The first video recordings were actually made by john Logie Baird in 1928, using gramophone discs which were fed through his Televisor.

But the use of tape did not appear until 1956, when Alexander Poniatoff demonstrated his Ampex machine in Chicago - and used it for a pre-recorded television broadcast as well.

Within two years, RCA announced their video-recorder, but in 1967 Ampex developed a video recording system which used a metal disc rather than a reel of tape, which was able to locate and play back any part of a program in less than four seconds - the beginning of “instant replay” as on television sports programs.

There are three system in use at the moment for home use - the VHS system, developed by Sony, the Beta system developed by Sanyo (both of Japan), and the “2000” system developed by Philips, of Holland and Britain.
Laser vision, also a Philips development, while technically more advanced than any, can only play-back and not record on a home video machine, so has not been so successful.