Video calling technology is such a mundane feature of smartphones now that it would be weird if a device *didn’t* have it. But the idea for the first FaceTime is buried deep in vintage tech history, all the way back in the 70’s… the 1870’s. And most people hated the idea of it.

By the time Mitsubishi’s VisiTel videophone graced the cover of Popular Science in 1988, video calling had already gone through generations of inventions, advances, and serious setbacks. When we finally acquired a pair of brand new VisiTel phones to make one single video phone call, humanity had already been through billions of dollars of failures, misguided promises, and losing gambles — including by Bell Labs, likely the most innovative company of the 20th century.

It’s been 150 years since we started thinking about and criticizing live video communication. And we still haven’t fully answered the technology’s most basic question: does anyone really want to be seen?

#technology #science #innovation #retro

When Everett Knowles hitched a ride on a Boston train, he expected to make it home in a few minutes. But the result was the final leg of a medical history journey more than 30,000 years in the making when Eddy Knowles’ doctors turned tragedy into a medical miracle.

The path from accident to surgery required an almost impossible set of conditions to line up perfectly, and then it actually had to work. On the day of the accident, the wild scramble to harness expertise and to weigh calculated risks make for an engaging story of science and human ingenuity — but the truth is that the same exact process of discovery and daring is what forged the centuries of scientific knowledge that Eddy’s doctors used to save his arm.

Scientific triumphs and medical miracles happen every day. They just take thousands of generations to be born.

#medical #history #science #popularscience

When a 40-year old Ohio man named John fell in the bathroom and hit his head on the tub, no one expected it to change how the entire world approached space exploration. But John Glenn wasn’t just a business traveler in a hotel room, and the medical mystery that followed changed NASA and the space program of the USSR.

Was John Glenn’s vertigo the result of his orbit of the Earth during his Mercury Atlas 6 mission? Was it all just an accident, or did it come from his intense World War II and Korean War pilot service? And could the balance, dizziness, and nausea be prevented for future astronauts?

The resulting research into what went wrong with John Glenn, Alan Shepard, and other astronauts and cosmonauts who experienced debilitating illnesses after spaceflight pioneered the spaceflight to the Moon and beyond — and it all started when a man slipped on a rug.

#space #spaceexploration #nasa #science