The first video phone call

An advert for the Bell Picturphone

According to the blog Skype Numerology Skype estimates it has approximately 124 million users, though it admits not all of these are active. I use Skype (and Apple's FaceTime) to talk with colleagues, students I'm supervising and of course to keep in touch with friends and family. You might be surprised to find out that the first public transcontinental video phone call was made in April 1964. Bell had placed their new Picturephones in booths at the New York World Fair and in Disneyland California. Members of the public in New York and California could see and speak to each and long lines rapidly grew at each location.
    A commercial service started in June 1964 from calling booths in three cities: New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago - but the service failed to excite.  Customers needed to schedule their calls in advance and it was very expensive. A 3-minute video call from New York to Washington cost $16, about $120 in today's money. Despite slashing prices the following year the service failed to take off and the plug was pulled in 1968. So next time you skype appreciate how convenient and cheap video calling has become.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog of the writing of the Universal Tool

I've been writing a book, on and off, for several years now. The book is intended to be a popular science book about the history of computers. I'm a computer scientist by profession and so I've long had an interest in this subject.

The idea of this blog is to encourage me to keep working on the book by being able to share both the process of writing it and elements from it with who ever decides to follow the blog of just drop by.

Computers you see are not like other tools that we've invented. Think of wheel and axle for example. This invention let man build carts and wagons and so more easily move heavy loads around. Thousands of years later, although we now have engines instead of horses the basic use of the invention hasn't changed. Now think of the computer. They were first used to crack military codes and design H-bombs, and then to do the payroll for large companies, but now we use them to communicate with friends, play (and compose) music, design buildings, create virtual worlds, make movies, this list is endless and constantly growing. You see the computer fundamentally does not crack codes or write blogs, a computer manipulates symbols and it can perform any task that can be represented by symbols. In this sense, in the words of Alan Turing, a computer is a "universal machine".