Picturephone as the perpetual technology of the future

As a follow-up to Wednesday's post about the Picturephone, I encourage you to read Frederic D. Schwarz's piece in Invention & Technology magazine.

"Unlike car phones, Picturephone never had long lists of people waiting to sign up. And periodic attempts to revive the concept with modern technology have never taken off. AT&T's color VideoPhone flopped in 1992, as did a wireless version launched in 2000. Even today, with transmission of voice and images over the Internet becoming routine, services that combine the two, while popular among homesick expatriates in Silicon Valley, remain a niche product at best."

"Most people simply don't want to see or be seen by the person they're talking to...."

Mobile Phone Prototypes (1973)

Invention and Technology magazine has a great piece in their Winter 2007 issue about the development of the mobile phone. The pictures below are prototypes developed by Motorola. The "banana" model second from the right intrigues me most. The world would be a very interesting place if mobile phones had never gotten any smaller.