Postwar Television Bell Systems PicturephonesThe first Picturephone test system, built in 1956, was crude and transmitted an image only once every two seconds.
1956 Picturphone Picturephone Mod I
Donated by Ludwell Sibley But by 1964 a complete experimental system, the "Mod 1," had been developed. To test it, the public was invited to place calls between special exhibits at Disneyland and the New York World's Fair. In both locations, visitors were carefully interviewed afterward by a market research agency.
Courtesy of Francisco Salvador di Silvestro Here are comments by Ludwell Sibley, who donated the Picturephone to the museum:
People, it turned out, didn't like Picturephone. The equipment was too bulky, the controls too unfriendly, and the picture too small.
1966 Picturephone prototype Picturephone Mod II
Donated by Richard Diehl, Labguy's World The Mod II was introduced in 1969 and was a technological marvel. Its 5.5 x 5 inch screen offered full-motion black and white picture with 250 lines resolution at 30 interlaced frames per second (horizontal scan rate of 8 kHz). The device also contained an innovative silicon photodiode array camera with a resolution of 0.8 megapixels; a small integrated mirror could be flipped allowing it to transmit either the user or documents laid in front of the device. The picture tube and integrated circuits were made at the Western Electric plant in Reading, PA. For transmission, the Picturephone required three twisted pairs of ordinary telephone cable, two pairs for video and one for audio and signaling. Picturephones could also "call" mainframe computers and render rudimentary graphics, with user input provided via a phone's number keypad.
Richard Diehl was in the process of restoring his Picturphone Mod II when he accidentally connected the power supply with the wrong polarity. The result is that the Picturephone's many custom ICs were all destroyed. No replacements were available, so Richard made the decision to donate his Picturephone to the Early Television Musuem. But the Bell System was convinced that Picturephone was viable. Trials went on for six more years. In 1970, commercial Picturephone service debuted in downtown Pittsburgh and AT&T executives confidently predicted that a million Picturephone sets would be in use by1980. What happened? Despite its improvements, Picturephone was still big, expensive, and uncomfortably intrusive. It was only two decades later, with improvements in speed, resolution, miniaturization, and the incorporation of Picturephone into another piece of desktop equipment, the computer, that the promise of a personal video communication system was realized.
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