Featured on PDR in the collection The Future Imagined in Albert Robida’s La vie électrique (1890)
Who participated in the first video date? A good couple for candidacy in this regard are Georges Lorris and Estelle Lacombe, who meet via “téléphonoscope” in Albert Robida’s 1890 novel Le Vingtième siècle: la vie électrique in which he imagines “the electric life” of the future. Adding a visual component to two recent technologies, the telephone (1876) and the phonograph (1877), this device lets scattered families in the year 1956 reunite around a virtual dinner table. For the lovebirds Lorris and Lacombe, the téléphonoscope facilitates their unapproved liaison in an immunologically fraught world. (And, for those without a beau, it also offers a service akin to on-demand streaming.)
Also appearing in the collection…
Other works by the artist in the archive…
The Tubes (View from an Aeronef at 700 Meters)
Artist
Date
1890
From
La vie électrique
Source
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