Who invented video calling

For his valedictorian award in high school, he got a scholarship abroad; but this was given to another student upon the intervention of a public official.

Just as he was already enrolled in the University of the Philippines with full support from his parents, he got his scholarship back after his rival got sick and died abroad. It was an opportunity for Zara for further his engineering studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He graduated with a degree of BS in Mechanical Engineering in there. Later, he attended the University of Michigan for a degree of Master of Science in Engineering Aeronautical Engineering where he finished as summa cum laude.

For that, Zara became the first Filipino to be given with the honor in the university. Zara became involved in the government after he came home to the Philippines. He was appointed with several positions in the Department of Public Works and Communications and the Department of National Defense, mostly in the aviation and aeronautical side.

Zara also published notable books and research works, some of which are in French. Being a prolific man of science and engineering, he received several recognitions from different institutions. But perhaps the most important was the National Scientist award conferred by the former President Ferdinand Marcos in In the same year, however, Zara died of heart failure at the age of He left his beautiful wife Engracia Laconico, who was former Miss Philippines, and their four children.

Nevertheless, he will be remembered as the engineer who developed the first ever videophone, the ancestor of all video calling devices. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

Learn how your comment data is processed. Hello there? Can i ask a question? Amm gregorio zara is invent first videophone i want to know what is the part of videophone that his created? Sorry im bad in english? GineersNow community. Share via. Read more Offshore Wind Farm Technologies. Chemical Engineering graduate with a passion in writing weird stuff at GineersNow. Follow me on Linkedin. Comments 2 Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

Previous Post. Next Post. Videophone History Last week, Apple's announcement of the iPhone 4 with FaceTime video calling capabilities brought the videophone back to the forefront of the media's attention. Steve Jobs' keynote made it sound like FaceTime will bring video phone calls to consumers for the first time. But the idea of a two-way communications device that transmits pictures as well as sound is as old as the phone itself.

Economic factors have kept it out of the average consumer's reach until the last few decades, and the public has repeatedly greeted the concept-in stand-alone form, at least-with apathy. Still, inventors and dreamers keep coming back to the notion that the videophone is the way of the future.

Let's take a stroll through videophone history to find out where things went wrong-and right-and how we got to the iPhone 4 and its rivals. Victorian Sci-Fi Shortly after Alexander Graham Bell's famous conversation, the telephone caught the public's imagination, and it wasn't long before people including Bell himself were speculating on how to transmit images as well as sound.

Seen here are two illustrations of early videophone concepts. On the left is an illustration by George du Maurier published in Punch's Almanack. To the right is a French card envisioning a visual telephone in the year Sign up here. Show Comments. Security Watch. Back to top. A photo caption in this story originally misstated where Lady Bird Johnson was photographed using a Picturephone. It was in Washington, D.

Contact us at letters time. By Francine Uenuma. In retrospect, we might deem that the moment video calling was born. Related Stories. Here's the Historical Reason Why. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription.