There has been a long list of transformative technologies in the field of video. We are going to get started back in the 19th century, with the invention of the modern, still photograph. Let’s get started!
Modern Photography
The origins of photography can trace their roots back to January 1839 in France. At the French Académie des Sciences, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre showed off one of the earliest, realistic photographs. The spectators were shocked and Mr. Daguerre’s invention went on to become “the first commercially successful photographic process” (source).
Numerous inventors had contributed to photography even before Daguerre. Daguerre and his invention the daguerreotype, however, were the closest to what we would today call photographs. He was the first to create accurate recreations of the real world, with a process that took a few seconds.
For those curious, daguerreotype images were produced on shiny silver plates.
Invention: First modern photograph
The Motion Picture
It took less than 40 years for us to go from early photographs (on metal) to the first motion picture. In June 1878, Eadweard Muybridge set up a dozen cameras that took photographs of a jockey on a horse. Rumor has it that Muybridge was trying to win a bet that all four of a horse’s hooves leave ground when they run.
Regardless of the reason, Muybridge stitched together these sequential photographs into the world’s first motion picture in 1878 (source).
As the name says, a motion picture was literally a series of static images placed one after another in order to give the impression of motion. While the original Muybridge motion picture looks primitive today, this remains the foundation for how all movies are created.
Invention: First motion picture
Building off Daguerre, Muybridge, and their contemporary Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers created the first projected motion picture. Brothers Louis and Auguste created an innovative device called the Cinématographe. The Cinématographe would record, develop, and project motion pictures — all in a single device. Their first showing was in 1895 and by 1896, the brothers had already opened theaters in England, Belgium, and the United States.
Invention: First projected motion picture
Improvements to these early motion pictures came quickly. While it was common to add sound effects, movies during this era were largely silent. That is until 1927, when the American film “The Jazz Singer” introduced singing and speech that was synchronized to the actors’ lips.
Invention: First motion picture with music, singing, and speech
In these early days, there were both black and white and color films. The colored films, however, were shot in black and white, then hand painted after the fact. It took until 1935 when “Becky Sharp” was fully shot in three-strip technicolor.
The Internet
The internet provided a massive, global platform for video to grow. Not only could videos be viewed from any internet-connected device, the proliferation of computers and handheld devices led to millions of new cameras being placed in the hands of consumers.
The first video on the internet was a live recording of the band Severe Tire Damage (link). The video was first uploaded in 1993, before the Netscape Navigator browser.
Invention: First video on the internet
That said, video started to take off on the internet with the rise of large scale video platforms — like YouTube, Vimeo, and DailyMotion.
Prior to these companies, there was no easy way to send videos to one another on the internet as video files were too large to email or too expensive to host on your website. It would take two decades of advances in a myriad of technologies — from internet infrastructure to modern browsers, CDNs, video codecs and more — before getting to where we are today.
Video is also not a medium solely for entertainment. A recent study found that 4 in 5 consumers believe a video explaining how a product works is important while other research found that visuals — such as pictures and videos — are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
Looking Forward
Today, video is everywhere. And this growth is only accelerating.
According to Cisco, video traffic will account for 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021 — an increase from 73% in 2016. Perhaps more shockingly, by 2021, every single second, 1 million minutes of video content will be sent across the internet.
As we look ahead, we expect there to be a shift from centralized platforms and vendors (the Googles and Amazons of the world) towards decentralization. VideoCoin, the makers of the VideoCoin Network, are building the decentralized video infrastructure for that future.
Instead of relying on a handful of vendors, the VideoCoin Network will incentivize participants for providing compute, storage, and bandwidth resources. In exchange, businesses can leverage the resources in the VideoCoin Network for a fraction of the cost.
We have come a long way from the origin photographs and motion pictures of the 19th century, but we anticipate there to be another large technological shift as we rethink critical video infrastructure in the age of blockchain technology.
Invention in progress: First decentralized video infrastructure
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