Wirephoto

Wirephoto, telephotography or radiophoto is the sending of photographs by telegraph, telephone or radio. Technologically and commercially, the wirephoto was the successor to Ernest A. Hummel's Telediagraph of 1895, which had transmitted electrically scanned shellac-on-foil originals over a dedicated circuit connecting the New York Herald and the Chicago Times Herald, the St. Louis Republic, the Boston Herald, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Édouard Belin's Bélinographe of 1913, which scanned using a photocell and transmitted over ordinary phone lines, formed the basis for the Wirephoto service. In Europe, services similar to a wirephoto were called a Belino. Western Union transmitted its photograph in 1921. AT&T followed in 1924, and RCA began sending Radiophotos in 1926. The first wirephoto systems were slow and did not reproduce well. In 1929, Dr. Vladimir Zworykin, an electronics engineer working for Western Electric, came up with a system that produced a better reproduction and could transmit a full page in approximately one minute. In the 1930s, wirephoto machines of any reasonable speed were very large and expensive and required a dedicated phone line. News media firms like Associated Press used expensive leased telephone lines to transmit wirephotos. In the mid-1930s a technology battle began for less expensive portable wirephoto equipment that could transmit photos over standard phone lines. The Associated Press began its Wirephoto service in 1935 and held a trademark on the term "AP Wirephoto" from 1963 to 2004. The first AP photo sent by wire depicted the December 1934 crash of a small plane in New York's Adirondack Mountains. When the U.S. Navy airship crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, the AP Wirephoto transmitted its first drawing — a conceptual sketch by staff artist Noel Sickles of the crash and search for survivors. According to Sickles, the Wirephoto staff initially didn't want to transmit the drawing because it was not a photo.