10 Sci-Fi Gadgets That Inspired Real Inventions
5. Video Calls
Video calls have been a huge staple of science fiction, almost as if creative teams have assumed that these will happen no matter what. They have played key roles in films such as Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey and even Back To The Future Part II, and were actually first seen as far back as 1927's Metropolis.
1927 - think about that. Just nine years after the end of World War One. A year before the invention of Mickey Mouse and a decade before Snow White. But Metropolis, the German silent science fiction film (which was one of the first ever of feature length in the genre) features the powerful master of the dystopian city using a combination of video and telephone to give his orders.
Director Fritz Lang includes a strange paper-related aspect and a complicated control system, but the effect of video calling is created in a way that was later closely mirrored in the video phones of the end of the 20th Century.