Evening star., 1934-12-24
STARS WIREPHOTO
SERVICE is TERMED
SCIENTIFIC TRIUMPH
Continued From First Page.)

for news transmission. At that time
Kent Cooper, the assistant to the
late Melville Stone and now general
manager Of the Associated Press,
sought to solve with automatic
printers the problem of news dis
tribution to papers in New York
City. Reliance on telegraph, telephone
and messenger had not sufficed.
Printers Doubled Output.
These automatic printers. convert
ing electrical impulses into printed
letters on typewriting machines in
stead of into dots and dashes, could
transmit news at double the maximum
of the day-that Is, at go words
minute. This was another of the
revolutionary steps in the mechani-
cal development Of the modern news
paper. The first printer circuit en-
braced 20 machines in New York
City alone. The first wirephoto cir
cult, by comparison. embraces "a ma
chimes from the Atlantic to the Pa
cific and from Minnesota to Texas.
The success of the automatic
printers in New York caused a second
circuit to be set up from New York
to Boston. The syetem has been
rapidly extended. Today The Evening
Star, for example, is connected with
a wire network Of the Associated
Press, which operates 5000 automatic
printers, carrying q word q second
to newspapers in every State, Cuba
and Mexico, and linked with q SIM
liar network Of the Canadian Press
serving newspapers in Canada. Only
four Morse circuits remain in oper-
alton. Over this system of wires move
more than 100000 words of news
every "a hours.
Inch a Minute Photos.
With the speed Of news transmits
sion quadrupled and the daily word
age multiplied by 13 since 1900, sew
eral years ago steps were taken to
give reality to the longtime dream Of
transmission Of pictures side by side
with the news. But an immense
amount Of arrangement and mechan-
ical development were necessary to
expand the telephotograph principles
and equipment Of the 1920s-they
were marvels In their day but now
seem rather antiquated-into the sys-
tenn which The Evening Star will in
augurate next Tuesday. This sys-
TEN will transmit pictures at the rate
of an inch a minute by electrical i'm
pulses moving 186,000 miles a second
from each of "a stations to all the
others in a single operation.
Telephotography in the United
States has had long incubation
period. 1t dates back, in fact, to
1875 when the strange properties of
the selenium cell first became known
to science. Only II years ago the
apex Of such efforts was the "tele-
photograver," q device for coding pic
lures and letters and numbers, which
could be transmitted by telegraph.
This was not an effort to transmit
photograph, but means Of enabling
a newspaper. which had Q picture to
describe 1t so accurately to q news
paper which wanted it, that the latter
could reproduce it faithfully.
Hour Needed for DECIDING
Using a principle Of analytical ge-
ometry, and checkered chart In
which every line was designated by q
letter or figure, the sender coded
the picture so as to show how a
pencil point moved to make q line
where it began, which direction It
took, and where 1t stopped. The
codes ran from 800 words up. A
small picture could be decoded in an
hour. The lines made up by the de-
coder, with the aid of q similar chart,
formed the outlines Of the picture,
which was then shaded and COM
pleted with the guidance Of further
code and description.
Obviously this somewhat clumsy de-
vice had no great possibilities for
daily use. Nevertheless the "tele-
photograver" during its short lifetime
had to its credit several beats" One
was picture Of the Dempsey Gibbons
night at Shelby, Mont, July 4, 1923,
which newspapers from Boston to Los
Angeles reproduced the next morning.
Another was the first picture Of the
Japanese earthquake the same year.
4 telephotograver operator met the
steamship President Pierce in Homo
lulu with the first pictures Of the
disaster and sent in code to the United
States q view Of the ruins Of the
American Embassy In Toxic.
The next step was to make reproduc-
ton electrically on the chart system,
but researchers were increasingly in
terested not in mere mechanical re-
production but in Photographic princi-
Piles involving the effect of light on
chemicals. At about this time ap-
peared a telepicture process enabling
transmission of small picture, with
coarse detail, in an hour and Q half,
but Is soon was discarded as i'm
practical.
The first telephotograph system In
the United States was inaugurated by
the American Telephone & Telegraph
T.