Viewfinder: Early Distant Vision

Since all video creators owe a debt of gratitude to lots of inventors that created the tools of our trade, let's take a look at some of the words, which describe those inventions.

Tele- is a Greek prefix meaning "distant". Common words using this prefix are telegraph, telephone and telecommunication. However, some of the more obscure uses of the prefix tele include teletype and teleflora. Sometimes, I like to pick apart words in an effort to seek deeper meaning so please allow me to examine this portion of a word with you.

Telegraph is the long-distance transmission of messages. Telegraph comes from the Greek words tele (far) and graphein (write). Telecommunication is the transmission of messages, over distances, for the purpose of communication. The word telephone is from the Greek: tele, (far) and phene (voice). Teletype was a electromechanical typewriter that was used up until the 1960s to communicate typed messages from a distance. Teleflora is the name of a flower delivery company, which sends flowers from a distance. Occasionally tele is a syllable in the middle of a word as in pantelegraph This is a device developed by Giovanni Caselli in 1865. The pantelegraph was the first "fax" machine, the sending of facsimiles from a distance. In the late 1800s the word telephonoscope was coined to describe what we now know as a videophone.

Of all the words that incorporate the syllable tele, my favorite is television. In order to make a point, I am going to spell it with a hyphen for a portion of this article.