Paleofuture:

From the 1950s until the 1970s Bell Labs spent over $500 million developing the videophone. But the technology failed to achieve mainstream success. Why?

The story of the Bell Labs videophone — from the experiments of the mid-50s, to the expensive and ultimately failed consumer trials of the 1970s.

This always seemed like one of those technologies forever searching for a problem for it to solve – a problem average consumers really didn’t have or want solved. The irony is now most of us carry around this technology in our pockets every day. But how many of us use it on a regular basis?