{"id":1100,"date":"2014-12-29T15:45:57","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T20:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2014-12-29T16:02:27","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T21:02:27","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-quickcam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1100\/retro-scan-of-the-week-quickcam","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Connectix VideoPhone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/quickcam_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/quickcam_small.jpg\" alt=\"Connectix VideoPhone video chat software QuickCam advertisement - 1996\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Even black and white was amazing once<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time, companies tried to achieve video phone calls using non-networked, proprietary point-to-point devices such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/667\" target=\"_blank\">AT&#038;T VideoPhone 2500<\/a> (RSOTW, 2010) &#8212; almost all of which utilized traditional telephone lines or ISDN.<\/p>\n<p>Then the Internet came along and blew the field wide open.  Suddenly, video chat could happen over any data transfer medium that supported TCP\/IP, and it could be routed around the world to any node on the Internet.  Connectix&#8217;s VideoPhone software (circa 1995) was one of the first consumer video chat products to take advantage of the Internet.  Using the software and the company&#8217;s QuickCam digital camera (arguably the world&#8217;s first webcam), folks could video conference all over the world &#8212; albeit in black and white.<\/p>\n<p>For more on the history of video phones and video chat, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technologizer.com\/2010\/06\/14\/videophones\/\" target=\"_blank\">this piece I created for Technologizer<\/a> back in 2010.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Internet World &#8211; February 1996, inside front cover]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> When was the first time you ever made a video call or did video chat?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even black and white was amazing once Once upon a time, companies tried to achieve video phone calls using non-networked, proprietary point-to-point devices such as the AT&#038;T VideoPhone 2500 (RSOTW, 2010) &#8212; almost all of which utilized traditional telephone lines or ISDN. Then the Internet came along and blew the field wide open. Suddenly, video [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,35,40,27,26,10],"tags":[151,213,988,118,567,102,986,60,984,985,987],"class_list":["post-1100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-internet-history","category-macintosh","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers","tag-151","tag-213","tag-connectix","tag-internet","tag-internet-world","tag-macintosh","tag-quickcam","tag-retro-scan","tag-video-chat","tag-videophone","tag-webcam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}