Video camera tubes are devices based on the cathode-ray tube that were used in television cameras to capture television images, prior to the introduction of charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors in the 1980s. Several different types of tubes were in use from the early 1930s, and as late as the 1990s.

In these tubes, an electron beam is scanned across an image of the scene to be broadcast focused on a target. This generated a current that is dependent on the brightness of the image on the target at the scan point. The size of the striking ray is tiny compared to the size of the target, allowing 480–486 horizontal scan lines per image in the NTSC format, 576 lines in PAL, and as many as 1035 lines in Hi-Vision.

Any vacuum tube which operates using a focused beam of electrons, originally called cathode rays, is known as a cathode-ray tube (CRT). These are usually seen as display devices as used in older (i.e., non-flat panel) television receivers and computer displays. The camera pickup tubes described in this article are also CRTs, but they display no image.

In June 1908, the scientific journal Nature published a letter in which Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, fellow of the Royal Society (UK), discussed how a fully electronic television system could be realized by using cathode-ray tubes (or "Braun" tubes, after their inventor, Karl Braun) as both imaging and display devices. He noted that the "real difficulties lie in devising an efficient transmitter", and that it was possible that "no photoelectric phenomenon at present known will provide what is required". A cathode-ray tube was successfully demonstrated as a displaying device by the German Professor Max Dieckmann in 1906; his experimental results were published by the journal Scientific American in 1909. Campbell-Swinton later expanded on his vision in a presidential address given to the Röntgen Society in November 1911. The photoelectric screen in the proposed transmitting device was a mosaic of isolated rubidium cubes. His concept for a fully electronic television system was later popularized as the "Campbell-Swinton Electronic Scanning System" by Hugo Gernsback and H. Winfield Secor in the August 1915 issue of the popular magazine Electrical Experimenter and by Marcus J. Martin in the 1921 book The Electrical Transmission of Photographs.

In a letter to Nature published in October 1926, Campbell-Swinton also announced the results of some "not very successful experiments" he had conducted with G. M. Minchin and J. C. M. Stanton. They had attempted to generate an electrical signal by projecting an image onto a selenium-coated metal plate that was simultaneously scanned by a cathode ray beam. These experiments were conducted before March 1914, when Minchin died, but they were later repeated by two different teams in 1937, by H. Miller and J. W. Strange from EMI, and by H. Iams and A. Rose from RCA. Both teams succeeded in transmitting "very faint" images with the original Campbell-Swinton's selenium-coated plate, but much better images were obtained when the metal plate was covered with zinc sulphide or selenide, or with aluminum or zirconium oxide treated with caesium. These experiments would form the base of the future vidicon. A description of a CRT imaging device also appeared in a patent application filed by Edvard-Gustav Schoultz in France in August 1921, and published in 1922, although a working device was not demonstrated until some years later.

An image dissector is a camera tube that creates an "electron image" of a scene from photocathode emissions (electrons) which pass through a scanning aperture to an anode, which serves as an electron detector. Among the first to design such a device were German inventors Max Dieckmann and Rudolf Hell, who had titled their 1925 patent application Lichtelektrische Bildzerlegerröhre für Fernseher (Photoelectric Image Dissector Tube for Television). The term may apply specifically to a dissector tube employing magnetic fields to keep the electron image in focus, an element lacking in Dieckmann and Hell's design, and in the early dissector tubes built by American inventor Philo Farnsworth.

Dieckmann and Hell submitted their application to the German patent office in April 1925, and a patent was issued in October 1927. Their experiments on the image dissector were announced in September 1927 issue of the popular magazine Discovery and in the May 1928 issue of the magazine Popular Radio. However, they never transmitted a clear and well focused image with such a tube.^{[citation needed]}

In January 1927, American inventor and television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth applied for a patent for his Television System that included a device for "the conversion and dissecting of light". Its first moving image was successfully transmitted on September 7 of 1927, and a patent was issued in 1930. Farnsworth quickly made improvements to the device, among them introducing an electron multiplier made of nickel and using a "longitudinal magnetic field" in order to sharply focus the electron image. The improved device was demonstrated to the press in early September 1928. The introduction of a multipactor in October 1933 and a multi-dynode "electron multiplier" in 1937 made Farnsworth's image dissector the first practical version of a fully electronic imaging device for television. It had very poor light sensitivity, and was therefore primarily useful only where illumination was exceptionally high (typically over 685 cd/m²). However, it was ideal for industrial applications, such as monitoring the bright interior of an industrial furnace. Due to their poor light sensitivity, image dissectors were rarely used in television broadcasting, except to scan film and other transparencies.^{[citation needed]}