1935, as visual equivalent of audio, from Latin video "I see," first person singular present indicative of videre "to see" (see vision). As a noun, "that which is displayed on a (television) screen," 1937.

Engineers, however, remember the sad fate of television's first debut and are not willing to allow "video transmission" (as television is now called by moderns) to leave the laboratory until they are sure it will be accepted. [The Michigan Technic, November 1937]

video game is from 1973.

1907, as a theoretical system to transmit moving images over telegraph or telephone wires; formed in English or borrowed from French télévision, from tele- + vision.

Television is not impossible in theory. In practice it would be very costly without being capable of serious application. But we do not want that. On that day when it will be possible to accelerate our methods of telephotography by at least ten times, which does not appear to be impossible in the future, we shall arrive at television with a hundred telegraph wires. Then the problem of sight at a distance will without doubt cease to be a chimera. ["Telegraphing Pictures" in Windsor Magazine, vol. xxvi, June-November 1907]

Other proposals for the name of a then-hypothetical technology for sending pictures over distance were telephote (1880) and televista (1904). The technology was developed in the 1920s and '30s. Nativized in German as Fernsehen. Shortened form TV is from 1948. Meaning "a television set" is from 1941. Meaning "television as a medium" is from 1927.

Television is the first truly democratic culture — the first culture available to everyone and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. [Clive Barnes, New York Times, Dec. 30, 1969]

"one whose profession is to measure the range and power of vision," 1903; see optometry + -ist.

in the figurative sense, 1849, from horses wearing blinkers to limit the range of their vision (see blinker).