History

The first commercially successful telepresence company, Teleport (which was later changed to TeleSuite), was founded in 1993 by David Allen and Harold Williams.^[10] The original intent was to develop a system that could allow families to interact across great distances without the hassle or costliness of flying. The first systems (which they called TeleSuites) looked more like something out of an upper class home rather than a conference room in an office suite (which are what most systems are used for today).

Hilton Hotels had originally made a deal with them to begin installing them in their hotels throughout the United States and other countries, but usage was low. The idea lost momentum and Hilton eventually backed out. They later began to focus on business oriented telepresence systems. Shareholders eventually held enough stock to take over the company, which ultimately led to its collapse. David Allen purchased all of the assets of TeleSuite and then called the new company Destiny Conferencing.

Although they survived, the idea did not truly catch on until other mega-corporations jumped onboard such as HP, and Cisco released similar systems around the mid 2000s.^[11]

An important research project in telepresence began in 1990. Headquartered at the University of Toronto, the Ontario Telepresence Project "was a three year, $4.8 million pre-competitive research project whose mandate was to design and field trial advanced media space systems in a variety of workplaces in order to gain insights into key sociological and engineering issues. The OTP, which ended December, 1994, was part of the International Telepresence Project which linked Ontario researchers to counterparts in four European nations. The Project’s major sponsor was the Province of Ontario through two of its Centres of Excellence -- the Information Technology Research Centre (ITRC) and the Telecommunications Research Institute of Ontario (TRIO)." (quoting from the project's final report ^[12]) The Project was an interdisciplinary effort involving social sciences and engineering.

Telepresence reaching Zeitgeist in 2008. New telepresence user discussion platforms (bulletin boards) such as Telepresence Forum and Telepresence Club have appeared in the later months of 2007 and continue into 2008 behind the industry push by mega-corporations such as Cisco, HP, Polycom, Nortel and Tandberg to heighten public awareness of telepresence and its benefits. Breaking telepresence industry news and article RSS feeds have gone from non-existent just a few years ago to mainstream on Internet websites such as Telepresence Today and Telepresence Report, all adding to the Zeitgeist of telepresence for 2008 and beyond.