En L'An 2000: French Vision of Video Telephone, c.1900

Warm ochres, dusty blues, and a theatrical beam of projected light anchor this optimistic retro-futurist tableau. Two Edwardian gentlemen operate a complex apparatus of brass horns, coiled cables, and a projecting camera device that casts a full-length image of an elegantly dressed woman onto a glowing screen — a remarkably prescient vision of video calling and home cinema projected nearly a century before their realization. The chromolithographic dot-pattern technique gives the scene a dreamy, almost hallucinatory warmth.