A History of CCTV Cameras
Smile for the camera! Or don’t, it’s recording either way. CCTV has been around for some time, and while we might take it for granted, the ubiquity of CCTV is still a relatively young phenomena. Consumers, businesses, government facilities – many people have enjoyed the benefits of CCTV systems, and their use continues to expand.
Of course, modern CCTV systems are quite different from their historical predecessors. Let’s take a look.
Early Stages
Our first documented use of CCTV was in 1942 Germany, where engineer Walter Bruch designed and installed a system for observing the launching of V-2 rockets. In 1949, the U.S. publication Popular Science featured the first known commercial CCTV application, called Vericon, noting that it worked entirely on wires, and required no government permit.
But it wasn’t until 1969, when Marie Van Brittan Brown was awarded the U.S. patent for the home security system that the concept of CCTV began to take hold as more than a curiosity.
1970 and Beyond
Initially, CCTV was primarily deployed in what were considered “high-risk” locations such as banks. The initial equipment was expensive, bulky, and provided an objectively poor picture quality, with the grainy footage, and vague silhouettes of suspects the target of public ridicule when first aired on programmes like ‘Crimewatch.’
But over time, improvements in technology drastically increased the quality of CCTV images, as the use of CCTV cameras grew in popularity. Experiments held in the UK through the 1970s and 1980s—such as outdoor CCTV installations in 1985 Bournemouth—led to additional trials throughout the decade, culminating in the 1987 installation in King’s Lynn, Norfolk; the first CCTV installation by a local government in the UK. These trials continued through the 1990s, and in 1994, “CCTV: Looking Out For You,” was released by the Home Office, deeming the trial period a success.
Modern CCTV Cameras
The modern CCTV camera is possessed of many qualities that eluded its historical forebears, capable of recording high-resolution images, remote operation, and relatively unobtrusive mechanical elements. While everyone agrees that they’ve seen widespread adoption throughout the UK, there’s a great deal of discrepancy between the numbers.
A series of Freedom of Information Act requests in 2011 established the number of CCTV cameras operated by local governments in the UK to be roughly 52,000. CCTV Image magazine published an estimate of some 1.85 million cameras in use around the same time, or an average of roughly one camera for every 32 citizens. The study this was based on—known as the Cheshire report—is widely considered more reliable than previous studies, which extrapolated the number of CCTV cameras in operation as high as 4.2 million.
While hardly free from controversy, the CCTV Camera has seen widespread increases in adaptation, not just in the UK, but worldwide.
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