How Was Video Invented?

[Click] [High-pitched CRT TV noise] Film is a very straightforward technology. It just involves taking a two-dimensional image, and focusing it on to a two-dimensional piece of film, and there you have a photo. But video, and by that, I mean moving electronic images, has a very different history with a lot of changes that have really transformed the way it works. This video was sponsored by B&H Photo, which is kind of fitting because that's where I get a lot of my gear to make these videos. So I'll tell you more about them later, but now it's off to San Francisco. I'm going to meet with a guy who knows a lot about old video gear and he's got some he's gonna show me. - Richard, nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you Derek. Come on in. Welcome to LabGuy's World. - [Laughs.] That's a cool spot you got here. - Thank you. - The fundamental problem of video is taking this two-dimensional light image and turning it into a one-dimensional electrical signal. So how do you do that? Well, the solution actually comes from the first ever fax machine, which believe it or not, was invented in 1843 by Alexander Bain. Now he was a clock maker. His invention involved a transmitter and receiver which each had a pendulum, and those pendulums were synchronized. So what would happen is, at the transmitter, there would be a metal sheet on which something was written or drawn using a non-conducting ink. - So a finger at the transmitter, an electric finger, would stroke over the paper and wherever there was iron, it would conduct, and that conducting signal was sent to the other end, which was applied to paper with a chemical that would turn dark when electricity flowed through it, and it would reproduce a very accurate image of the handwritten note you just made. - Now Alexander Bain only ever transmitted static images, but some people have called him the real father of television, because he invented scanning. This idea of moving back and forth across an image, breaking it down into lines. But if you really want to get moving images, well, you need to be able to scan much faster.