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"To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer."
- Robert Heinlein
 |
| 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.
The first person to use the word "Telephot", as far as I know, was Auguste Vautier-Dufour, who created a compact "telephoto" camera and patented it in 1901:
An ardent photographer of the night skies and a lover of telephotography, Auguste Vautier-Dufour had been busy experimenting since the 1890s. After a series of unsuccessful trials, he finally had some good results, some of which were thanks to advice from Emile Schaer, associate astronomer at the Geneva Observatory; this allowed him to reduce the bulk of a camera equipped with a very long focal-length lens.Two internally-mounted mirrors lengthened the distance which light has to travel by making it run the length of the camera three times, thus enabling it to be more compact in size. It was possible to retract the upper part into the body for transporting.
(Telephot camera by Auguste Vautier-Dufour , 1901)
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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Tech news articles related to Ralph 124c 41 +
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| NYC/Dublin Portal Fails To Meet 'Guardian Of Forever' Standards |
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'The observation vehicle was of that peculiar variety used in conveying a large number of people across rough terrain.'
'The real border was defended by... a swarm of quasi-independent aerostats.'
'I ... set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching for a habitable planet.'
'...haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'
'... oblongs were all over the floor and surfaces.'
