Marin resident Ed Dudkowski has been acknowledged as the first to introduce the “mini-cam” to the United States in 1973. Lightweight, portable hand-held video cameras have only been around for about 40 years. Electronic television is less than 90 years old. Dudkowski, with over 45 years in the television and video business as a patented inventor, producer, director, writer, videographer and editor, traces the history of the TV camera from its’ invention by Philo T. Farnsworth in San Francisco in 1927 to the iPhone high definition cameras of today. Along the way he tells of the time he met the first woman ever on TV, Farnsworth’s wife Pem, when she was living in Stinson Beach and came into his Mill Valley Studio for an interview.
