The idea of a portable videophone was common around 1910, written and illustrated in electronics and sci-fi mags. Here’s one I hadn’t seen before in a 1918 Gernsback magazine.
I’ve modeled it with one age-appropriate improvement. Gernsback’s version resembled a vanity mirror mounted on a candlestick phone, keeping the separate receiver, which wouldn’t have been necessary in 1918. Cone-type speakers weren’t common yet, but earphones with horns were common. In my version the speaker is on top and the camera lens is the smaller circle below the screen. I’ve left the hook on the base to serve as a transmit/receive switch.
Gernsback assumed the mechnical scan-disk method, common in experimental TV until the 1930s. The mechanical parts could have fitted inside this device. Clocks and watches had far more intricate miniature machines. More to the point, the scan disk mechanism in Mary Jameson’s 1918 Optophone would fit inside this gadget.
The 1918 electronic parts couldn’t possibly fit inside. I’ve added a 1918 receiver, only a very small part of the necessary equipment. The electronic parts of TVs remained huge until the 1970s when transistors and ICs could handle high frequencies and high voltages.
Let’s imagine that Polistra and Happystar are talking and seeing each other with Telephot units. From the outside, a bungalow court with antennas on two houses. (The antennas and electric car are exactly 1918 but the houses and furniture are more like 1940s.)
Happystar is talking to Polistra,
and Polistra is talking to Happystar.
Polistra's Mill 