On June 30, 1970, the world’s first commercial video conferencing service launched in Pittsburgh with an inaugural call from Pittsburgh Mayor Peter Flaherty to Alcoa Chairman and CEO John Harper. AT&T’s “Picturephone” system allowed the two to speak “face-to-face,” even though they were blocks away from each other.
Learn more about this bit of history and the recent recreation of the event from Chris Harrison and Andrew Meade McGee of Carnegie Mellon University. To celebrate the 50th anniversary — June 30, 2020 — current Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto and Alcoa Chairman Michael G. Morris will video chat, as their predecessors did a half century ago.
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Well, Audrey, you know my love and passion for all things history in history and tech in Pittsburgh. So I think I'm gonna sit back and let one or two guests take the driver's seat. I think so man I know. So last week was like the 50th anniversary of like the first video conference call. And I didn't realize this happened in Pittsburgh with Carnegie Mellon. And our mayor, like, Oh, it's just it was so cool to me. And so we got some great guests hanging out with us today, Audrey, we have Andrew Meade McGee from Carnegie Mellon and Chris Harrison, who is also with Carnegie Mellon, the human computer interaction lab and guys, I'm so excited to nerd out about how Pittsburgh was like on the forefront of video conferencing, and how you guys kind of reenacted the whole call last week with more that you kind of made new and I'm ready to geek out that's all I can say.
So who's gonna start who's gonna To kick it off and tell us exactly what happened. I think Andrew is best suited to tell us that.
Okay, and Chris, well, thanks for having us to Jonathan and Audrey. And what we're celebrating is 50 years of commercial video conferencing. Basically, the moment when calling somebody via a picture over a phone, I left the lab, it left the gimmick of world's fairs and became a commercial network reality that happened in Pittsburgh on June 30 of 1970. And this year, Carnegie Mellon University, the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and the human computer interaction Institute, collaborated to refurbish two of these vintage video phones that were used in this Pittsburgh and recreate that first ball between the mayor of Pittsburgh and the chairman of Alcoa and my collaborator Chris Harrison, who's a professor in the human computer interactions And his lab made these machines work again. And we recreated and celebrated this legacy of a half century of talking to each other over pictures.
You take it for granted to it's like, it's the thing we just always do now and to think that it was years ago.
So Chris, Chris, what did it take to repurpose and rebuild that and simulate and actually do it again? What did it take from you?
Well, we we acquired the hardware about a year or so ago, actually at that auction and we added it to CMU is growing libraries of kind of information technologies and convenient technology, electronic computing devices and so on. And we took it apart It was the first time we really got a good kind of glimpse of the insides didn't change. Very few of these really left around probably less than 100 on the entire planet, maybe even substantially less than that. So there isn't a lot of information on these devices. But we mean Andrew open it up was actually came in the original packaging, I think If we had not been used at all an engineer at at&t had squirreled to these devices away, you know, you know, trade it up in a box with the original 1970s, which was pretty disintegrated condition. Yeah.
Any good geek will do you disassemble it, you take a look at the internals, obviously, they were absolutely mint condition. And then we started trying to study the circuit board to see if there was a way to really tap into this now, realize pretty early on without any sort of documentation on how these things actually ran. And we were missing some key pieces of the infrastructure. We don't have the switchboard that allowed it to communicate over video, we only had the device itself. And so ultimately, what we thought was best for the preservation of this incredibly rare electronics. And to be able to tie into modern video conferencing software was actually to set aside the original 1970s electronics and instead use the enclosure to house just modern.
See, that's what I would have done to Yeah, just put the good stuff into It looks old but new on the inside, right? Well, it's quite essential CMU. It's finding practical hands on solution, tinkering to make something classic work in today's environment and know that that is this guy. So how did it work? How, how would you rate the performance?
I mean, it worked perfectly well. We actually brought one of the units down to the mayor's office to gather some, you know, photos and B roll of him using the device. In fact, he didn't talk speak with the chairman of CO on the device, but instead he talked to his executive assistant James Hill, and, and they were able to converse, they were talking about what it was during their social media briefing session, which was kind of interesting to hear, but they happen to do it over this original 1970s device.
Originally, at the beginning of the spring, we had planned to do a full recreation in person and two separate locations with the original video phones. COVID-19 disrupted that, but what it demonstrated was the sheer importance of video conferencing in today's world. environment what we were really exploring was that half century legacy, the dream of being able to connect with someone real time. And 50 years ago when these devices were on the at&t network and you had three copper wires being the only thing that transmitted video and audio, over switchboard operator control units connecting building to building and city to city that's so vastly different from our world of software and web connections today.
And so how long what's the size of this unit having to the physical size, they're really quite small. I mean, it was a real tour de force of engineering back in the day to even try as these incredible technology they had an integrated camera and had that you know CRT screen, it could have a little doll even had a little flip mirror. So you could actually do essentially screen sharing document sharing if you to talk to that. Somebody can actually watch you annotating you could play Tic Tac Toe from 1000 miles away and but because they wanted to feel like it desk appliance, they don't want to slap down a gigantic computer s thing some box on your desk, they want to look sleek, you know, like the 1960s 1970s typewriter, these smooth lines but jet aids mid century modern sort of aesthetic. And they very much achieved that and the density inside these units was incredible. I mean, there is not any wasted space. They really packed it in. Yeah, Chris is spot on. These are just beautiful machines very streamlined aluminum basis, again that Alcoa connection. They're of the same generation as the Boeing jet liners and the IBM mainframes. They're products of American manufacturing big companies that wanted to turn computers into an electronic devices into appliances that would sit on every office desk and eventually every living room table in America.
I tell you what vision what a visual zoom call went off perfectly like I joined the session and it was so much fun watching it and I started waxing nostalgic about Wow, how much Pittsburgh tech History is kind of going on with that whole thing. And I'm just impressed that Carnegie Mellon is like collecting this stuff. What are the types of things you guys putting into your library of good stuff?
Well, we've just started over the past two years accumulating collections. And what actually kicked this off was a gift from a woman named Pamela McCormick, major writer in artificial intelligence. He used to be married to a former head of computer science, and Joseph trout, and they endow the travel quarter collection, the highlight of which are two vintage Enigma machines, World War Two era German coding devices, and they're part of a collection of about 30 or 40 historic information processing devices that try to tell chunks of the story of the history of technology through information whether that's code breaking, communications, computing, calculating, and Chris and some of his lab. collaborators have had the chance to go hands on with these devices.
Who was using these? Who back then? Who would the early adopters, Chris, of the picture phone, right. So it launched I think, with eight Pittsburgh companies and it was all about, you know, mainstays that you might imagine but the biggest leasers were Alcoa and Westinghouse. And they were actually they were trialing the technology even before the public launch in 1970. So Westinghouse had offices both in New York where their headquarters was in Pittsburgh. And in order to tie those two offices together, they'd been trialing the technology for I think, at least, since like 1968 as a precursor and as a corporate test before the commercial availability available. Anyone could in Pittsburgh on June 30, or on July 1 1970, could actually just pay the money be subscribed, and that really was that, as Andrew said, that inflection point where it was sort of the technology was out there but no one could get their hands on it too. You could call it a TV and say I want on my home I want on my desk and be a subscriber.
You know, Audrey, we need to link up with copy genetics, because they've been around for more than 50 years and they were some of the pioneers. In video conferencing, in addition, back in the day, I'm thinking there could be some some cool artifacts that can be put into this new new library that is cooking up right now.
Well, this story, like Chris said, is really a story of the Pittsburgh business community embracing this new technology. Westinghouse, Alcoa were the major corporate figures who agreed to be the guinea pigs for at&t to try this out. And they experimented in a new ways. Chris mentioned the slip up mirror on the device that could be used as sort of a projector so that documents can be displayed over the video network. And Alcoa used that as kind of an internal precursor to an intranet. They would share documents across video cams in the same building with each other and use it as almost terminal points connecting remotely in meetings in different rooms in the same vast corporate headquarters building.
So at Carnegie Mellon, you work you talk Right before we got on about the work that you're doing in terms of creating some sort of museum or archive, can you talk a little bit about that? Because we're going to stay closely connected to the both of you ever? Well, Chris and I are both members of host at CMU for history of science and technology, which is a cross campus committee working group that is trying to bring together diverse groups of people at CMU working on the history of science, technology and information. And our long term goals are hold more public events of this type, using digital humanities work to grow the collections around interesting pieces in the history of science and technology, and eventually the push for a museum that tells stories of History of Science and Technology, particularly in relation to CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and this part of the country.
I love it. I think it's so important for us to look at the role that Pittsburgh has played over the past, you know, centuries honestly, but in the past 50 just how important Pittsburgh has been developing things, very nothing. for granted, like video conferencing, so I think you got we got to make this happen, like regular contributors here and tell us about some of the new stuff that you're working on when and when it happens.
Well, one thing I just want to point out for everyone is the importance of design. Yeah, the design thinking that was occurring back 50 years ago. So we'll think of, you know, I always chuckle that today, people think that, you know, user interface design was really started at Carnegie Mellon, in terms of the big work that was going on. So when you start talking about the beauty of the device, I can't wait to see it. So I can't thank both of you for joining us today. And for the future. We're gonna keep we're gonna keep engaged and have tabs on both of you because you're you're really diamonds in our community.
So thank you, Adrian. Chris, thanks for being part of tech vibe tonight. And like I said, Man, you guys are the best. Thank you very much. Sorry, another tech by Monday the bell I'm pumped up. Like I said, I get all geeked up when It comes to all things Pittsburgh in tech. In order we got to wrap the show up. This has been Jonathan Kersting. And this is Audrey Russa are more about the Pittsburgh tech council by going to PGH tech.org.
Good night, everybody.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai