Videochat During World War I
The videophone had a very long road to becoming mainstream. Once envisioned as a standalone device, the tech kind of snuck up on us in the 21st century via the backdoor of our phones and other devices. But Gernsback was way ahead of the curve in imagining dedicated video chat devices.
In fact, the sci-fi legend featured a very cool two-way video device on the cover of his magazine even back when radio was still considered new technology.
From the May 1918 issue of Electrical Experimenter:
The future instrument on which the name “Telephot”(from the Greek tele-far, photos-light) has been settled, is supposedly an apparatus attachable to our present telephone system, so that when we speak to our distant friend, we may see his likeness not only as an immovable picture, but we will see his image exactly as we see our own image when looking into a mirror. In other words, the apparatus must faithfully follow every movement of our distant friend whether he is only five blocks away or one thousand miles. That such an invention is urgently required is needless to say. Everybody would wish to have such an instrument, and it is safe to say that such a device would revolutionize our present mode of living, just as much as the tele-phone revolutionized our former standard of living.
The “tele-phone” indeed.
