Long before Zoom meetings, FaceTime calls, and that awkward moment when you realize you've been on mute for 10 minutes, video calls were already a thing. Yep - decades before we started using them to show our coworkers our cats, people were experimenting with ways to see and talk to someone miles away in real time.
These 20 vintage photos prove it. From bulky, two-way TV rigs in 1930s Germany to NASA space links in the 60s to the clunky desktop setups of the 80s that cost more than a car, the dream of face-to-face calls has been around for well over a century. The first concepts date back to the 1870s, when inventors on both sides of the Atlantic were already imagining "picture telephones" - even though the tech wouldn't catch up for decades.
Some of these early designs look sleek and futuristic. Others… look like a prop from a low-budget sci-fi movie. But every single one shows just how long we've been chasing the idea of being able to see the person on the other end of the line.
Turns out, video calls aren't a product of the 21st century - we just finally made them cheap, fast, and cat-filter compatible.
