LONDON, July 20 — The shift in video surveillance isn’t just about sharper lenses or cloud storage. It’s about a quiet, decades-long migration from closed, proprietary cables to the open, interconnected web — a move that has turned every networked camera into a potential node of state or commercial oversight. And the debate over how much watching is too much, even in public, is only getting louder.
The technology is older than most people realise. Back in June 1927, Russian physicist Leon Therevin — better known for inventing the electronic instrument that bears his name — built the first mechanical CCTV system.
Commissioned by the Soviet Council of Labor and Defense, it used a manually operated scanning-transmitting camera paired with a wireless shortwave transmitter and receiver. The image resolution was a crude 100 lines. Commanded by Kliment Voroshilov, the contraption was demonstrated to Joseph Stalin, Semyon Budyonny, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, then installed in the Moscow Kremlin courtyard to monitor visitors.
It was a surveillance tool from the very start.
From Nazi launchpads to London streets
Another early system appeared in 1942, installed by Siemens at Test Stand VII in Peenemünde, Nazi Germany, to observe V-2 rocket launches. In the United States, the first commercial CCTV system — Vericon — hit the market in 1949 from Remington Rand, designed by CBS Laboratories. Its selling point?
Because it used cabled connections rather than over-the-air transmission, it did not require a government permit. That wired distinction matters: it kept the signal contained.
For years, the systems required constant human monitoring. Then came reel-to-reel recording, which allowed storage — but tapes still had to be manually changed and threaded. The 1970s introduced videocassette recorders, making recording and erasure far easier, and that convenience drove wider adoption.
The real leap happened in the 1990s with digital multiplexing, which let multiple cameras record simultaneously, plus time-lapse and motion-only recording. That saved time and money, and CCTV use accelerated.
Britain was an early adopter. The Metropolitan Police installed early CCTV systems in central London between 1960 and 1965. By 1963, Munich was using CCTV to monitor traffic.
The trend underneath those early municipal deployments was the same one that drives today’s systems: the desire to watch more, record more, and review later.
The internet rewired the camera
The most consequential shift came when CCTV technology moved towards Internet-based products and systems. Closed-circuit by definition, the term implies a limited audience. But once a camera connects to the internet — even via a private network — the boundaries blur.
Modern systems use digital video recorders (DVRs) capable of storing years of footage, with features like motion detection and email alerts. Decentralized IP cameras now pack megapixel sensors and can record directly to network-attached storage or internal flash, operating as stand-alone units.
The signal is still not openly broadcast like television, but the audience can be far larger than the original closed set of monitors. This expansion has fueled significant growth in state surveillance, advanced social monitoring and control, and crime prevention worldwide. It has also generated significant debate about balancing surveillance with individuals’ right to privacy, even in public spaces.
The question is no longer whether cameras are watching — in many cities, they are — but who controls the footage, how long it is kept, and what algorithms are analysing the feed.
Watch this space. The technology is now cheap enough, small enough, and smart enough to embed almost anywhere. As IP cameras proliferate and AI-powered analysis becomes standard, the old distinction between a closed circuit and an open network may collapse entirely. The Kremlin had a manual camera in 1927. Today’s iteration can see, remember, and flag behaviour without a human ever watching the screen. What’s changing is not the fact
