History of Video Telephone
Gregorio Y. Zara, a Filipino engineer and physicist, invented the first two-way video telephone in the 1950s. This enabled the caller and recipient to see each other while conversing. It laid the foundation for video-conferencing. The videophone was conceptualized in the 1870s. But the physics, chemistry and materials science were not available until the 1920s. These were first used in electromechanical television.
In the 1930s, Germany developed the first public video telephone service. This allowed two-way speech transmission with video signals over telephone lines. In the 1990s, AT&T launched the VideoPhone 2500. It worked over phone lines and made audio calls. It also offered video communication. But the consumer market was not ready to adopt this technology.
Inventions and Developments
When was the video telephone invented?
Gregorio Y. Zara, a Filipino engineer and physicist, invented the first two-way video telephone in the 1950s. This enabled the caller and recipient to see each other while conversing. It laid the foundation for video-conferencing. The concept of a videophone was first described in the 1870s, but the required physics, chemistry and materials science were not available until the 1920s for use in electromechanical television.
In the 1930s, Germany developed the first public video telephone service allowing two-way speech transmission with video signals over telephone lines. In the 1990s, AT&T launched the VideoPhone 2500 working over phone lines for audio calls and video communication, but consumers were not ready to adopt the technology.
Who made video phones?
Who invented the video phone? The concept of video phones first developed in the 1870s. Yet Gregorio Y. Zara, a Filipino engineer, invented the first two-way video phone in the 1950s. This let callers see each other. AT&T and John Logie Baird began developing video phones in the 1920s. Despite launching the Picturephone in 1960, high costs stopped mass adoption.
Zara’s invention enabled two-way conversations with video. This laid groundwork for later video conferencing. In 1999, Kyocera launched a mobile video phone with a camera for video calls.
Deaf people use a ‘videophone’ service for direct sign language video calls. Germany developed the first public video call service in the 1930s over phone lines. In the 1990s, AT&T released the VideoPhone 2500 over phone lines for audio or video.