With the development of smaller cameras, and advancements in signal compression, switchboards and circuitry, AT&T was able to produce the Picturephone Mod II for house and workplace usage. It had a 5.5- by 5-inch black and white screen, with a 250-line resolution and a refresh rate of 30 interlaced frames per second. The video camera had a resolution equivalent to 0.8 megapixels.
The Mod II had actually an integrated mirror, too, which you might flip to either reveal yourself or files on your desk or table– basically, an early kind of screen sharing. AT&T charged $160/month to use it, the equivalent of a tremendous $1,092 today, and you d get a generous 30 minutes of call time.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the gadget didnt take off. Only 450 or so Mod IIs were in usage by 1973. The company had actually forecasted that 100,000 Picturephones would be active on its network by 1975.
The company, which raked half a billion dollars into videophone research and development from the 1950s to the early 70s, kept attempting to make various incarnations of Picturephone a success up until the 90s. It stopped working due to the fact that of high costs, low demand and an expected widespread societal hesitation not to be seen over the phone..
Now, of course, billions of people have smart devices, tablets and computers with web cams, and many of us are more than happy to thrust our faces onto the internet and share our visages in video calls. The Mod II might not have actually been the game changer AT&T had hoped at the time, but it was an essential turning point in video calling technology.
The first commercial video call took place 50 years ago today – Engadget
