George Jetson, a character in the 1970s cartoon, was not terribly futuristic when he used his telephone that enabled him to see the person to whom he was talking. Videoconferencing, as it is known today, has been under development in the research labs at Pacific Bell since the 1920s. The project, referred to as "picture phone," is in the form of a desktop videoconferencing system. Videoconferencing rooms have been in existence at AT&T since the 1960s, where they are used to support large corporate meetings, including the annual shareholder's meeting.

It wasn't until the 1964 World's Fair that the "picture phone" was introduced to the public. AT&T predicted that the "picture phone" would replace the telephone by 1970. Although that prediction was wrong, the recession of the 1970s created a wider acceptance of videoconferencing by corporations that were looking for alternative ways to conduct meetings and conferences while...