The Picturephone in Your Future
September 1964 Radio-Electronics

September 1964 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

On April 20, 1964, AT&T introduced the Picturephone at the New York World's Fair, enabling coast-to-coast video communication. The device, which featured a 4-3/8" x 5-3/4" screen and push-button controls allowing users to display themselves, others, or nothing at all, went into commercial service on June 24 with public booths in New York, Washington, and Chicago. The article notes that the concept of video telephony was first imagined in Hugo Gernsback's 1911 science fiction novel "Ralph 124C 41+," where it was called the "Telephot." While initially expensive ($16-$27 for three minutes depending on cities connected), the Mr. Gernsback, in this 1964 editorial, predicts the technology would eventually become more affordable and evolve to include features like language translation, 3D capabilities, and color display, potentially revolutionizing activities like shopping by allowing consumers to see products remotely in full color.

The Picturephone in Your Future... Immense Are the Coming Applications of This Great Device ...

By Hugo Gernsback

On April 20, 1964, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. unveiled its newest device, the Picturephone, at the New York World's Fair. (The Picturephone is shown on page 6 of the July 1964 Radio-Electronics.) Viewers could see people across the country, as far away as Los Angeles, Calif., in a coast-to-coast press conference. Ever since, the long-awaited "See-as-you-talk" phone has been drawing huge crowds at the AT&T pavilion at the Fair. There, soundproof booths equipped with Picturephones allow visitors to talk with each other or with a nearby telephone operator. Visitors sit about 3 feet from the little instrument's screen, housed in a small desktop table set. Normal room illumination is sufficient for the little vidicon tube next to the set's screen to give a good picture. On June 24, the Picturephone went into commercial use in a circuit linking public booths in New York, Washington and Chicago.

Picture size is 4 3/8 x 5 3/4 inches. The control set uses no dial; it has push buttons which allow you to see yourself, another person or nothing at all at your choice.

The idea of the long-distance Picturephone is hoary with age. It probably was first used anywhere in word and picture in my novel, Ralph 124C 41+ (A Romance of the Year 2660), originally published in installments beginning with the April 1911 issue of Modem Electrics, forerunner of Radio-Electronics.

For the record, 53 years ago the instrument was known as the Telephot. As the story opens, Ralph 124C 41+, one of the world's most renowned scientists and one of the ten celebrated Plus men of the Planet, is talking from New York long distance to a friend, over the telephot.

Suddenly there is an interruption, just as we have today - and the screen of the telephot goes blank. Then:

"At this moment the voice ceased and Ralph's faceplate be-came clear. Somewhere in the Teleservice company's central office the connection had been broken. After several vain efforts to restore it Ralph was about to give up in disgust and leave the Telephot when the instrument began to glow again. But instead of the face of his friend there appeared that of a vivacious beautiful girl. She was in evening dress and behind her on a table stood a lighted lamp.

"Startled at the face of an utter stranger, an unconscious 'Oh!' escaped her lips, to which Ralph quickly replies:

"'I beg your pardon, but 'Central' seems to have made another mistake. I shall certainly have to make a complaint about the service.'

"Her reply indicated that the mistake of 'Central' was a little out of the ordinary, for he had been swung onto the Intercontinental Service as he at once understood when she said, 'Pardon, Monsieur, je ne comprends pas!'

"He immediately turned the small shining disc of the Language Rectifier on his instrument till the pointer rested on 'French.' "

This starts the great international and interplanetarian romance, with the heroine, Alice, in distant Switzerland. Ralph subsequently saves her, via electronics, from an immediately threatening avalanche.

While the Picturephone is now an assured fixture, what are its implications for the future?

At present, while it is new, it still is a luxury. AT&T made public its rates: $16 for the first three minutes between New York and Washington, $21 between Chicago and Washington, and $27 between Chicago and New York.

These rates, in the foreseeable future, will naturally come down and will, in all probability, with electronic advances, approach the prevailing long-distance phone charges.

What about other foreseeable necessary technical advances of the future? Ralph in the story spoke of a Language Rectifier. A great deal of work on this internationally necessary invention has already been accomplished by scores of laboratories all over the world. We would be surprised if the problem were not solved by 1975, at the present rate of progress of the electronic computer.

Probably the next requirement is 3D or three-dimensional TV. We have mentioned this at length and frequently on this page. Anyone who has ever watched a baseball game or other sports has been struck by the inadequacy of the two-dimensional, flat TV picture of our present-day sets. Technicians and inventors know that 3D will be achieved without question in the future. Our own guess: The solution most likely may lie in a multiple transparent screen that will show the picture in depth, perhaps with a plurality of split cathode rays.

Finally, the perfected Picturephone, to be universally acceptable, must of necessity be in full color.

We can see a vast and unbelievable expansion of the future Picturephone as a shopping instrumentality alone. Here is why:

Shopping today is a major chore - and it will be worse in the future - because of our totally inadequate streets, over-crowded stores, impossible traffic, time loss and general frustration in shopping from store to store.

In the future you will be shopping by Picturephone while you stay either home or at your office. If you are a man, let us say, and you wish to buy a number of ties, you can do it in minutes, thanks to the color Picturephone. You will see every-thing you buy in full natural colors. If your wife wants to buy a dress or a pair of slacks - she sees them in the real colors. Or she may want to buy a rug, a pair of shoes or what not. Now she sees what she buys, without any guesswork. Most of the frustration is now eliminated.

All this, however, is only a single application of the Picturephone.

There are literally thousands of other uses: "Whenever it is too difficult; too dangerous; too expensive; too inconvenient; too inaccessible; too far; too hot; too cold; too high; too low; too dark; too small to observe directly-use television," says an excellent book, Television in Science and Industry, written in 1958 by V. K. Zworykin, famed inventor of the iconoscope and the kinescope. And, we might add, don't overlook the hundreds of new uses of the finally improved future Picturephone.*

Finally and parenthetically, may we delicately but firmly point out one fact to the wildly perturbed lady columnists who, lately en masse have denounced the perfectly innocent Picturephone as a nasty electronic ogre and a horrible example of a new infraction of woman's privacy.

The simple technological fact is this: No one, least of all the Picturephone, could possibly intrude on your privacy, unless you want it to. There is a button or a switch you must press first to become visible to a caller.

No press, no see! See! -H.G.

* See also the long list of industrial and other uses in Atypical Television, Radio-Electronics, October, 1958.