The pervasive demand for erotic entertainment has always fueled the development and adoption of new visual media, from Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope to VHS, DVD, and the Internet. All of these technologies owe much of their early success to erotic subjects. Consider:

• The first motion pictures, featuring scantily-clad dancers and the infamous May Irwin Kiss, played in peep-show parlors throughout America beginning in 1894.
• The first x-rated feature film, Deep Throat, became the most profitable movie in history, and launched the modern adult film industry in 1972.
• X-rated videotapes were largely responsible for the initial success of the home VCR, introduced in 1975. VHS won out over the higher-quality Beta format in part because Sony refused to license Beta for adult content.
• Adult productions were the first to take advantage of advanced DVD capabilities such as multiple angles, multiple timelines, and interactivity. Anticipating the extinction of VHS, most of the major adult studios now release on DVD only.
• The adult film and video industry releases approximately 11,000 titles per year, about 3 times the number of movies released by Hollywood, and generates approximately $6 billion in revenue from erotic video sales and rentals via retail, mail order, Internet, and pay-per-view offerings in the United States alone.

This section explores the phenomenon of erotic film and video as it has developed over the last century or so.