bell video phone 1956
 

Stand back iphone, it was done 60 years ago.

http://justsmog.com/Clay/bellvideophone1.gif
http://justsmog.com/Clay/bellvideophone2.gif

Hey, wonder why it never caught on. There were plenty of VERY wealthy people in these united States back then who could've sprung for it.....and in '56, I highly doubt there was anything like it .

Sad it didnt,I would have LOVED having one!!!!

Great for MOONING telemarketers... :D

SR

gg 1/2 frame per second.

No wonder it never caught on. Even with 1/2 fps, it might've become popular if the accompanying junk wasn't so bulky and expensive. It's an interesting concept that they're sending a 60 line video signal along with the phone call, but stretching out the signal of one frame over two whole seconds... apparently why they needed the magnetic drum. To think that they had no electronic method for taking a waveform and stretching it out... I wonder if the drum spun very quickly and then slowed down to do that... or did they have some other method of slowing down the reading.

Hmm. Fascinating though.

Does this mean youd have to wear fake nose and glasses to make prank calls?? :D

SR

Me owning several of AT&T's much later 5200 series videophones which DID NOT require their own custom lines and lending phones out to friends, I can say that the novelty wears off really fast. Even when you ARE getting about 3-5 frames per second (and believe me, the picture quality is EXTREMELY exaggerated in that above ad), often you don't really need to look at who you are calling. It sounded extremely cool and there were a few suggested scenarios that sounded great it was extremely novelty.

Ah man!!

prank calls really would have been interesting , it probably didn't catch on because of cost, knowing the phone company .most people back then like my parents had a 15.00 dollar phone bill forever and that was all they wanted ,my dad held onto rotary service i think till the early 90's ,they tried everything to get my dad to change , he said didn't bother him .