Here’s the interactive video application that started it all. Shortly after arriving on campus in January 1979, Dr. Gayeski was looking for guest speakers to bring into her Instructional TV Design and Production class. She happened to see a tiny ad in the back of Educational and Industrial TV Magazine for a new technology called “interactive video”. The company, Vontech, was located in Rochester, NY, so Dr. Gayeski called them and was invited to a demonstration. Vontech was started by a man who worked as a media producer at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester. Here’s the program they created. The hardware consisted of a mini-computer (huge by today’s standards) hooked up to a ¾” U-Matic VCR through some proprietary hardware and software. The program helps deaf student to practice their lip-reading and job interviewing skills.
Click play to view the clip.