Skype, Tango, Duo and Facetime: Today's Versions of Ma Bell's Picturephone Service

Readers may recall that in October 2012, I blogged about the 50th Anniversary of Hanna-Barbera cartoon "The Jetsons" (catch my post on that by visiting http://goo.gl/01mqj). It was a sort of a tongue-in-cheek intro that the future had just received its membership card from AARP, but the reality is that at least in my lifetime, many of the gee-whiz things we saw in "The Jetsons" have become facts of life.  True, we're not flying to work yet, but many other things are now pretty ordinary.

One technology that I highlighted was the concept of video telephone calls. These days, that technology, whether its via Tango, the far more ubiquitous technology from Skype, or Apple's proprietary (and non-compatible) Facetime apps on Apple's iOS devices, or Google's Duo app (available on Android and iOS platforms) today, video phone calls are no longer far-fetched dreams of visionaries. But it wasn't always that way, and the change has actually been quite recent.

According to the AT&T Archive, the American public first witnessed what was dubbed the Picturephone at the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, NY. Soon thereafter, what was then known as the Bell System (which was in reality known as AT&T) rolled out three Picturephone booths in Washington DC, New York, and Chicago. Those three Picturephones could communicate only with each other. Usage costs ranged from $16 to $27 for just three minutes (that's $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars!).

Cover of 1964 Picturephone brochure (click to open)

The old Bell System even published a futuristic-looking brochure (now scanned into Adobe Acrobat format) which can be found by visiting http://bit.ly/2eplcjD tempting us that the Bell System was working to bring those video phone calls to our homes in the future.

 As it turns out, that did happen, and the old Bell System disintegrated following antitrust regulators suing (and winning) a lawsuit to break the monopolistic company up. The company we know of as AT&T in 2013 is actually one of the so-called "Baby Bells" which grew into a company that looks a bit like the old Bell System used to, minus the legendary Bell Laboratories which invented the fiber optic technology which runs much of today's internet and lots of other stuff, minus Western Electric, the company that manufactured all those telephones that still sit in many people's homes even today (side note: if you can find a landline phone made half as well as those were, you might consider holding onto it, because the cheap junky phones sold today aren't likely to work for very long after they are removed from the packaging; I've bought three which didn't even work after I opened the plastic).

In the following video, which is courtesy of the AT&T Archive (noted above), shows a short video (originally from film) from 1970 containing actual footage from the inaugural Picturephone call at the launch of commercial service in the first test (beta) city, Pittsburgh. The call was made from then-Mayor Pete Flaherty, in Pittsburgh's Bell Telephone HQ auditorium, to John Harper, then the Chairman of Alcoa. Those two men made the call from locations that were actually only a block apart, but seeing them on a screen in realtime seemed like an incredible vision of the future.

Watch that video below, or by visiting the AT&T Archive at https://techchannel.att.com/playvideo/2012/06/29/AT&T-Archives-Debut-of-the-Picturephone or on AT&T's YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/BQMnlKMFD8M:



The AT&T Archive also has some interesting information on why the original Picturephone service never quite took off (the reason wasn't technological, but cost).  It seems that companies, who were seen as the target market for the service, balked at paying the equivalent of almost $1,000 per month for the video conferencing service (which came with a minimum of 30 minutes. Additional sets on the same line added another $50/month in 1970 dollars; additional minutes were priced at $0.25 each, again in 1970 dollars). Still, when viewed from its historical perspective, you can see just how visionary all of that was in 1970!

In 1992 (until around 1995), AT&T tried again, with its VideoPhone 2500 to the general public, with prices starting at $1,500.  Unlike earlier efforts, this particular device was designed to provide color video using ordinary Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), rather than broadband connections.

AT&T VideoPhone 2500 (circa 1992)

As it turned out, AT&T would ultimately by acquired by a baby bell (the company behind the acquisition was SBC, the Southwestern Bell spinoff which went on an buying binge, snapping up most of its baby bell rivals except Bell Atlantic (Verizon as of 2013).  From a tech standpoint, VideoPhone 2500 was a winner, but in spite of the superior technology behind it, cost was the key issue in its failure.  However, AT&T's published research helped pave the way for other companies to later enter the field of videoconferencing.

These days, a LOT of people complain that Apple's Facetime is limited only to other iOS users, and that's a major drawback, whereas Google Duo operates on both platforms (though Google got into the game late). That means you cannot Facetime your grandmother if you've got an iPhone but she's got a Droid. Rather than encouraging Apple device sales, it seems to be doing the opposite. There's been a steady stream of news that Apple has lost its perch on top of the mobile device market as Samsung outsold it (see http://n.pr/16KAXED for details).  iOS is a nice operating system, but Wall Street is looking for Apple to sell cheaper devices to get them into more people's hands, especially in the developing world. Apple is sitting on a very big hoard of cash at the moment, so the company is hardly in imminent danger, but the many experts believe the company's premium-priced strategy may need retooling.

Still, to get around that proprietary Apple technology hurdle (lets face it, of mobile devices, recent data shows that 60% of all devices now in circulation are powered by Google's Android operating system, Apple only has about 40%, down from half a few years ago), Skype already has apps that work on both, as does Google's Duo and there are rival apps like Tango which do the same.  The point is these days, its not technological hurdles but marketing hurdles, but most people already have the technology to do video conferencing right from their mobile handsets.  But we should remember it wasn't so long ago all of those were just visions of a future world!

Are The Jetsons at Age 50 Still A Vision of the Future?

I can remember the first few times I ever saw Hanna-Barbera's "The Jetsons" on television.  I was already accustomed to watching "The Flintstones" regularly by the same animation company since they were re-run in syndication daily.  However, for me, the space-aged version of the nuclear family was a glimpse into what life might look like in the future, and I thought it was so incredibly cool!

Their family car wasn't powered by their feet like on "The Flintstones", it was a personal hovercraft (plane, helicopter, or something that flew).  The young son on "The Jetsons", Elroy, had a watch with a TV set built-in (in reality, Sony introduced a product called the Sony Watchman back in the 1980s, but teachers were wise to that kind of thing and wouldn't allow them to be used in their classrooms, these days, it's SmartPhones that are the bane of well-meaning teachers across America).  Of course, I watched the original version of "The Jetsons" which ran from 1962–1963.  The very first episode of "The Jetsons" aired on September 23, 1962, and there were only 24 episodes.  It was also the first show ever broadcast in color on ABC -- talk about futuristic back in the day!  However, even watching the show for the first time as a kid more than a decade later, it seemed (to me, anyway) to be a rational vision of what the future might potentially hold, and it was awesome!

Happy 50th Anniversary to The Jetsons

As the premier date above indicates, September 23, 2012 was the 50th anniversary for "The Jetsons".  While I'm not even 50 myself (I have more than a few years before I'm there), it seems to me that "The Jetsons" helped shape what not only the Baby Boomers expected the future to look like, but also Generation X that followed them.  However, the Baby Boom and Gen X helped make those visions reality, which is (if I'm being honest) no small accomplishment!

One of the visions of the future I thought was particularly awesome at the time was the video-telephone the Jetsons routinely used.  In one episode, it's early morning and the matriarch of the household Jane Jetson receives a call from a friend, but she doesn't have her makeup on, hence she didn't dare take the call until she'd put a mask on to make herself presentable.  That clip can be viewed below, or by visiting http://youtu.be/0idWiHiasKg:



My recollection of that scene wasn't about Jane's mirage of a face, but how cool it was to be able to SEE the person on the other end of the phone.  What if the future enabled us to mitigate long-distances by enabling video conversations?

However, I think this is really important, even as a child, I knew cartoons weren't real.  I might have wondered if "The Jetsons" represented what COULD potentially be.  But I certainly didn't have any expectation to see moving sidewalks everywhere (although anyone who has ever had a connecting flight at airports in Charlotte, Chicago O'Hare, Atlanta or various other big airports has indeed seen and possibly even used moving sidewalks, although I see those more as time-savers without any expectation of seeing them appear on Main Street in the town where I grew up or even in Midtown Manhattan.  The need simply isn't there.

NPR spoke with Matt Novak, a writer of a blog at Smithsonian, about his posts about the TV show, The Jetsons, on its 50th anniversary and why it still matters today.  Mr. Novak's posts were originally found at Smithsonian's "Paleofuture" Blog, although it was subsequently moved to Gizmodo (see the news HERE), and the post at Gizmodo's blog can now be seen at https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/50-years-of-the-jetsons-why-the-show-still-matters-512621126.  The NPR segment entitled "Fifty Years Later, Bits Of Our Own Reality Reflected In 'Jetsons' Future" can be listened to below, or by visiting https://n.pr/2xSmRYB:

Matt Novak's Smithsonian observation on "The Jetson's" 50th anniversary can be seen HERE or at http://bit.ly/T5NPuX, but the content is the same.  He made a rather interesting observation there:

"It's important to remember that today's political, social and business leaders were pretty much watching "The Jetsons" on repeat during their most impressionable years. People are often shocked to learn that "The Jetsons" lasted just one season during its original run in 1962-63 and wasn't revived until 1985."

Like all kids my age, we watched the ORIGINAL Jetsons, in fact, I was already in high school by 1985 when the first reboot version appeared.

But his blog post adds:

"Thanks in large part to the Jetsons, there's a sense of betrayal that is pervasive in American culture today about the future that never arrived. We're all familiar with the rallying cries of the angry retrofuturist: Where's my jetpack!?! Where's my flying car!?! Where's my robot maid?!? "The Jetsons" and everything they represented were seen by so many not as a possible future, but a promise of one."

Even as a kid, I knew cartoons weren't real, but Mr. Novak contends that many people feel betrayed by what The Jetsons had that the average American does not enjoy today.  That's the wrong way to look at things IMHO.

To his point, the original Jetsons (forget about the 1985 reboot; the story lines weren't very good and the series had lost some of it's "edge" at the time so I'm not sure how much of a glimpse into the future those episodes were for many people).  Still, for me, I don't consider where we are today a sense of betrayal, but of just how much of what's become reality.  For example, I can sit anywhere in my house with my Google Nexus tablet in-hand and conduct a face-to-face conversation with family members who are thousands of miles away.  I routinely microwave dinner in just a few minutes, hence this is really a matter of perspective.  I also have no desire to fly to work knowing how bad the roads are!  My smartphone has more power than my family's first computer did, and what's more, it has potential to not only Skype, but do much more (if you can see a 2-inch screen without magnifying glasses).

Who Will The Futurists of Tomorrow Be?

In fact, I do believe "The Jetsons" painted a picture of what the future could possibly look like.  My question is what visions of the future are being shared with today's youth?  Case-in-point: Today, Walt Disney World's Carousel of Progress ride no longer seems so futuristic to me (my last visit to that exhibit was in 2005).  There were some prominent futurists a while ago; in fact, a book that had a pretty profound impact on me personally was "Megatrends 2000" written by futurists Patricia Aburdene and John Naisbitt.  I don't recall all of their predictions, but if memory serves me, I think many of them actually DID become reality.  But I wonder who will tomorrow's futurists be, and what will they base their predictions on?

Author P.S., July 31, 2022: If there was any doubt that the future is here (for better or worse), just remember that you are now officially living in George Jetson's lifetime. Animation fans celebrated an important milestone (see HERE), as several savvy Twitter users observed that the Spacely Sprockets employee, husband to Jane, and father of June and Elroy, is said to be born on July 31, 2022. Cartoon Network explained why: "on The Jetson's George is 40 years old in the year 2062."