From Stunts to Snapshots: The Dawn of Instant News Photography in the late 1930s

[Music] [Applause] what or and austrich all right what's your address hello Mr Smith did you release the second bond issue in uh December yeah all right your cat did walk Mrs Harris really all right okay listen Mark some crazy stunt man is going to try taking off in an airplane from the top of an automobile this afternoon out in the valley sounds like a story hold it Jack take off from an automobile on a dirt road can he make it well be a good picture either way I'll send mag out with a snapper it's 40 Mi out to the valley we'll never make today's paper a wire photo will make it if they pull it by 4:00 Hello Joel I'm sending McIntyre and a photographer down get started for the valley right away yeah some guy's got to speed the life's blood of a newspaper speed speed speed train Telegraph airplane telephone and radio get the story get it to the paper get the paper on the street what time do you start Marvin right now better warm up the Machine Head ready for a hookup [Applause] [Music] give me this the rush okay lights out every available development of Science and Engineering has been utilized to get the story to the reader in the shortest possible time and now the latest Miracle of news Gathering sending pictures by wire Has Lifted the curtain on a new era in newspaper history traveling almost as fast as the telephone story wired photos now go across the continent with the speed of light long distance superviser I want a clear circuit to the Daily News for picture transmission please keep this line clear here's the Daily News go ahead please wide worldwired photo this mobile unit number one in the valley ready with pictures of stunt car and airplane give me your [Music] signal although it took years to perfect the technique of sending pictures by wire is comparatively simple it's not a matter of sending the whole picture at once but of separating the picture into Fine Lines sending those lines over a wire and assembling them at the other end let's suppose we have a picture or a pattern which we want to send to another location and the only way to send it is through a small tube for our purpose we'll make this picture on closely wound string now if we start at one end of the picture taking it line by line or string by string in proper order we can run the string through the tube and assemble it at the other end line by line until we again have the original pattern that is exactly what we do in wired photo transmission but we now take the picture apart electrically and translate it into units that we can send over a wire the units are lines all of the same width but of different tones of gray if we have a given number of lines in a given space the tonal value of the page the difference between dark gray and light gray is determined by the density of the lines if the lines vary in density they will form a pattern instead of changing lines into a pattern wired photo transmission is simply a matter of breaking up the pattern or picture into lines this process is called scanning a light is focused on the picture and as the drum revolves this light scans the picture from top to bottom on this line at the same time the drum is moving slowly along in front of the light so that every part of the picture is scanned if we stop the drum and look inside the case then remove the condensing and amplifying apparatus leaving only the optical system we see that as this light strikes each part of the picture it is reflected back through a lens and an aperture the aperture allows only 100th of an inch of the picture to pass through at a time so that the picture is scanned in Fine Lines the light that gets through the aperture goes into the photoelectric cell this cell contains a plate made of a metal that has a distinct reaction to light electric current will pass more freely through the plate when it is exposed to a lot of light very little electric current will pass through if the cell is dark therefore when there is a white spot on the picture a lot of light is reflected from it into the photoelectric cell and a lot of current passes through the plate if there is a dark spot on the picture little or no light is reflected from it onto the plate and very little current will pass through it the current is then radiated into the receiver of the telephone set where the telephone coils pick up the energy or current and send it over the line to the wired photo receiving set on the receiving machine these currents are then transferred into corresponding lines on a photographic negative wrapped on a similar drum let's stop this drum and look inside the light that reaches the negative comes from a neon tube into which our current has been fed a neon tube is used because it will react more quickly to current than an ordinary tube with lots of current it immediately becomes bright and with less current the tube dims quickly an opening on this machine similar to the one on the sending machine allows only a small amount of light to go through to the negative at one time the whole story of wired photo transmission then is simply this a lamp light scans the original picture a white spot on the picture makes a lot of current lots of current makes lots of light on on the receiving machine and so exposes the negative more heavily at that point a black spot on the picture reflects no light back into the photoelectric cell no current passes over the telephone line the neon tube remains dim and the negative is not exposed we have merely Unwound the original by lines in terms of Lights and Shadows and wound it up again on the negative the negative now goes through the regular routine it is developed and printed and made into a half tone engraving called a cut put into the form it goes with the page to be made into a mat then a mold then a part of the Roaring presses before the Advent of wire photos days were required to send a picture from coast to coast by train and hours by airplane now it is only a matter of minutes after a news event has occurred before newspapers all over the country are carrying pictures that tell the story more graphically and completely than the printed word pictures sent from any location by simply picking up a telephone and calling the paper e [Music]