By Bob Brody
May 17, 2014, 8:00 a.m.
Los Angeles Times
Back in 1964, 50 years ago this summer, my mother, father, sister and I drove from our home in suburban New Jersey to New York City, where we caught a glimpse of the future.
Our destination was Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, the site of the World’s Fair. It all seemed exciting to a boy of 12, but it was at the Bell Telephone Pavilion that I saw something that seemed revolutionary, especially for my family: the Picturephone, also known as the Mod or Model 1.
Photo: The Picturephone model that debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair. T (AT&T Archives and History Center)
At the phone exhibit, my father and I stepped into one booth while my mother and sister went into another. We sat in chairs that had been placed in front of a modern-looking oval device containing a small camera and a rectangular video screen. My father pressed the button marked “V” for video on a touch-tone telephone keypad, and my mother and sister appeared on the screen.
Our eyes wide and mouths agape, we waved at one another and spoke excitedly for the next 10 minutes. I left thinking that this device, if it ever became available to ordinary people in their homes, would have far-reaching implications for all kinds of people, but especially for members of the deaf community.
I had a particular interest in the well-being of deaf people. Both my parents were profoundly deaf: my father from birth and my mother from spinal meningitis when she was an infant. My father had enough residual hearing that he could, with a hearing aid, handle phone calls and other interactions, but he was generally out working from early morning until late evening. And so my mother usually relied on me, her oldest child, when she needed to call friends and relatives or make arrangements by phone.
It was a service I often performed grudgingly, resentful at having been pulled away from playing with my toy soldiers or reading the sports pages or watching “Superman” on TV. Most often, the calls she asked me to make were to her mother in Manhattan. Since this was usually to arrange visits, I would have to navigate back and forth between them, conveying logistical information.
My mother always thanked me for the calls afterward, both vocally and in sign language. She would bring her palm flat near her lips and then toward me, as if blowing a kiss. But, after the World’s Fair, I couldn’t help thinking about what a difference a Picturephone would make
