When my grandfather (1898-1970) died I was given a number of his books. He was apparently an avid Tom Swift fan and owned several of the books by Victor Appleton (a pseudonym). I've read them all several times but today, looking for something "new" to read, I picked up Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone (1914) again.
I think of my grandfather, then just 16, and how marvelous a photo phone would have sounded!
"Tom, I don't believe it can be done!" said Tom's father.
"To transmit pictures over a telephone wire, so that persons cannot only see to whom they are talking, as well as hear them - well, to be frank with you Tom, I should be sorry to see you waste your time trying to invent such a thing."
It was a futuristic idea, to be sure, and the author noted the problems of sending pictures by wire.
"The idea of talking over a wire and, at the same time, having light waves, as well as electrical waves passing on the same conductor!" was too much to even imagine. But, of course, we know both are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum.
Of course Tom manages the feat ...
I can imagine my grandfather staring at that picture in awe. Since he died in 1970 he would have only vaguely heard of the AT&T "Picturephone" whose service was inaugurated in 1964. It was first shown at the New York World's Fair that same year. They predicted a million in service by 1980.
Of course the Picturephone failed. It had just 250 lines of resolution at 30 frames per second. But mostly the problem was that to make a Picturephone call, you had to call someone who also had one. And at $160 per month, it was understandably not very popular.
Today we have hi-resolution video calls on our cell phones (Look, Ma, no wires!) and services such as Zoom to expand the capability even further. We can now easily see the caller. And the cost is negligible.
Even Tom's father eventually came around to the idea of the usefulness of the invention. "Well, Tom, maybe you're right. Go ahead."
Lucky for us, someone did,
No comments:
Post a Comment