Crazy what we had to do before fully digital circuits.
Also, that GO/STOP traffic “light”!!!
How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
31–40 of 117 posts
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#32How did they get the incandescent bulb on the receiving end to switch on and off fast enough to avoid blurring the picture?
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Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#33In 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 hard part was synchronization. We're used to synchronization being easy today, but it was really hard to synchronize anything until the 1980s, when phase-locked loops became easy and cheap.
Does the belinograph need syncing though? I imagine you would just have a waste ribbon around the photo and start it after the call with say a delay you both agreed too. Or maybe you could send light in some known pattern with a starter strip and the receiver could look at the lamp.
Attenuation most have been a problem though? I guess you could send some sort of calibration photo to adjust gain? I don't think practical FM signal modulation was a thing yet in the 30s?
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#34Even older is Jacquards self portrait on 24000 punched cards - a 2Mpixel image in 1839
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#35In 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 visua…
They were produced to convey information, not to generate clicks and ad views.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#361930s? These machines were widely in use even in the very end of the Soviet era like in 1989 or so, in the USSR. I personally seen them in operation in post offices being a kid. I think the very last of them fell out of use when modern faxes appeared but just like telegrams existed for a while when email was already a thing, i think these stayed formally available even if not in demand, well into 1990s.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#37I love this. It's so immensely simple. Truly human technology. We need to burn all computers and limit technology to this level.
Long live the Butlerian Jihad!
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#38In 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 apple…
What’s interesting is you also see the is was sponsored by Chevrolet (on the title screen), so it seems monetization-wise, it’s no different than today when YouTubers have a sponsor read at the start of a video. I just wonder if then it’s simply a matter of more creators competing for less ad-money-per-person, which leads to the kind of “optimized” content we see today.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#39In 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. And the they take their time to convey the message.
I think that is true for some content, but there's certainly a contingent of content creators out there now putting out a lot of good technical explainer videos. They're doing it far better than your typical mass media content producers.