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Abstract
This American Studies dissertation explores in detail the Bell Picturephone project of 1956 to 1972 and the device as it was first publicly exhibited at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. This dissertation utilizes extensive archival research at the AT&T Archives and History Center in Warren, New Jersey, and reviews the Bell Picturephone’s inception, the limitations of its adoption, and the “freezing” of the project. To understand the extent of the Picturephone’s achievement, this dissertation explores not just the device itself but also the contemporaneous technological, political, and economic culture, each influencing Picturephone’s reception and lack of adoption. The Bell Picturephone was an interactive mode of communication, an innovative joining, and augmenting of audiovisual capabilities. Nevertheless, it was an innovation faltering on needed support from other, unsteadily emerging technology as well as the disruptions and uncertainties of social crises of the times. Without developing broad marketing opportunities, and not resonating with the times to capture the home audience that might have made a significant difference, the Bell Picturephone foundered between limited acceptance and a narrow marketing strategy. Yet despite the sense of loss in a promised future it may have provoked, the Bell Picturephone was an instrument leading us along the path of videotelephony and technology in general. It remains a model for many later, similar devices.
