Two inventions that had to meet
A video camera does two things: it turns a moving scene into an electrical signal, and it records that signal. These were separate problems with separate histories. Cameras for television came first, in the 1920s and 1930s, but the signal could only be sent out by live transmission or captured by pointing a film camera at a monitor. Practical video recording arrived in the 1950s. The consumer camcorder, which combines both functions in one handheld unit, appeared only in the 1980s.
Television cameras
Early electronic television cameras used a vacuum tube that scanned the image. Vladimir Zworykin’s iconoscope, developed at RCA in the 1930s, was among the first to work well, and the American inventor Philo Farnsworth worked on a similar system in the same period. The patent and priority issues between them were fought in court. In the late 1940s, the image orthicon tube produced better pictures in low light, and the vidicon tube of the 1950s made smaller, cheaper cameras possible. Studio cameras remained large and heavy, with a crew to operate them and cables to a control room.
Recording to videotape
For years, television programs were either live or recorded on film by pointing a camera at a screen, which was expensive and gave poor quality. In 1956, the Ampex company demonstrated and began selling the first practical videotape recorder, the Quadruplex, which used four rotating heads on a wide tape. U.S. commercial networks used it to delay broadcasts for different time zones and to edit programs. Early machines were the size of a piece of furniture and were costly.
In the following decade, helical-scan recording, in which the tape wraps around a slanted spinning drum, allowed smaller and cheaper machines. Sony introduced the CV-2000 home video recorder in 1965, and Sony’s Portapak in the late 1960s was a battery-operated camera and recorder pair that could be carried by one person, though still awkwardly. Artists and community activists used such equipment to make video art and local documentaries.
The format battle
In the mid-1970s, two cassette systems competed for the home market. Sony’s Betamax appeared in 1975, and JVC’s VHS followed in 1976. Both recorded television programs and played prerecorded tapes. VHS won the market over the following decade, partly because of longer recording times and a broader group of manufacturers. Why Betamax lost is still debated, and simple explanations should be treated cautiously.
The camcorder
The camcorder merged camera and recorder. Early portable systems had a separate camera connected to a cassette recorder carried on the shoulder. In 1982, JVC introduced the compact VHS-C cassette, which could be used in a small camera and then played in a standard VHS machine with an adapter. Sony released its Betamovie, a single-unit Beta camcorder, in 1983. In 1985, Sony’s Handycam used the small 8mm video format, and it was small enough to carry in one hand. Sensors changed too: camera tubes gave way to charge-coupled devices in the late 1980s, producing lighter cameras and removing problems such as burn-in from bright lights.
Prices were high at first, but they dropped, and by the late 1980s the camcorder had become a common gift for families. Later formats improved quality and size, including Hi8, then digital formats such as MiniDV in the mid-1990s, which recorded digitally and connected to computers for editing.
How people recorded events
Before the camcorder, motion pictures of family events were mostly made on small-gauge film, which was expensive and had to be sent for processing. Videotape was cheap, could be played back immediately, and was reusable. Weddings, birthdays, school plays and vacations were recorded in large numbers. Home video also created a market for television shows such as programs built from viewers’ clips.
Camcorders also entered public life. The 1991 videotape of police officers beating Rodney King in Los Angeles, shot by a bystander with a camcorder, was widely broadcast and became a major news event. It is a frequently cited example of how ordinary people with portable cameras could document events and affect public debate. Other bystanders’ recordings followed, and news organizations began to rely on amateur footage.
Professional and broadcast use
Lightweight video cameras changed television news. Electronic news gathering, using portable cameras and recorders in the 1970s and 1980s, replaced film crews in many newsrooms, since tape did not need chemical processing and could be transmitted quickly. This sped up news cycles and let stations broadcast live from the scene.
Decline of the camcorder
By the 2000s, digital still cameras could record video, and flash memory replaced tape. Small cameras such as action cameras, and later smartphones, took over most of the market for ordinary video. Dedicated camcorders now survive mainly for professional and event work. Advances in 4K cameras and other formats continue the trend toward smaller, higher-quality devices.
Notes on accuracy
Dates for products differ slightly between sources, and who deserves credit for the first camcorder depends on definition. The overall pattern, of video moving from studios to homes to pockets, is well established.