Thanks to tech like Skype , the ability to both see and hear someone across thou of nautical mile is a mundane exercise for most of us here in the former 21st C . But back in 1947 , signing a contract over videophone was like expect into the future tense . Even if that future turn out a bit different than we were have a bun in the oven .
When commercial-grade videophone service take off in earnest , in the sixties , one of the giving marketing dot was that you could see and show documents from a great distance . You could even sign contracts with all signatories “ present ” despite the fact that they were thousands of statute mile apart .
https://gizmodo.com/a-brief-history-of-the-videophone-that-almost-was-1214969187
But the first utilization of this engineering would really happen decades in the beginning , in 1947 , during a publicity stunt in which execs from Chevy signed a deal with Dumont to shop at some TV programming .
The January 9 , 1947 exit of theAlexandria Times - Tribunein Indiana explain :
A legally adhere business contract simultaneously signal by contracting parties more than 200 miles asunder , yet able-bodied to see and hear each other by TV , result from the first use of this newest medium of communicating to consummate a clientele agreement .
Parties to the dealings , which may omen an entirely new room of doing business face to face though many miles apart , were the Chevrolet Motor Division of General Motors and Dumont Television , through whom Chevrolet was the first automotive manufacturer to frequent a commercial television broadcast series .
The foreign aspect of the story to forward-looking eye ? They call the Skype - like technology the ability to see “ by television . ” Here in 2015 we think of TV as only a broadcast medium . But early goggle box , much like early radio , also encompassed point - to - item communications .
picture via the April 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated by way of life of theModern Mechanixblog
picturephoneTelevisionvideophone
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