"When they showed off their cutting-edge invention to awed audiences at the World's Fair in 1964, the creators of the Picturephone had the future both completely wrong and completely right.
Designers from the Bell System were mistaken that the unveiling of the gadget, which transmitted a picture image along with a phone call to a small monitor, allowing two callers to see and chat with each other, would instantaneously revolutionize communication, the way the first telephone call had nearly a century before.
Though three public call centers were set up in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Grand Central Station in New York City, the phone systems never took off. At around $27 for a three-minute call between Chicago and New York (about $200 in today's dollars), they were far too expensive for practical use."
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