Simple analog videoconferences could be established as early as the invention of the television. In 1927, when Herbert Hoover was US Secretary of Commerce, he used a videoconference system in Washington to communicate with AT&T President Walter Gifford in New York.
This was a prototype system, but AT&T continued pursuing the idea developed the Picturephone in the 1950s and launched the commercial Picturephone product in 1970. It was a commercial failure, mostly due to poor picture quality and the lack of efficient video compression techniques.
In 1964 Bell Labs launched their first prototype of videoconferencing system. However, limited by the networks and other technology, videoconferencing system was brought into market only in 1980s with the development of codec protocol.
During the 1970s, some private videoconferencing links were set up by some very large organizations using analog technology.
Video conferencing saw advancement and development in the 1990s due to many factors including technical advances in Internet Protocol (IP) and also more efficient video compression technologies that were developed, permitting desktop or PC-based video conferencing.
In 1991, IBM introduced the first PC—based video conferencing system, named PicTel. Although it was a black and white system, it was very inexpensive to use. It was the first dedicated systems, started to appear in the market as ISDN networks were expanding throughout the world.
Video conferencing system in history
