Video telephony

The concept of videotelephony was conceived in the late 19th century, and versions were demonstrated to the public starting in the 1930s. In April, 1930, reporters gathered at AT&T corporate headquarters on Broadway in New York City for the first public demonstration of two-way video telephony. The event linked the headquarters building with a Bell laboratories building on West Street. Early demonstrations were installed at booths in post offices and shown at world expositions. AT&T demonstrated Picturephone at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City. In 1970, AT&T launched Picturephone as the first commercial personal videotelephone system. In addition to videophones, there existed image phones which exchanged still images between units every few seconds over conventional telephone lines. The development of advanced video codecs, more powerful CPUs, and high-bandwidth Internet service in the early 2000s allowed the new category of smartphones to provide high-quality low-cost color service between users almost anywhere in the world, eliminating the videophone as a separate product concept.