#18: Telephone’s “Picturephone,” 1964

Often, we make the mistake of thinking that the day-to-day technologies we rely on have been around forever. We can’t remember how we ever got by without cellphones or the internet, so we imagine that they must have always been around, even though we know they’re fairly recent inventions.

However, video calling is an invention that we tend to think of as more recent when, in reality, the technology has existed for years. Communications companies began research and development as early as 1929, with a commercial model being trialed in the 1970s. Yet, it would take quite a few more years for it to catch on.