The press was already sending photos by telephone in the 1930s!

In today’s world, capturing an event on a simple mobile device can go viral in no time. But, that wasn’t always the case. Let’s go back in time, to a time when the press didn’t have that luxury. Imagine the challenge: transmitting information over unstable phone lines and sending photographs through traditional channels. However, in the 30s, a new player emerged: Wirephoto. This forgotten gem of technology made it possible to transmit photographs over phone lines, revolutionizing journalism in its entirety…

Today, a photographer needs only an internet connection and a mobile device or computer to send his or her images to the four corners of the world. In the early 20th century, the reality was quite different. A letter containing photos could take between two and four days to arrive at its destination, in the best case, and disappear forever, in the worst case.

The urgency for newspapers to get news out "as soon as possible" was (and remains) palpable, but photographs were a real challenge... untilWirephoto arrival. Descendant of the Telediagraph, designed by Ernest A. Hummel in 1895, the Wirephoto system became established in the mid-1930s, facilitating the transmission of photographs by telephone. Its success generated a real race for innovation to reduce costs, optimize the portability of equipment, and increase the speed of sending. I imagine that you are curious to discover this system!

Wirephoto: transmitting photographs by telephone in the 30s

This 1937 "Spot News" news video gives us a very impressive glimpse into the Wirephoto system, illustrating how the press could obtain in minutes what used to take days. A mobile crew (housed in a van) would drive up to a telephone pole to make a connection. The photo would then be processed in the van and placed on a cylinder before being transmitted.

This transmission was done line by line (or rather column by column). The photo rotated on the cylinder, illuminated by a light beam. The latter scanned the photo from top to bottom, while the cylinder also moved laterally, thus covering the entire surface of the image. The light, amplified by an optical system, struck a photoelectric cell. The latter captured the variations in the intensity of the light and transformed them into a signal transmissible by telephone line.

At the other end, the signal was picked up by a receiver system equipped with a neon lamp (which reacted very quickly to electrical changes). In this way, the lamp's light exposed a photographic negative mounted on a cylinder with the same dimensions and rotation parameters as the original. It was then simply a matter of processing the negative in the traditional way and preparing the image for publication in the press.

To explain the principles of this process more simply, the report takes an example that uses a rope wound on two cylinders. This shows how the information from the photo is transmitted column by column and reconstructed at the other end of the wire.

But in the end, the most impressive thing about it all is that this system is 100% analog : there is absolutely nothing digital in this process.

Wirephoto ran like clockwork for decades. The Associated Press even dedicated it to him a whole article to celebrate his 85th birthday, a must-see!