What equipment was used in the 40's to transmit newspaper photos by wire?

[gone]

First of all, if this is not the right place to post this, please feel free to move it. I have no idea where to put this.

We just watched a great B&W Jimmy Stewart movie called "Call Northside 777" that was made in 1948. It showed a photograph being loaded onto some sort of rotating cylinder that was transmitted by telephone wires to another newspaper location. Apparently, they still had to develop it on the other end, because the guy had said that it wouldn't take long to get the print because it was a positive.

Does anyone know what process this was? It looked fascinating, especially the shot of the darkroom, where lo and behold hung what looked like a perfect copy of my old Kodak bullet safe light. Everything about the photographic process up to that point made sense to me, except for the guy in the darkroom who had a visor (safe light glare? LOL), and some sort of protective sleeves on his shirt that I would love to have myself to keep chemicals off my arms. The whole process almost looked like some form of early scanning, sorta.

My wife was asking me "you actually recognize those things in their darkroom"? I almost hated to tell her that some of the stuff in my darkroom and two of my cameras are older than 1948. Boy, that will make you feel old. By the way, the guy that was imprisoned, whom Jimmy Stewart was trying to exonerate by means of that photo, was found.....sorry, you'll have to watch the film for that part.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

If the darkroom worker was making contact prints with a lamp hanging from the ceiling, the visor would be quite useful.

 

[Kirks518]

I saw a neat BBC documentary(?) about the fax machine. Fax transmissions have been around for centuries, and fax by phone line has been around since the 1920's.

So my guess is - Fax Machine

I would think the second process referred to in the movie was more about making the plate for printing in the newspaper.

 

[Kirks518]

I found the video I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaCfs5Xb-EI

 

[snapguy]

wire

I toiled for an international wire service for many years starting in the 1950s. It was like we had our own Internet in those days -- we had 2200 machines that could send photos or text to most of the major newspapers and magazines around the world. The machine you saw in the movie could be rigged to take in a 7x9 photo print or a 4x5 negative. The photos and text (the photo service was separate from the news text department) came over a telephone line. Internationally, radio was used. The photos were transmitted via a 7x9 inch print with a photo caption stuck along one side or the other. Most of our clients had transmitting machines, too, so if something big happend in San Francisco and someone wanted a print of a news photo in Tokyo or London or whatever, the newspaper or a local wire service employee could send it. Our motto was "a deadline every minute." Every minute of every day someone around the world had a deadline. Great movie, by the way.

 

[removed account4]

I found the video I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaCfs5Xb-EI

huge thanks for posting this ... who'd a thunk from the 1840s ! ( using farmer's reducer no less ! )

 

[Sirius Glass]

Wire services transmitted photographs in half tone photography. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halftone

 

[Jeff Bradford]

"The Wire Service" consisted of teletype, an audio signal sent over radio waves or telephone lines, which resulted in text or images being output by a mechanical printer. It was a forerunner to the fax machines which became popular in the 1980s. Teletype is still used today.

 

[summicron1]

I toiled for an international wire service for many years starting in the 1950s. It was like we had our own Internet in those days -- we had 2200 machines that could send photos or text to most of the major newspapers and magazines around the world. The machine you saw in the movie could be rigged to take in a 7x9 photo print or a 4x5 negative. The photos and text (the photo service was separate from the news text department) came over a telephone line. Internationally, radio was used. The photos were transmitted via a 7x9 inch print with a photo caption stuck along one side or the other. Most of our clients had transmitting machines, too, so if something big happend in San Francisco and someone wanted a print of a news photo in Tokyo or London or whatever, the newspaper or a local wire service employee could send it. Our motto was "a deadline every minute." Every minute of every day someone around the world had a deadline. Great movie, by the way.

When I was working in upstate New York in the early 70s we still used a machine very similar to this to send text by phone -- it scanned the typed text line by line (the lines were smaller than the text to reduce the image of the letters to the audio equivalent of 1 and 0) and sent that to a receiving unit at the other end. The text it produced was fuzzy but readable. Picture transmission was similar -- we got AP and uPI pictures on flimsy paper that came off the machines by the yard.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

"The Wire Service" consisted of teletype, an audio signal sent over radio waves or telephone lines, which resulted in text or images being output by a mechanical printer. It was a forerunner to the fax machines which became popular in the 1980s. Teletype is still used today.

...and they were the wonder of their time.

Telephotography (Wirephoto)



Ken

 

[Dr Croubie]

Most of our clients had transmitting machines, too, so if something big happend in San Francisco and someone wanted a print of a news photo in Tokyo or London or whatever, the newspaper or a local wire service employee could send it. Our motto was "a deadline every minute." Every minute of every day someone around the world had a deadline. Great movie, by the way.

And they say that today the '24 hour news' has sped things up ridiculously...

Actually, at uni 10 years ago, in either my Economic History or Telecommunications lectures (can't remember which, I did them at the same time, maybe it was both?), the lecturer said that in terms of % speed-up of communication, the 'first globalisation' of the late 1800s and the 6-weeks-by-ship transition to telegraph/telephone had much much more of an impact on communications than the last few decades' transition from telephone/letters to internet/email.

 

[gone]

This has been a good day. I learned a few things, which is no no small feat. A deadline every minute. What a great line.

Yes, it was a good darned movie. Did Jimmy Stewart make any other kind? Very different world back then for sure.

So that was a forerunner to a fax machine. Amazing. I used to have some 33 rpm music albums that proudly proclaimed they were recorded on 35mm film, so one technology can do a lot of different things. I especially like the idea of using a visor for contact prints. One of those would come in handy when riding my bike in this Florida heat. With my usual baseball cap on, it feels like my brain is frying between May and October.

 

[snapguy]

apples and

We have apples and oranges here. What you saw in the Jimmy Stewart movie was a system that could transmit photos by wire. The original was a photo print and the other end got either an old fashioned photo print or a negative, depending how that machine was set up. There was also a fax machine that was less costly, ran by itself (nobody had to be there to "take in" and then develop the photo prints or negs) but the fax copies would just not reproduce as well as the prints or negs.

 

[Arklatexian]

First of all, if this is not the right place to post this, please feel free to move it. I have no idea where to put this.

We just watched a great B&W Jimmy Stewart movie called "Call Northside 777" that was made in 1948. It showed a photograph being loaded onto some sort of rotating cylinder that was transmitted by telephone wires to another newspaper location. Apparently, they still had to develop it on the other end, because the guy had said that it wouldn't take long to get the print because it was a positive.

Does anyone know what process this was? It looked fascinating, especially the shot of the darkroom, where lo and behold hung what looked like a perfect copy of my old Kodak bullet safe light. Everything about the photographic process up to that point made sense to me, except for the guy in the darkroom who had a visor (safe light glare? LOL), and some sort of protective sleeves on his shirt that I would love to have myself to keep chemicals off my arms. The whole process almost looked like some form of early scanning, sorta.

My wife was asking me "you actually recognize those things in their darkroom"? I almost hated to tell her that some of the stuff in my darkroom and two of my cameras are older than 1948. Boy, that will make you feel old. By the way, the guy that was imprisoned, whom Jimmy Stewart was trying to exonerate by means of that photo, was found.....sorry, you'll have to watch the film for that part.

It was called "WirePhoto" and the one that I would see used was supplied by Associated Press. The newspaper always used a cut line that said AP Wirephoto. I think the photo paper used was Kodabromide F2. Medalist paper may have been used also....I learned lots of good stuff hanging around newspaper darkrooms, always by invitation, of course. That was back when most used 4x5 Speed and Crown Graphics.....Regards

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

It was called "WirePhoto" and the one that I would see used was supplied by Associated Press. The newspaper always used a cut line that said AP Wirephoto. I think the photo paper used was Kodabromide F2. Medalist paper may have been used also....I learned lots of good stuff hanging around newspaper darkrooms, always by invitation, of course. That was back when most used 4x5 Speed and Crown Graphics.....Regards

I'd have guessed Velox. My grandfather, who wrote for The Cleveland Press after WWII always referred to wire photos and proofs as "Veloxes."

 

[Steve Smith]

The rotating cylinder machine was an early form of fax machne.

http://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/departures/nz/0/3445_early_fax.html


Steve.

 

[Simon R Galley]

We still sold paper ( activator / stabilizer ) for wire systems, and lots of it till about 1992.

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

 

[ChuckP]

I saw a similar setup used in a 1930's Charlie Chan movie. Helped solve the crime.

 

[Jeff Bradford]

The "Photo by Wire" style of communication was still being used to receive weather satellite images when I was in high school in the 1980s. We still used similar equipment when I was in the US Army through the 1990s. The US Navy still uses similar equipment for communicating between ships even today.

 

[lxdude]

It was called "WirePhoto" and the one that I would see used was supplied by Associated Press. The newspaper always used a cut line that said AP Wirephoto.

And the ones from UPI were called "Telephoto".
When I was a kid, I asked someone what AP Wirephoto and UPI Telephoto in captions meant, and when it was explained, I didn't believe it. I just couldn't picture (so to speak) how it was done.

 

[resummerfield]

In the movie “Bullet” with Steve McQueen from 1968, there was a rotating cylinder machine used to transmit photos. The technician placed a standard telephone handset in a special receptacle to transmit the signals. It seemed to take several minutes to transmit one photo.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

How the system worked is as follows.

The photo or document was fastened to a drum. The drum then was spun at a moderate speed. A point light source was positioned over the drum almost touching the print. Light reflected from the print then entered a photocell generating a current. The assembly containing the light source and photocell scanned from left to right across the rotating drum. The current generated by the photocell was proportional to the amount of light, lighter tones in the photo producing more current. This current was then converted to a tone. It was this tone that was sent over the wire to the receiving unit. The receiving unit was identical to the sending unit. But here the process was reversed. The tone was converted back to an electric current. A sheet of photosensitive paper rather than a print was on the drum. The point source of light then exposed the paper. The whole process was fairly slow and took several minutes. Resolution on the early machines was rather poor.