A little wonder, every day

Video calls in science-fiction films

Documentary screenshot of a Skype video call, dated 2008. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Video-call.jpg. The uploader released it into the public domain; unchanged. It documents a later real-world example, not a film scene.

оптимізовано з `media/nasa-videoconference.jpg`: 2551×1712 px (половина початкової ширини й висоти), JPEG quality 82.

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Documentary screenshot of a Skype video call, dated 2008. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Video-call.jpg. The uploader released it into the public domain; unchanged. It documents a later real-world example, not a film scene.

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Science-fiction films showed video communication long before video calling appeared in Skype. In *2001: A Space Odyssey* (1968), Dr. Floyd calls his daughter from a video-phone booth; *Blade Runner* (1982) includes a videophone, and in *Back to the Future Part II* (1989), Marty is told he has been fired during a call on a large screen. These are different visions of a distant conversation with moving images, not proof that the films invented the technology or precisely predicted modern apps. Real videophone systems were being developed and demonstrated before these films.