Today the use of dash cameras is more widespread than ever by private citizens and law enforcement agencies. Dash cams protect people in insurance-related and accident cases in court.
However, it took a long time for people to start installing them in their vehicles, and their popularity exponentially grew in the past decade.
So, when did the first dash cam come out? There are many recorded instances in history throughout the 20th century of a camera being used in cars. Still, only one is considered the true beginning of dashboard cameras. Let’s discover!
When Did the First Dash Cam Come Out?
The first dash cam was invented back in the 1930s by H.C. Fairchild to help police officers catch traffic violators. The first police officer photographed to use this was R.H. Galbraith of the California Highway Patrol in 1939.
The History of Dash Cams
The first filmmaker to record a video from a moving car was the American filmmaker William Harbeck in 1907. Harbeck filmed British Columbia’s capital, Victoria, from a moving streetcar with a hand-crank camera. While this is the first instance of recording from a video camera, it is not considered the first dash camera.
First recorded dash cam use
The official beginning of dash camera usage is considered when in 1939, a California Highway Patrol officer was photographed using H.C. Fairchild’s “windshield camera” on the job. The windshield camera was created to help the police catch traffic violators.
This first dash cam setup consisted of three cameras mounted to a vehicle to take still pictures that the police officers used as evidence in traffic violation cases. During the 1960s, dash cams became more standard among law enforcement agencies.
However, they did not gain huge popularity, mainly due to the equipment being too expensive and bulky.
The dash cam took up most of the police cars as a video recorder, and a monitor took up the back seat. The camera was mounted on the dash with a small microphone hanging around the police officer’s neck.
This setup could only record 30 minutes of footage at a time. After that, the police officer had to rewind the tape for it to continue recording more footage. Also, the lens needed to be changed three times every day.
Read more: Is Dash Cam Video Admissible in Court?
The first fully captured high-speed pursuit
After that, in the 1980s dash cams recorded footage on VHS cassette tapes. These dash cam setups were also big, and a tripod held up the cameras on the front or back window. The dash cam footage proved useful in court cases and displaying crime scenes.
However, storing and transmitting the recordings took too long, which is why they were not widespread in law enforcement agencies. During this decade, or more specifically in May 1988, the first high-speed pursuit was recorded.
The chase was captured from the police car of Detective Bob Surgenor of the Berea, Ohio, Police Department. What was most notable about the recording was that the pursuit was filmed entirely from start to finish and was later used to convict the offenders in court.
A renewed popularity
During the 90s, the interest in dash cams was still incredibly low, and even as the cameras became more compact and better developed during the early 2000s, their popularity stagnated.
Moreover, it was in 2009 when the Russian government legalized dash cam use for private citizens, and the interest became reignited among western countries.
The popularity was largely due to the hundreds of dash cam videos uploaded on YouTube, which allowed people to see how useful dash cams are for accidents and fighting false insurance claims.
Then, a meteor shower hit Earth in 2013, which was seen worldwide because almost everyone in Russia had a dash cam, so videos were available from multiple angles. This inspired millions globally to install a dash cam in their vehicles.
Also read: Does Installing A Dash Cam Void Warranty?
Conclusion
From YouTube videos of car accidents to cop TV shows, dash cams are everywhere today. However, as I talked about their popularity, you can see dash cams were slow to capture the attention of large audiences despite their usefulness.
So, when did the first dash cam come out? Although the answer is the faraway 1960s, their popularity started spreading in the past decade.