How Photos Were Transmitted by Wire in the 1930s
I didn’t know what to expect from this 1937 video explanation of how wire photos were transmitted to newspapers, but a double stunt sequence featuring an airplane and a death-defying photographer was not anywhere on my bingo card. This starts kinda slow but it picks up once they get into the completely fascinating explanation of how they sent photographs across the country using ordinary telephone lines. The whole setup was portable and they just hacked into a wire on a telephone pole, asked the operator to clear the line, and sent a photo scan via an analog modem. Ingenious!
The Wikipedia page about wire photos is worth a read — French designers argued that the technology was responsible for an early form of fast fashion.
After World War II at haute couture shows in Paris, Frederick L. Milton would sketch runway designs and transmit his sketches via Bélinographe to his subscribers, who could then copy Parisian fashions. In 1955, four major French couturiers (Lanvin, Dior, Patou, and Jacques Fath) sued Milton for piracy, and the case went to the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court. Wirephoto enabled a speed of transmission that the French designers argued damaged their businesses.
(via the kid should see this)
Comments 2
Hi, journalist here, this wild technology was still in use into the early 90s at least. I remember working at a little paper in South Carolina when AP rolled out an early way to see photos on a computer screen instead of waiting for the wacky old spinning drum machines to spit out prints, one by one, that you'd physically thumb through. It felt like magic. But truth be told, the spinning drum thing was also magic.
You can read more about wire photos on Tedium: Pushing Photos Through Wires.
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