Albert Robida's Telephonoscope Vision: Home Entertainment of the Future, c.1890

A gentleman sits alone at a curved control console, utterly transfixed as a luminous circular screen projects the image of a dancing performer directly into his private parlor. To his left, a massive gramophone horn amplifies the accompanying sound. This is Albert Robida's prescient vision of on-demand home entertainment — a single man commanding theater, music, and visual spectacle from an armchair, decades before television would make it reality.