard format used by the BBC and ITV.

Domestic video camera recording at this time involved using a very large and cumbersome video camera which was connected by a lead to a separate portable video recorder. It was a very keen amateur video recordist who would carry this very bulky kit to film his holiday abroad! Video is no longer available: www. Thomas Edison received a patent for his movie camera, the Kinetograph, in Edison and his team had developed the camera and its viewer in the early s and staged several demonstrations.

He is now credited with inventing the first movie camera. The first movie camera was called the Kinetograph. It was the first camera to take motion pictures on a moving strip of film.

This was 35mm film, much like we use today. In February , Edison built a small movie studio that could be rotated to capture the best available sunlight. Very Hollywood of him. He showed the first demonstration of his films—featuring three of his workers pretending to be blacksmiths—in May The Kinetoscope launched the motion-picture industry , but its technical limitations made it unsuitable for projection.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica , "a slit opposite the picture produced a stroboscopic effect; in the Kinetoscope, the film traveled at the rate of 40 frames per second, and a slit in a inch-diameter rotating shutter wheel afforded an exposure of 6, second. Illumination was provided by an electric bulb positioned directly beneath the film. The film ran over spools. Its ends were spliced together to form a continuous loop, which was initially 25 to 30 feet long but later was lengthened to almost 50 feet.

A direct-current motor powered by an Edison storage battery moved the film at a uniform rate. By definition, a motion picture is a series of pictures projected onto a screen, creating the illusion of movement.

As you know, we had photography in the early s and were experimenting with projection and motion. In , Eadweard Muybridge set up 24 cameras linked to tripwires to take photographs of a horse galloping.

This was technically the first movie ever made! He developed and later projected the images onto a screen using his invention, the zoopraxiscope. The invention inspired French inventors Louis and August Lumiere to develop a movie camera and projector, the Cinematographe, that allowed a large audience to view a film. While there were lawsuits and disputes, the ability to show movies to people ultimately changed history.

We were able to capture life and take the show on the road, broadcasting it to thousands of people. First, we should say that a video camera is different than the movie camera.

A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition. Alternately, a movie camera records images onto film. Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but now common in other applications as well. Such as home use.