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"I realized there was a heavy-duty change coming in biology, and I could write a really compelling novel about catastrophic evolution, punctuated equilibrium."
- Greg Bear
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| Telephot | ||
| A device that combined the functions of telephone and television; a phone with a screen. |
This is a very early reference to this idea; there are earlier descriptions as linked below.
| His physical superiority, however, was as nothing compared to his gigantic mind. He was Ralph 124C 41+, one of the greatest living scientists and one of ten men on the whole planet earth permitted to use the Plus sign after his name. Stepping to the Telephot on the side of the wall, he pressed a group of buttons and in a few minutes the faceplate of the Telephot became luminous, revealing the face of a clean-shaven man about thirty, a pleasant but serious face.
As soon as he recognized the face of Ralph in his own Telephot, he smiled and said, "Hello, Ralph." "Hello, Edward. I wanted to ask you if you could come over to the laboratory tomorrow morning. I have something unusually interesting to show you. Look!" He stepped to one side of his instrument so that his friend could see the apparatus on the table about ten feet from the Telephot faceplate. Edward came closer to his own faceplate, in order that he might see further into the laboratory. |
| Technovelgy from Ralph 124c 41 +,
by Hugo Gernsback. Published by Modern Electrics in 1911 Additional resources -
|
This technovelgy item has been accomplished many times over the years; today's version of teleconferencing over the Internet via webcams is just the latest version. Curiously, it has never really caught on with the public; I wonder if people really want to be seen.
Take a look at this representation of the Telephot on an early cover for the novel.
Constantin Perskyi had coined the word "television" in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on 24 August 1900.
Compare to the detailed article about the telephonoscope from Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century) (1882) by Albert Robida, the phonotelephote from In the Year 2889 (1889) by Jules Verne, the video communicator from The Machine Stops (1909) by E.M. Forster, the zoom call visaphone system from John Jones's Dollar (1915) by Harry Stephen Keeler, the videophone from The Golden Girl of Munan (1928) by Harl Vincent, the optophone from Too Many Boards! (1931) by Harl Vincent and the opti-phone from The Impossible World (1939) by Eando Binder.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Ralph 124c 41 +
More Ideas
and Technology by Hugo Gernsback
Tech news articles related to Ralph 124c 41 +
Tech news articles related to works by Hugo Gernsback
Telephot-related
news articles:
- Android Glass Desk Phone
| Holobox? Who Doesn't Want A Home Hologram? |
| EBS-260 Handjet Free Hand Dot Matrix Printer |
| CD, DVD Bit Rot And PKD's Civic Notification Distorter |
| Zoom Education Idea Is 100 Years Old |
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Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
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