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This is a 1970’s era, color film that exhibits face to face video terminals. It is a film about the evolution of communication. The purpose is to show a new technology – Picturephone Service. The film opens with rustic drums being played with sticks. In a silent film, a man talks on a telephone, :26. Woman and man are using the telephone in a silent film, :31. A fast montage of old telephone images flashes on the screen, :35. Main title: Face to Face. A man sits at a computer terminal, 1:21. A video terminal, 1:28. “Picture phone” service, 1:30. Two men talk on the picture phone, 1:40. Man dials phone, 2:05. Men start a new video call, 2:18. Men talk in the office after the video call, 2:55. The picture phone displays sales charts, 3:20. Herbert Hoover photo, 3:44. Television images, 4:06. Camera picture tube images flash by, the birth of video telephone is born, 4:26. NY World’s Fair 1964, the video phone system is introduced, 4:48. Bell Labs improves on the picture tube, 5:00. Fashion designers use the picture phone to discuss designs and models, 5:20. The police use the picture phone to try and identify a suspect in a crime, 5:51. Two women use the picture phone from their homes, 6:20. A grandfather talks to his granddaughter on the picture phone, 6:42. Husband and wife use the picture phone, 7:00. Boyfriend and girlfriend fight over the picture phone, 7:20. Directed and produced by Leo Trachtenberg. Cameraman, Robert Strovink, editor, Beth Emerson. A Harvest Films Production. AT&T. Picture-Phone Service is the wave of the future.

AT&T's Bell Labs conducted extensive research and development of videophones, eventually leading to public demonstrations of its trademarked Picturephone product and service in the 1960s. Its large Manhattan experimental laboratory devoted years of technical research during the 1930s, led by Dr. Herbert Ives along with his team of more than 200 scientists, engineers and technicians. During the mid-1950s, its laboratory work had produced another early test prototype capable of transmitting still images every two seconds over regular analog PSTN telephone lines.The images were captured by the Picturephone's compact Vidicon camera and then transferred to a storage tube or magnetic drum for transmission over regular phone lines at two-second intervals to the receiving unit, which displayed them on a small cathode-ray television tube. The more advanced Picturephone Mod I's early promotion included public evaluation displays at Disneyland and the 1964 New York World's Fair, with the first transcontinental videocall between the two venues made on April 20, 1964. The first Picturephone 'Mod I' (Model No. 1) demonstration units used small oval housings on swivel stands, intended to stand on desks. Similar AT&T Picturephone units were also featured at the Telephone Pavilion (also called the "Bell Telephone Pavilion") at Expo 67, an International World's Fair held in Montreal, Canada in 1967. Demonstration units were available at the fairs for the public to test, with fairgoers permitted to make videophone calls to volunteer recipients at other locations. The United States would not see its first public videophone booths until 1964, when AT&T installed their earliest commercial videophone units, the Picturephone "Mod I", in booths that were set up in New York's Grand Central Terminal, Washington D.C., and Chicago. Its system was the result of decades of research and development at Bell Labs, its principal supplier, Western Electric, plus other researchers working under contract to the Bell Labs. However the use of reservation time slots and their cost of US$16 (Washington, D.C. to New York) to $27 (New York to Chicago) (equivalent to $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars) for a three-minute call at the public videophone booths greatly limited their appeal resulting in their closure by 1968.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com