TelePrompTer

A teleprompter is a display device that prompts the person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script. Using a teleprompter is similar to using cue cards. The screen is in front of, and usually below, the lens of a professional video camera, and the words on the screen are reflected to the eyes of the presenter using a sheet of clear glass or a specially prepared beam splitter. Light from the performer passes through the front side of the glass into the lens, while a shroud surrounding the lens and the back side of the glass prevents unwanted light from entering the lens.

Because the speaker does not need to look down to consult written notes, he appears to have memorized the speech or to be speaking spontaneously, looking directly into the camera lens. Cue cards, on the other hand, are always placed away from the lens axis, making the speaker look at a point beside the camera, which leaves an impression of distraction.

The word TelePrompTer, with internal capitalization, originated as a trade name used by the TelePrompTer Company, which first developed the device in the 1950s; it is now a genericized trademark. , a United Kingdom manufacturer of teleprompters, also finds its trademark used in a generic fashion in Commonwealth countries and some European countries.

The TelePrompTer Corporation was founded in the 1950s by Fred Barton, Jr., Hubert Schlafly and Irving Berlin Kahn. 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. Schlafly built the first teleprompter in 1950. It was simply a mechanical device, operated by a hidden technician, located near the camera. 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. In 1952, former President Herbert Hoover used a Schlafly-designed speech teleprompter to address the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Mechanical prompters were still being used as late as 1992, as was the case with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

...
Wikipedia