"This category [science fiction] excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy."
- Robert Heinlein

Also, in 1879, an instrument called a telelectroscope was invented; this device transmitted a simple visual scene over phone lines. Here is how it was reported in Scientific American:

We have recently on one or two occasions alluded to the telectroscope invented by M. Senlecq of Ardres. We now have before us some very ingenious and curious applications of selenium, in which its peculiar property of changing its electrical conductivity when exposed to light varying in intensity is utilized. The several devices are the invention of Mr. George R. Carey, of Boston, Mass. Perhaps the most curious of these instruments is the selenium camera obscura, which is capable of transmitting telegraphically an image of any object and making a permanent impression of it at a distant point. In this case a person may sit before the camera in New York while his photograph is made in Boston. Mr. Carey employs two methods of accomplishing the object, one being something like M. Senlecq's, and the other totally different. We hope to present to our readers before long the details of these interesting instruments.