5 Insane Sci-Fi Ideas Of The Space Age

In 1964, at the New York World Fair, Bell Telephone Company (Now AT&T), debuted their "picturephone." For $121 in today's money, attendees could call their friend located somewhere in the nation, with a video screen attached. This amazed visitors to the fair, and many believed this early version of Skype would be able to change their communications very soon.

However, testing of the picturephone in telephone booths proved to the company that it did not have enough interest for its cost, and the plan was soon after scrapped. These ideas of video telephone communication amazed and wondered many and they found their way into comics and films like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Over the next decades, technology slowly developed and a version of this early idea came onto the market in the version of famous communication apps like Skype, Whatsapp, Google Hangouts, and more. Video conversations were one of the few ideas of the era that arguably proved to end up working out. In fact, modern versions of these concepts were even better than imagined, as people all across the world can now call their friends, loved ones, and family found anywhere in the world, at the touch of a button.