answer:THink back to the NY World’s Fair in 1964–65. They announced and displayed the Picturephone back then. When I was a kid, we went to the Fair and I actually sat and used that phone for a minute. See link It never caught on, for several reasons: 1) privacy, as you wrote, @LostInParadise 2) back in those days, they used TV (there was no internet in 1964) which took different technology and the average person didn’t have the proper lines coming into their house. The internet makes it possible.