 1-1. How Video Communication Systems Work. With DSL and cable modems, video communication became possible, not just at work, but also at home. Now wireless broadband Internet access is enabling video communication from mobile devices. Cultural shifts take time but, as the explosive acceptance of the Internet demonstrates, these shifts eventually reach critical mass. We have learned to cope with the succession of new applications for our desktops and mobile devices, and we are now less resistant to adopting them. Graphical user interfaces (GUI) and on-line help utilities are making us increasingly proficient and increasingly able to adapt to new technologies. In this fertile environment, video communication seems destined to become a tool as fundamental as the telephone. Video communication was not always an accessible, low-cost option for anyone who owned a computer. Until 1990, video communication was a tool for the business- elite. Moreover, until early 1994, when Intel introduced its ProShare family of personal conferencing products for Windows™ PCs, video communication was almost non-existent on the desktop. How video communication progressed from a tightly-engineered, customized boardroom implementation that cost as much as $1 million per site to freebie software is an interesting tale. It has been more revolutionary than evolutionary; it has been less a continuous progression of enhancements than a random string of breakthroughs. Video Communications: The Whole Picture Figure 1-2. Picturephone (AT&T) THE HISTORY OF VIDEO COMMUNICATION One of the first demonstrations of video communication in the U.S., Bell Labs demonstrated a crude video communication application between Washington DC and New York City in the 1920s. Others were engaging in experiments in Europe in the 1930s, where television technologies and systems were more mature than in the U.S. World War II intervened and, for almost two decades, the technology languished. In the late-1940s, Bell Labs resumed work on videoconferencing. After researchi