How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
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Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#2Tangential, but was there ever some form of fibre or telephony connection for news crews in 1990s? Microwave trucks excluded.
I ask this because I swear, as a kid, I’ve seen a cameramen open up a telecom/telephone box and connect something to it. I assumed it was for an uplink back to the station to transmit video.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#3Tangential, but was there ever some form of fibre or telephony connection for news crews in 1990s? Microwave trucks excluded. I ask this because I swear, as a kid, I’ve seen a cameramen open up a telecom/telephone box and connect something to it. I assumed it was for an uplink back to the station to transmit video.
Absolutely. From the advent of radio broadcasting telephone lines were used for everything, audio and even DC signalling to control relays. All remote radio broadcasts used at least two lines. One for sending sound back to the station and a 2nd pair (telephone lines are a balanced pair of wires) for "cue" that came from the master control room to the remote site.
Since most transmitters were located outside of city limits, equalized telephone lines were used to send the sound from master control to the transmitter.
This was the most common and cheapest way to make the connection to the transmitter until the advent of inexpensive microwave equipment. And microwave links have a nasty habit of fading out during tropospheric inversions so they were actually not as reliable, over long distances, as a phone line with a backup phone line that took an alternate path. (first hand experience here. Ya I'm that old) :-)
Most people today have no idea how you transmit analogue audio faithfully and reliably over long distances, via wires. Telephone engineers figured it out over 100 years ago.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#4In it's simplicity it is genius. I had no clue this was a thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirephoto
I really like these old "explaining" films. The pedagogical level is far higher than what seems common today. And the they take their time to convey the message.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#5That is some electric age magic and is really neat.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#6Tangential, but was there ever some form of fibre or telephony connection for news crews in 1990s? Microwave trucks excluded. I ask this because I swear, as a kid, I’ve seen a cameramen open up a telecom/telephone box and connect something to it. I assumed it was for an uplink back to the station to transmit video.
I know ISDN was used for this kind of thing for a good while.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#7Tangential, but was there ever some form of fibre or telephony connection for news crews in 1990s? Microwave trucks excluded. I ask this because I swear, as a kid, I’ve seen a cameramen open up a telecom/telephone box and connect something to it. I assumed it was for an uplink back to the station to transmit video.
I know ISDN was used for this kind of thing for a good while.
Yes, ISDN was the higher priced product offered by the telcos but ISDN was not available until the 1980s. Radio broadcasting started over 60 years earlier and analogue lines were the only option.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#8In it's simplicity it is genius. I had no clue this was a thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirephoto I really like these old "explaining" films. The pedagogical level is far higher than what seems common today. And the they take their time to convey the message.
>I really like these old "explaining" films. The pedagogical level is far higher than what seems common today. And the they take their time to convey the message.
I wonder what happened? I have been blown away by some of the older explainer videos from the 40s and 50s, esp. some of the military training videos for vehicle repair, electrical engineering, etc. Very concise and very clear explanations, always with visual examples. Today, we have things like 3brown1blue that are kind of like that, but in general you don't see information transfer like this either online or in school (at least not in my experience).
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#9I have some old wire photos in a particular set of movie memorabilia I've been constructing from press kits, pamphlets, film cells, foreign posters, slides, lobby cards, et al.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#10In it's simplicity it is genius. I had no clue this was a thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirephoto I really like these old "explaining" films. The pedagogical level is far higher than what seems common today. And the they take their time to convey the message.
> The pedagogical level is far higher than what seems common today.
This is a growing pet peeve of mine. I used to think that advancing media formats and productions tools would generally make conveying knowledge faster, better and deeper. Instead, we see most media intentionally engaging in overall 'dumbification'. It's not just more content being shorter or more summarized, as I'm trying to compare 'apples to apples' here in terms of content targeting, length etc.