Teleprompter

Barton was an actor who suggested the concept of the teleprompter as a means of assisting television performers who had to memorize large amounts of material in a short time.

[6] The script, in inch-high letters, was printed by a special electric typewriter on a paper scroll, which was advanced as the performer read, and the machines rented for the then-considerable sum of $30 per hour.

Jess Oppenheimer, who created I Love Lucy and served for its first five years as its producer and head writer, developed the first "in-the-lens" prompter[9] and was awarded U.S. patents[10][11] for its creation.

The producers of Dragnet estimated the use of teleprompters cut the show's production time by as much as 50%[12] Arthur Godfrey, Raymond Massey, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Helen Hayes were early users of the technology.

[14] in 1955, Richard L. Neuberger, a Democratic Senator from Oregon, proposed legislation that if a politician used a teleprompter the use of the device had to be noted in the speech.

The custom software and specially-redesigned camera hardware ran on the Atari 800 computer, which featured smooth hardware-assisted scrolling.

Paper-based teleprompting companies Electronic Script Prompting, QTV, and Telescript followed suit and developed their own software several years later when computers powerful enough to scroll text smoothly became available.

In certain systems, the PC connects to a separate display device to offer greater flexibility in setup, distances, and cabling.

The success of the system led the company to develop a new model for use on TV cameras, with the glass placed directly in front of the lens.

This modification to the traditional two-teleprompter set-up continues to be in use at both the Democratic and Republican parties' national conventions: the two glass teleprompters on either side of the speaker's lectern create the illusion that the speaker is looking directly at the audience in the hall, the monitor embedded in the lectern, together with the fourth, much larger teleprompter screen, known as a "confidence monitor", placed immediately below the broadcast TV cameras which are located some distance away from the convention stage on a specially-constructed broadcasting gantry.

This placement of the center prompter creates the illusion that the speaker is periodically looking straight into the camera lens and thereby appears to directly address the TV audience watching the televised Convention coverage.

[3] In 2006, speakers at the Liberal Democrat Conference, held at the Brighton Centre in Brighton, UK also used a three-screen system (but this time consisting entirely of large off-stage confidence monitors mounted on poles — which are often described outside North America, together with glass teleprompters, as "autocues"), where the skill required for those using it, according to the Liberal Democrats' former leader, Menzies Campbell (2006—2008), is to move their gaze seamlessly from one screen to the other: left, center (near the broadcast TV cameras), right and then back again.

[26] As well as helping the speaker to appear to sometimes directly address the TV audience during his or her speech, this system allows the speaker – in another case cited, the party's then-new leader, Nick Clegg (2008–2015) – to abandon the podium lectern and roam the stage, speaking with apparent spontaneity but in fact constantly assisted by three large autocue screens placed throughout the conference hall.

[4] Ironically, this use of the system was adopted by Clegg to counter the oratorical success of another party leader, David Cameron (later to become British Prime Minister), who bestrode stages while speaking seemingly off-the-cuff, having memorized key parts of his speech.