Microsoft Word has been spellchecking me for decades with TelePrompTer whenever I type in teleprompter. Why?
Kleenex, Xerox, and Google have become generic words for facial tissue, copying, and searching, respectively. Well, so has TelePrompTer…
No one capitalizes it that way anymore… sorry Microsoft…
Originally though, the company TelePrompTer was created around 1950 by three people: Hubert Schlafly, Fred Barton Jr, and Irving Kahn from Schlafly’s original design. The teleprompter side of the business was sold in the 1960s and then the company invested in cable networks. In 1973, TelePrompTer was actually the largest cable provider in the US. It was since merged and sold many times but the weird capitalization remains for the company’s name… but not in real life usage.
Oh, and there was a British thoroughbred horse called Teleprompter, too. He won a bunch of races in the mid-1980s and died in 2003, RIP.
Do you have to type all those speeches in?
People think we type in the entire script. Or maybe that energetic cat up there does. Actually they typically email it to us the night before, but only after it’s been approved by lawyers etc. We almost always make edits on site.
RESERVE YOUR PROMPTER TODAY