If video cameras were invented in the 1970's, how are there videos of historic events from years before?

Question

like, there's videos of hitler and stuff, which is way before the video camera was invented. How are videos like that possible?! :S

Answer 1

Before video cameras there were film cameras...

If you are watching video of history from the 1940's, it was likely originally captured on film and developed and someone transfered those images to video.

Answer 2

The video tape recorder was actually invented in 1951, by a group led by Charles Ginsburg at Ampex Corporation (a big company in the audio tape business of the day). Consumer video was introduced in the 1970s, but all those news archives were professionally shot.

Of course, video cameras existed before video recording.. they were part of the whole system of inventions that became television. The first video camera was invented in the late 1920s by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.

And before video, of course, there was the motion picture camera (eg, film, such as you still see at most movie theaters). Several inventors (including Thomas Edison) were working to develop a "moving picture camera" in the late 1800s. So essentially, there are filmed records of many events starting in the 20th Century.

Home filming was a hobby fairly popular in the 1950's into the 1970s. My Dad used to have a little Bolex movie camera. This contraption was called a "double-8mm" camera.. it took a short roll of 16mm movie film. You could shoot three minutes worth, then flip the reel around and shoot another 3 minutes. When you got it back from the processor, you got 6 minutes of film. And this was in the days before automatic exposure or automatic focus, and of course, no sound.

Since the early days of video, there have been mechanisms to convert film to video. Even before video recording had been invented, films couple be converted live, allowing movies and other filmed events to be shown on TV.

If you see a film showing something before 1888 or so, it's a re-creation, not the original event. Or space aliens using their time machine.

Answer 3

Obviously video cameras have been around for much longer since the earliest films were made in the late 1800's but those cameras were too expensive, too large  for personal home use and it was difficult for the average person to develop the film.  The first attempt at consumer video cameras were made available in 1967 but didn't gain popularity until the 1980's.

http://www.internetvideomag.com/Articles...

Answer 4

As others have said, film was transferred to video.  Look up telecine if you want more details