"Albert Robida, like Jules Verne, enjoyed to fantasize about the future, but his was a much more lively and tongue in cheek approach, full of humor and grotesque ideas. The illustrations were stunning in their accuracy. There it was, circa 1870, and the man had conceived of the Telephonoscope, a screen on which spectators could see events taking place at another far away location, in real time. He apparently was the first human being to conceive of television in such a specific manner...Perhaps had Robida’s work not been discounted in its day as mere flights of fancy by an overproductive imagination, and relegated to disposable cartoon art of the epoch, we’d have had TV, maybe even Web TV, and sadly biological warfare, generations before they materialized in real life."
- the prophetic steampunk genius of Albert Robida
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