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"Why does a creative person create? It's a type of compulsion. I like to explore new ideas."
- Bart Kosko

Videophone  
  A person-to-person communication device offering sight as well as sound.  

As far as I know, the first use of this word in science fiction.

On his desk there reposed an instrument comprising a disc of silvery gray metal, framed in darker gray, and mounted vertically upon a base of similar material. This instrument was Roy’s private videophone, and it was the calls from it of a voice repeating, “NY-19-635,” that occasioned his numerous returns to it. As he returned and answered his number, a face would appear in the disc and inform him in a monotonous voice that no success could as yet be reported on his call. Each time this was a signal for his renewal of the nervous pacing and muttering, accompanied by further rumpling of his hair.


(Videophone by Harl Vincent)

It was preposterous! Here he had been trying for two hours to get a connection with one of his patrons in Paris. Constant reports there had been that something was wrong with the continental video. Pity that the Terrestrial Videophone Company couldn’t keep their confounded voice and vision ether waves working, he thought angrily. Or whatever kind of waves they were! Roy was no scientist.

From The Golden Girl of Munan, by Harl Vincent.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1928
Additional resources -

Harl Vincent made good use of this new expression in his 1929 story War of the Planets:

At that moment the news announcer’s voice burst forth from the videophone:

“Connections have now been established with the great reflector at Castle Mountain. If you darken your rooms, you will find that the newly discovered phenomenon is dimly visible in the disc of your instrument.’’

Walter switched off the lights and drew two chairs close to the videophone.

Thelda joined him there and the two gazed intently at the disc.

The view was very indistinct at first, but, as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, a small group of weird objects became visible in the center of the disc...

At this juncture their individual call sounded from the videophone and Walter flipped back the news lever to permit the incoming personal call to be made. The disc flashed brightly and the face of his father appeared.

“Hello, folks,” spoke the cheery voice of the man they both loved, “Why in the world are you sitting in the darkness? Oh. I know — you have been listening to the absurd reports of some menace from the skies...

"All right, dear. I’ll be home in ten minutes, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep an eye on that son of ours this evening,” grinned Roy, “So long.”

The disc went dark and the voice was gone.

A videophone could also have a huge screen so many could see, again from The War of the Planets:

They found the southbound moving ways unusually jammed for the time of day and a holiday spirit prevailed. Everyone wore a smile and the names of Roy Hamilton and Professor Nilsson were on the lips of all. They left the moving platform at 125th crossing and mingled with the crowd in Square T-17 on the sixth level. Here was a huge videophone screen, fully thirty feet in diameter, and the voice of a news announcer filled the entire area with natural distinctness, but amplified to such an extent that it completely overcame the crowd noises. Still it was not painful to the ear, but seemed rather to come from a point immediately adjacent to the individual listener in ordinary speaking volume, The scene in the disc was again that through the Castle Mountain reflector and the three women thrilled with secret pride as they watched the drifting, weaving convolutions of the approaching fleet and realized that their men had recently left the vicinity of the menacing mass with a victory to their credit.

In case you're wondering why videophones had a circular screen, it's because the mechanical scan version of television technology of the Twenties made use of a disc:


(1929 advertisement)

A.E. van Vogt used this same term in 1945 in The World of Null-A:

He closed the door, fastened the three plasto-windows and put a tracer on his videophone.

For an earlier version of this idea, see the telephot from Hugo Gernsback's classic 1911 novel Ralph 124c 41 +.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Golden Girl of Munan
  More Ideas and Technology by Harl Vincent
  Tech news articles related to The Golden Girl of Munan
  Tech news articles related to works by Harl Vincent

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