©Mark Ollig
Sunday, May 8, 2016, I, along with other family members, were visiting with my mom at St. Mary’s Care Center in Winsted.
It was Mothers Day.
One of my mom’s granddaughters lives out of state, on the west coast, and was unable to visit in person.
However, the distance apart did not prevent them from seeing and talking with each other.
My niece, who was also visiting, used technology known as videotelephony to bring them both together.
She placed a video phone call using a software app (application) on her cellphone.
My niece placed the video call more or less the same as making a voice call. She then held the cellphone in front of my mom.
When my mother first saw and heard her granddaughter on the cellphone, she smiled, they both began talking as if they were sitting across a table from each other.
Mom was thrilled being able to see and talk with her granddaughter on the cellphone.
They both acknowledged each other’s cheerful facial expressions and smiles on their cellphone screens.
The video call was placed using Apple’s FaceTime app.
During the 1940s, my mother was a telephone switchboard operator in Silver Lake; which is when she first talked with my father.
My dad was working the telephone switchboard in Winsted and contacted the Silver Lake switchboard operator to get a line into Hutchinson for placing a call.
Today, people commonly use video-calling apps for placing face-to-face phone calls.
Ten years ago, I made my first video call; however, it was not over a cellphone. I used Skype, which is a video-chat program I downloaded to my desktop computer.
I placed the video-call to my oldest son, who was out of the country. He was taking classes at the Academia de Bella Arte School in Florence, Italy.
The video call to Florence Italy, some 4,750 miles away from my location in Minnesota, was placed over the internet.
On my computer, I opened the Skype program and called my son’s Skype number.
A small screen appeared in the upper right-hand corner of my computer monitor. It displayed live video of my son as seen through his laptop camera.
I smiled while looking into the camera on my computer, and cheerfully said, “Hello, Mathew!”
He smiled back and returned the “Hello.” I was surprised by how good the quality of the color video was.
While we talked, he moved his laptop’s camera to give me a panoramic view of the café in Florence, Italy, where he was having coffee.
The café looked very inviting. Customers were seated at tables talking with each other while drinking coffee. Some of the people were eating Italian cantucci and biscotti biscuits.
Mathew’s laptop was connected to the café’s Wi-Fi connection to the internet.
During the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the Bell System’s (AT&T) highly-anticipated presentation of “the telephone of the future,” using a device called the Picturephone, took place.
The Picturephone used a video camera, display screen, audio speakers, power supply, and a push-button telephone.
The video camera inside the Picturephone used a Plumbicon tube, which was used in commercial television broadcasting cameras.
Recently, I watched an archived Picturephone demonstration video. The audio and black-and-white video quality of the person seen on the Picturephone monitor was excellent.
The two people using their Picturephone to talk and see each other appeared both amused and delighted.
In 1965, Picturephone video booths were installed in a few major city locations.
The high cost of placing a video call, along with the inconvenience of having to use the device away from one’s home or business proved unpopular with the public.
By 1968, most of the Picturephone booths had fallen out of favor and were no longer used.
A photograph of the first videophone call from April 20, 1964, can be seen at https://bit.ly/31UG7i3.
I fondly recall my mother’s smiles from not only hearing her granddaughter’s voice on the cellphone, but being able to see her on the display screen, as well.
“It was the first time I could see the person I was talking with over the phone,” my mom later told me.
I smiled and said, “Sometimes, technology gets it right.”
My mother would have been 89 years old Aug. 26.
This column was originally published May 16, 2016, and includes some revision by the writer.
Sunday, May 8, 2016, I, along with other family members, were visiting with my mom at St. Mary’s Care Center in Winsted.
It was Mothers Day.
One of my mom’s granddaughters lives out of state, on the west coast, and was unable to visit in person.
However, the distance apart did not prevent them from seeing and talking with each other.
My niece, who was also visiting, used technology known as videotelephony to bring them both together.
She placed a video phone call using a software app (application) on her cellphone.
My niece placed the video call more or less the same as making a voice call. She then held the cellphone in front of my mom.
When my mother first saw and heard her granddaughter on the cellphone, she smiled, they both began talking as if they were sitting across a table from each other.
Mom was thrilled being able to see and talk with her granddaughter on the cellphone.
They both acknowledged each other’s cheerful facial expressions and smiles on their cellphone screens.
The video call was placed using Apple’s FaceTime app.
During the 1940s, my mother was a telephone switchboard operator in Silver Lake; which is when she first talked with my father.
My dad was working the telephone switchboard in Winsted and contacted the Silver Lake switchboard operator to get a line into Hutchinson for placing a call.
Today, people commonly use video-calling apps for placing face-to-face phone calls.
Ten years ago, I made my first video call; however, it was not over a cellphone. I used Skype, which is a video-chat program I downloaded to my desktop computer.
I placed the video-call to my oldest son, who was out of the country. He was taking classes at the Academia de Bella Arte School in Florence, Italy.
The video call to Florence Italy, some 4,750 miles away from my location in Minnesota, was placed over the internet.
On my computer, I opened the Skype program and called my son’s Skype number.
A small screen appeared in the upper right-hand corner of my computer monitor. It displayed live video of my son as seen through his laptop camera.
I smiled while looking into the camera on my computer, and cheerfully said, “Hello, Mathew!”
He smiled back and returned the “Hello.” I was surprised by how good the quality of the color video was.
While we talked, he moved his laptop’s camera to give me a panoramic view of the café in Florence, Italy, where he was having coffee.
The café looked very inviting. Customers were seated at tables talking with each other while drinking coffee. Some of the people were eating Italian cantucci and biscotti biscuits.
Mathew’s laptop was connected to the café’s Wi-Fi connection to the internet.
During the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the Bell System’s (AT&T) highly-anticipated presentation of “the telephone of the future,” using a device called the Picturephone, took place.
The Picturephone used a video camera, display screen, audio speakers, power supply, and a push-button telephone.
The video camera inside the Picturephone used a Plumbicon tube, which was used in commercial television broadcasting cameras.
Recently, I watched an archived Picturephone demonstration video. The audio and black-and-white video quality of the person seen on the Picturephone monitor was excellent.
The two people using their Picturephone to talk and see each other appeared both amused and delighted.
In 1965, Picturephone video booths were installed in a few major city locations.
The high cost of placing a video call, along with the inconvenience of having to use the device away from one’s home or business proved unpopular with the public.
By 1968, most of the Picturephone booths had fallen out of favor and were no longer used.
A photograph of the first videophone call from April 20, 1964, can be seen at https://bit.ly/31UG7i3.
I fondly recall my mother’s smiles from not only hearing her granddaughter’s voice on the cellphone, but being able to see her on the display screen, as well.
“It was the first time I could see the person I was talking with over the phone,” my mom later told me.
I smiled and said, “Sometimes, technology gets it right.”
My mother would have been 89 years old Aug. 26.
This column was originally published May 16, 2016, and includes some revision by the writer.
