Fax machines go way back to the 1800s, before phones, surprisingly old! Another classic is Tim Hunkin’s secret life of the fax machine https://youtu.be/yuUyt9RG7pk which features a clip from the video in TFA.
Older even than the Pony Express.
How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
81–90 of 117 posts
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
I pretty much use YouTube as a MTV replacement to watch music videos only, so won't speak to the quality of instructional material you find there, but I was still in the military as recently as 12 years ago and the training material in the military was still terrific. This includes unclassified material, though I don't know how you'd find it as a civilian if, for whatever reason, you were interested in learning how t…
I'm not in the US, so that sprawl sounds like my only option if I wanted to see what was available.
Where should I start looking? If there's enough high quality content, it might be worth it to download entire websites and index everything to classify and surface things.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#83For a slightly later version of this: My most popular YouTube upload is the telecopier scene from Bullitt, where you can see the police use the latest and greatest "fax" technology of 1968. I uploaded the video without almost no information, but in an surprising twist, a lot of the youtube comments are actually pretty informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQGAaCSFlJI
I like how it's nearly two minutes of men standing absolutely motionless, with a completely stationary camera, with no score, no building tension, no close-ups showing emotion or what we are supposed to be feeling, as they listen to a whirring sound. Riveting television
Are you perhaps being sarcastic? Because it's a great scene. The whole movie's great on the same basis. It's classic film that has the authentic feel of the period, for those who weren't alive then, and lets people simply experience what's happening on the screen.
The devices you mention are what makes most movies unwatchable. The over the top and increasingly forced devices used to essentially manipulate the viewer, lest there's any ambiguity as to what they "should" be feeling. No room for subtlety, just shove it down the viewer's throat.
They're a great alternative to fine acting, directing and cinematography that's able to speak for itself.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Does survivor bias account for this? Only the best/most worthwhile videos from the "old times" are archived. Right now, we see every piece of crap uploaded to YouTube. No doubt there's awesome video content being created today - Smarter Every Day by Destin Sandlin seems to fit - but it's surrounded by junk.
No, almost every piece of non-live media that was produced from the 1940s onwards went into huge broadcast archives. Some of the media it was stored on was destroyed, or otherwise reused for newer broadcasts, but much of what survived wasn't due to the inherent quality of the content and we have vast amounts of it remaining. Take this compilation of 1960s commercials from the Prelinger archives [0]. These obviously weren't produced to the same quality as the Chevrolet videos, but it's also not drastically different from contemporaneous syndicated content. The pacing is slower than modern ads, most include practical demonstrations of why the product is better/necessary, and there's just less optimization towards the visual frenzy we see today.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#85In 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…
Survivor bias?
Maybe they made plenty of trash explainer videos, and those didn't survive.
Though for economic reasons, that's clearly less true than today.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#86In 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 and the production values both have the same source - this is an advertisement. The Jam Handy Organization made what we would now call sponsored content. It is unfair to compare the production values of this to modern educational content or modern amateur content - they're operating at different scales and with different resources.
In the past - as in now - media production is driven by the demands of capital.
We can wax nostalgic for commercials all we want but comparing it to a different modern product does a disservice to the past and media workers in the present.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Have you seen Technology Connections on YouTube?
A criticism I have with not just Technology Connections but plenty of similar channels is that each video seems to just be whatever they thought of doing next.
I would love something of the same caliber of quality but with a blueprint for an entire series that would cover the compete gamut of a subject.
A popular YouTuber mentioned on HN, and deservedly so, is Ben Eater. His series on building a 6502 computer on a breadboard is exactly the kind of blueprint-driven content I would like to see more of. He had a goal of beginning from a clock circuit and ending up with an 8-bit breadboard computer displaying ASCII to an LCD display and he delivered it in a series of chapters.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#88In 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…
What happened is that the average attention span fell bellow 2 seconds. There is a book. “Amusing ourselves to death”. YOU can watch those videos. The average person today will be bored and tune out.
Re: How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Youtube is full of videos like that. A few sample excellent channels: https://www.youtube.com/@animagraffs https://www.youtube.com/@engineerguyvideo https://www.youtube.com/@Lesics/videos The problem is more that they are drowned under the volume of content available.
If YouTube had a Dewey decimal style clickable directory it would be a lot easier to find content.
A librarian friend had the same complaint.
The problem is that libraries Dewey decimals are managed by librarians who want to sort things correctly. YouTube would be managed by uploaders who wants their stuff to be managed _incorrectly_.
YouTube recommendations and search is a super interesting problem not just because of the scale but also because uploaders are an adverse opponent, trying to keyword stuff their spam.