by Gideon Marcus
Miracles are afoot at the Seattle World Expo. General Electric released its Visi-phone technology, allowing people from across the country to not only talk to each other, but to see each other as they do so.
Of course, money being no object, the cutting-edge Galactic Journey had to avail itself of this wonder immediately! The 21st Century…is now!
Yesterday morning saw the world's first Tele-Conference, featuring several Journey notables and not a few guests. From 11AM to 12PM, we entertained a rapt audience around the continent from our luxurious studios in San Diego. If you've ever been to a convention panel, it was much like that – attendees submitted questions and comments via teletype, the panelists did their best to answer them, and prizes were dispatched to attendees with the best interactions.
In between, we rolled movie clips, played music, and demonstrated other marvels of current technology. There were some technical glitches, but then, even NASA's rockets had trouble at first. On the whole, however, we think the event went off swimmingly.
If you missed your chance to attend, or if you simply want to relive the experience, we have recorded the entire event onto video tape and will be rebroadcasting it continuously on the UHF band for the conceivable future.
So tune in! And if you think we should make this a regular occurrence (say, once every month or two), do let us know.
I don't care who sees my ugly mug, but my wife will check her hair before she will answer the phone. And my mom will make a quick clean-up pass through the room before she'll answer.
Video telephony has been a science fiction staple for decades, but I think there might be some social problems to iron out before it becomes a success. At least, those best able to afford something like that are likely to be older, more conservative people who wouldn't touch it if it was free, much less pay extra for it.
You may be right. Expect it to get adopted by businesses first.
Technology is getting exciting!
Thank you for the video telephony experience, I hope you'll do it again.
Who knows, maybe one day it will become a common thing!
1962 is an interesting year.
It was good there on Saturday.
Thanks for joining us, William!
I was able to watch the kinescope of this two-way television broadcast, although technical difficulties kept me from participating live. Nice to see all the good folks. It was delightful to hear my name mentioned. Thank you.
Thanks for being with us in spirit! We will be sure to coordinate things better next time.