1930s How Photographs Were Transmitted by Wire: Spot News (1937) - CharlieDeanArchives

[@stormthrush37]

Explaining how this works with a picture printed on rope is actually a really great analogy!

[@Binary_Omlet]

Yep! It could even be extended to how 3d printing works too. These old films always make the best examples to get an idea across!

[@AudioJellyfish]

"Like putting too much air in a balloon"

[@newp0rt]

this entire video was explained like the viewer is a mentally impaired 4 year old. aint no way it took 9 whole minutes to explain this damn.

[@plixplop]

Some of these old technical film reels had really clever analog methods of explaining concepts like this. Very cool!

[@starstencahl8985]

@@newp0rt Show some respect. This film is great, it brings across the subject perfectly. And it’s made for anyone to understand. Ever thought about the average level of technical education in the 1930s? How’s anyone without any prior knowledge going to understand you, when all you do is speak in fancy technical terms because you want to sound intellectual. There’s no use for that in a basic film for all audiences like this

[@bridgecross]

I like how the newsman pulls up, a total stranger, and he's already on a first-name basis with the stunt team. Back in those days, there were only about 73 people in the world, so everybody knew everybody.

[@bakatoroi]

73 people in the western world. The rest of the world hadn't discovered numbers yet so there are no official figures but it's estimated there were around 2000, maybe more in Antarctica.

[@kidkique]

Yes but the cameraman may have gotten there before the cameraman who was shooting the cameraman so by the time the cameraman's cameraman got there the cameraman may have already met the stunt pilot

[@aaronjaben7913]

that's ridiculous. there were at least 100

[@shawnalfaro6943]

and those people all wore suits.

[@bridgecross]

@@shawnalfaro6943 and fedora hats when appropriate

[@gitpusher2400]

I’m always amazed at the quality of these old-school educational videos. They somehow manage to distill complex topics into something that’s approachable for the layperson, but without missing any important technical details. I wish we had videos like this for every topic!

[@percthirtington4588]

Bro right? I'm dumb asf and I understand this concisely

[@afirdaus068]

Agree!

[@seanshapuron]

person who is not in the profession

[@rangerjones5531]

Schools today would have to put the information in a rap video or kids won’t watch....there are students who graduated high school and can’t read or write worth a damn, and they give them a diploma 🐵🍌

[@SixthyGTi]

Exactly my thoughts...

[@killosama72]

I am blown away....I had no idea this was possible...especially in the 1930s. Absolutely incredible a 1930s modem.

[@Bartooc]

First use of fax was in 1860, so this 80 years old video was already 70 years behind.

[@KCJazzKeys]

That’s cool, but can it play “Doom”?

[@UrianErreErre]

​@@KCJazzKeys Maybe

[@Eduardo_Espinoza]

It's like a magic trick

[@ghostsofnormmacdonald2446]

@@KCJazzKeys I got a phonograph to play Duke Nukem 3D so anything's possible!

[@albear972]

That was an absolutely genius visual demonstration of the photo fax. And while the photographer was taking the pictures under very questionable conditions, he didn't lose his hat.

[@JB-yb4wn]

Well they had really good hat tech back then.

[@FloppyDorito]

That's because losing your hat in the 30s was like losing your phone.

[@xylfox]

But his head when too near on the propeller😅

[@buttyboy100]

The darkroom in the back of the van appeared to be very effectively stabilised as the staff were not at all bothered by the movement of the van over the dirt road.😂

[@stoopidbastid6420]

Staples

[@k_a_bizzle]

“Will he make it? It’ll make a good picture either way.” Glad to see things have never changed.

[@Helix_22]

Can we all agree that their animations back then were on point.

[@AndrewTSq]

I was just as amazed by the animations as how they did this back in the day.

[@goldenhippie6352]

What are you talking about? On average people back then had way more intelligence than anyone today.

[@AndrewTSq]

@@goldenhippie6352 not sure who you reply to, and none of the people you could reply to sad anything about people being dumb back then..

[@oh_knee7173]

@@goldenhippie6352 this is true the more lead we are exposed to the lower asre iqs are geting we dumb

[@goldenhippie6352]

@@AndrewTSq to the guy who deleted his text after I called him out obviously

[@jorik41]

This makes the invention of the tv seem like a very natural progression of the technology of the day. -Sending pictures via signal - the principle of moving pictures using individual pictures - cathode ray tube to display signals. - radio for broadcasting signals. - electronic speakers and vacuumetube amplifiers It was all they just needed to combine it and make it of course faster and more efficient.

[@SeanOfEarth]

Except for the fact that Baird demonstrated television more than a decade before this

[@jarivuorinen3878]

@@SeanOfEarth Yes. But it's not merely about technology existing, it's about adopting that technology and investing into it to make it widespread enough to be useful. So it has to be relatively cheap, reliable and widespread to be useful. This requires engineering, optimizing and marketing, then producing the devices and teaching the protocols to everyone involved and whatnot.

[@DrBovdin]

The telefacsimile was actually a quite mature technique by the 1930s, but it would indeed remain a specialist niche for some time. I am uncertain as to if it was a novelty to be able to use any telephone line, but it must have come across as quite futuristic for the general populace, who were not specifically interested in electronics and other technology.

[@SeanOfEarth]

@@jarivuorinen3878 it's about the order of operations. You cannot use this technology to invent something that already exists.

[@jarivuorinen3878]

@@SeanOfEarth Of course not. I agree with you that the system shown in the video wasn't the first time pictures or photos were transfered through phone lines or any photonic or electric medium, there were working systems before this. What I meant by my comment is that the implementation of this system did require much more than merely understanding the technology behind it. It was the 1930's after all, funding being the key word here

[@marcoscorsolini8803]

I am always amazed at the amount of work required to make such videos. The drawings, the animations, the orchestra live recorded...

[@georgehill3087]

On top of those, they actually sent somebody to fly that plane, had somebody on top of the car to take the photo, another car to film the plane and the news car, and made an actual newspaper.

[@elFulberto]

@@georgehill3087 and somebody manufactured that rope spool thing to illustrate how the scanning works.

[@josemolina566]

As a telecomunications engineer with image processing background and photographer enthusiast, I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed this video. Finally KZbin's algorithm nails it with me. People that worked on this have already passed, but if they had not and I got to meet them I would definitely behave as a damned groupie.

[@nuassul]

Ahora si dio lo mejor de lo mejor este algoritmo recomendando algo que si vale la pena ver :D

[@StegoMan]

Te pasa como a mi Jose, llevo 15 años en ingeniería de telecomunicaciones y más de 25 años haciendo fotos... este vídeo es genial

[@Ciervorelajado]

This trend os “as a [insert topic related profession]” is so narcissistic…

[@StegoMan]

@@Ciervorelajado cómo??

[@ceoatcrystalsoft4942]

@@StegoMan he's just jealous

[@nagualdesign]

What I found most impressive is the large rooms with ample headroom that fit inside the back of that small van, and how stable it was while the van was still moving along at speed on a bumpy track. I guess the men inside the van were very small and the van had a state-of-the-art suspension.

[@JohnGrishHam]

Also how the mans hat stayed on while taking pictures from the top of a moving car

[@autophyte]

That's just the point they were trying to make subliminally - that the new Chevrolet panel vans have extraordinarily good suspension. These Jam Handy films were commissioned by General Motors to promote Chevrolet. As to the small man - well, they just hoped you wouldn't notice.

[@thedave7760]

@@JohnGrishHam Didn't you see he had his leg under the top bar of the roof rack to make sure he wouldn't go flying off.

[@sir.richardarmstrong3rd759]

I guess they just don’t make things the way they use to 😂🤣😂🤣

[@OneAdam12Adam]

@@sir.richardarmstrong3rd759 They don't. People are too cheap to pay for things made with quality materials and quality craftsmanship.

[@Fishwithadeagle]

Just the sheer ability to translate electronics to physical explanation is absolutely amazing in these films.

[@Mostlyharmless1985]

What's interesting to me is this is still pretty much EXACTLY how it works today. Shine a light on something, measure what's reflected back, convert it to a signal.

[@BringDHouseDown]

the part that I don't get is how it is converted into a signal and how that's interpreted, how the devices work to interpret those electrons or why there's even a higher or lower current based on the light input, what are the materials made out of that react that way, what the heck is a neon tube, so many questions.

[@JB-yb4wn]

@@BringDHouseDown It was almost the same technology that gave you "talkies". A selenium band ran on the side of the film. Selenium is light sensitive, so when you play a sound loudly, the device reflecting onto the selenium metal would emit more light the light would be then translated into a sound by a speaker that would read the contrasts of the selenium metal. The signal here is sent as a pulse, instead of light, it is a flow of electrons. Think of it as a record player. The reflections of light are turned into a light or dark pulse that are zoomed down a line and put together at the other end like the string diagram showed. What the light is broadcasting is the contrasts of grey. Neon are the lights that you see in outdoor display signs, they are usually tubular, mostly used for the "open" signs. Amazing that they had this level of technology back in the thirties.

[@nkag545]

@@BringDHouseDown Checkout photoelectric effect

[@RajinderYadav]

@@BringDHouseDown it's a photo-eletric cell converts light into electricity, causing a current to flow. The level of the current is then converted back to the intensity of the light used on the film.

[@mrben9000]

​@@BringDHouseDown More light, more energy. More energy = more electricity. Same when converting back to light. today, almost all electronics are digital and therefore send series of 1s and 0s. Much more complicated but same principle.

[@computer_toucher]

These old instructional videos could well be shown in classrooms today. Especially the 1940's Military training videos. Explaining concepts in such intuitive ways, in detail.

[@e-remes7029]

I use them all the time.

[@Eduardo_Espinoza]

Yup, my instructor exactly

[@TrasherBiner]

I find amazing that they had the building blocks of a modem , scanning analogically light reflected, coded into the phone and then printed it in a negative. In 1937 no less. This must have been absolutely ridiculously expensive machinery back then.

[@megatesla]

Photosensitive tubes and the rest of the electronics were available and probably not that expensive. I think the biggest challenge was to get a good phone line and get the timing correct.

[@TrasherBiner]

@@megatesla You raise an important point. I am not that old, but I grew up in the 80's and I remember how noisy phone lines were. This was a challenge even in the dialup and DSL era (and before that the BBS era... pre internet).

[@georgehill3087]

@@TrasherBiner It's why they asked for a line with no traffic to transfer that. I wonder how much that one wire cost.

[@FlorenceSlugcat]

@@georgehill3087s does not apply as much here. The first phone lines capable of carrying multiple calls at once came around the 1950s, with a capacity of 24. Before there, there was a two-calls technology that would quickly switch between two calls and only send you your call. And there was also another technology called the party line, where a few household next to eachother would share the same phone line. Each house would have a different ringtone for people to know who is being called, and in some cases, you could hear your neighbours talking if you picked up your phone. So in this context, an unreserved line really only refers to a line that is not currently in use by a single caller, by two callers in alternation, or by something like 4 households(add or remove 1 or so, it could vary a bit) Reserving a line like that would come at a cost of about the cost fairly similar to a normal call, likely a little more to ensure it is a clean line. Maybe up to four times that cost, which would match up against a party line. Starting in the 50s, this cost would have significantly increased as sudently lines began transitioning from carrying one caller or party line to 24 lines. To increase a line’s capacity at the time, carriers simply bundled multiple cables into a single bigger cable. So you could have had a big cable with a dozen small cables in it, each carrying one caller or party, and one phone call at a time each. That is what they would be reserving. Not the big cable. Just a small one in there. This method of bundling cables is still used today. A fiber cable, no matter what, is still limited by how many different wavelenghts it can carry. And how much data it can carry. The difference is that now, each of thoses small cables each carry multiple calls

[@percussion44]

Look up how sound was added to movies back in the day. Very similar. The audio is encoded photonically in the film!

[@crooker2]

It's really amazing to think just how much physical effort went into creating a newspaper back in the day. And they did it every day... Day after day... For decades. It's no wonder that the newspaper was the frontline in news until television took over.

[@MattExzy]

Looking back at the newspaper, they must have been magical at the time.

[@geoffbarratt2732]

I was stunned to see the mouthpiece being used as the receiver from the scanner to become the transmitter, and the guy climbing the Telepone pole to connect up. it been so long since we had analogue modems using the phone line like that. we are so lucky living with the results of the pioneers . Great clip

[@Thirdbase9]

One of the earliest mobile phones.

[@downundarob]

Fax machines work in the same principle

[@kidkique]

This is just the beginning too! we're still in the baby steps when it comes to information technology

[@DavidMcCoul]

Well said!

[@almostfm]

I know that up through a good part of the 1980s, you could see the byline "AP Wirephoto" on pictures in the paper (I'm sure UPI had something similar, but our local paper primarily worked with AP

[@michaeldonnelly2977]

The creators & animators of these educational videos back in the day really were talented at explaining complex topics to the average person. I’ve watched a bunch of these videos on everything from how electricity works to how to behave in the military, and I’m very impressed with their quality.

[@kaptainkaos1202]

What’s so funny is when I was 12 I attempted to build a system like this, almost 50 years ago. I had to spend many hours at the library reading about the system. I never could get the resolution they had but it was a good try. Years later I hacked a fax machine so I could connect it to my computer and use it as a scanner. I’m such a dork.

[@arbjful]

@@BlondieHappyGuy that’s sublime

[@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648]

I'd expect more problems with optics, reproducers, and sensors than with the rest of the electronics.

[@colt-_-jonson1743]

look up "oney plays saints row reboot" and go to the part where they introduce the "characters" and just think about the waffle guy.

[@soonersciencenerd383]

@@BlondieHappyGuy at least you tried.

[@kaptainkaos1202]

@@BlondieHappyGuy I am so blessed because I have the job of my dreams, a flight test engineer. I’m a Geekess at work and home. Often work is like being at Underwriters Laboratory. Our team will come up with an idea, design and build it, then test. Then comes the fun, how could it possibly go wrong.

[@MarkWick]

This brings back a lot of memories as I was a photojournalist from the early 1970s until about 2010 and I transmitted many photos using a bit more modern equipment, but working the same way, for Associated Press and Reuters. shot on 35mm film, but also developed film and made prints in closets, under stairways, in kitchens, basements, and even in the back of my pickup truck.

[@_arnavmathur]

Sir your like 90 now or what

[@MarkWick]

@@_arnavmathur 72

[@mrmawster9786]

Wow

[@gurvindersingh.1814]

Sir you did a great 👍 job

[@tentacle1984]

That is an amazing career! You must have a collection of memories that may need to be written in book form. Positives and negatives worth reading.

[@A2YU09]

I work as a printer technician,the process in which this is achieved,using electricity,a drum and light to produce an image is almost similar in the way a laser printer operates,really cool stuff to see and admirable.

[@justmayo6097]

Super interesting stuff (:

[@kikuchu.]

Fellow printer tech here as well, I was thinking the same exact thing while watching this! 🤘

[@BikeArea]

I can't emphasize enough the quality of the animations. 😮 This kind of visualization is outstandingly well done and I wouldn't know how to replicate it nowadays without the use of computers. 🥴

[@sarowie]

the crazy part is, that the illustration could - with just a few changes - be used to show how analog TV works. All it needs is a sync signal that can be illustrated and created by a metal strip (very bright signal) for each line and end of frame.

[@RustOnWheels]

@@sarowie In this technique a sync signal is also very much needed though, otherwise start, end and speed could be way off, creating skewed or even randomlike patterns. They did not mention it but I guess a pilot tone was sent along. They also didn’t mention if that time we heard was the signal and if it was the amplitude modulation that seemed to occur was the light modulator. I’m too lazy to look this all up on Google, just mentioning it here 😂

[@KJ-kw7gh]

Old visual demonstrations are the best. I’ve watched some on here about different automobile systems and it makes understanding very intuitive.

[@sevenspec]

​@@KJ-kw7gh there are many differences between 50s education and that of today... That is unless pronouns interest you...

[@dsprocks]

​@@sevenspecYeah it's like society seemed to be going in a good direction with value being placed on being well groomed, dressed, and educated, then one day they decided that makes people too free too hard to lie to and manipulate and started intentionally dumbing down society.

[@scrumtrellecent]

It's remarkable to think about how much technological progress we've made since then, and yet I find myself increasingly desensitized to the incredible advances we see today. It's easy to forget the wonder and amazement that people must have felt in the days of analogue mid-century technology. Watching this video was a humbling reminder of just how far we've come.

[@XMysticHerox]

It's neat how relatively easy this is to understand. Sadly with the modern equivalent you won't understand much without having taken some university level physics courses or an equivalent.

[@ross-carlson]

@@XMysticHerox And that's sad? Why?

[@XMysticHerox]

@@ross-carlson Because it means it is much less accsessible than this older tech. Of course overall it's better but it'd still be nice if more people could grasp the technology they use.

[@showguyer]

Im surprised at the technology they had back then! Had to be some smart cookies back then too.

[@3-DtimeCosmology]

And this is just the very beginning. Today are still the early days.

[@jonathankern5814]

The technical part of this little film -- from about 2:30 to 8:30 -- is beautifully done. These days I often see videos purporting to explain something technical where I suspect the writer doesn't really understand what he's talking about. This video could be used not only to tell people about sending photos by wire in the last century but to show people in this century how to make a complex subject totally intelligible to the layman.

[@sneakypoof]

i absolutely love the analog/mechanical demonstrations.. It's so much easier to understand then just reading or studying a book

[@lancepage1914]

Simple in theory, genius in practice. This is a great example of the step by step processes technology had to go through to as we know it today. Becoming vastly more complicated each time and using the technology and techniques available at the time to simplify what could be. Amazing!

[@thatguyalex2835]

I didn't know this tech existed in the 1930s until two months ago. Am currently working on a crappy sci-fi plot set on an alien world called The Wastelands in 1909 with '30s levels of tech, and they have this technology. An asteroid was heading to their planet, and the astronomers had to send a photo fax of the asteroid's trajectory for analysis, the first use of that technology on their world. The tech and other tech is used to save the city of 3 million people. Now I am on the part where the asteroid hit the ocean, producing a tsunami wiping out most of the New Spork City area. :) Trying to keep this sci-fi plot as realistic as possible, so I incorporate real technology from the 1930s. The name of this tech in the plot I called "wire photography".

[@prltqdf9]

*_ingenious_* in practice

[@RuthvenMurgatroyd]

​@@thatguyalex2835 Why '30s level tech if it's in 1909?

[@NcsAsp]

Finally! I find a video explaining what the only thing without a sequel does. and boy, it didn't need that sequel after all.

[@bloxxberg]

the video also outstanding on an educational level. complex stuff made easy to undertand. well done grand grand grand pa!

[@LucasRodmo]

This is brilliantly explained. Because takes in consideration that the audience will not understand so many new tech in a short time. I wish that workshops, webinars, internet lessons, took this approach more often, because sometimes you just don't have a actual clue about the thing you wanna or have to learn

[@weedlordbonerhitlerii3862]

the wonderful thing is that it's still relevant because digital imagery still works fundamentally the same way

[@JoJoGaminG36]

This is so simple but yet genius, people back then knew how to explain such stuff in a great quality.

[@jdnelms62]

I worked in at a newspaper right out of college in the late 1980's. The analog technology was still essentially the same, only most newsrooms had a wire service department, with dedicated phone lines, teletypes and photo-facsimile machines running 24-hours a day, for each of the wire services such as AP, Knight Ridder and UPI. It was not unusual to see a wire baskets under each of the photo-facsimile machine and teletypes, to catch the prints as they tumbled out all day. Editors looking for interesting non-local filler stories would read through the teletypes and sift through the piles of photos every day.

[@sawilliams]

we are so spoiled now

[@gustavgnoettgen]

Hey, we're watching such pics right now

[@davidjosh5640]

By design…play with all the shiny toys, pay no attention to the men behind the curtain!

[@FirstnameLastname-py3bc]

Apparently not in cars department, even most of off-roaders will fall apart on a road like that runaway

[@enedenedubedene4811]

1930!!!!!!! Kaum zu glauben.👆👆👆👆👆😃😃😃😃 Viele Grüsse aus Germany

[@CrymsonNite]

Bet they made more money back then.

[@luke7750]

What an excellent explanation of how transmitting a photo worked back then

[@arieflaksono9600]

It's like a dial-up modem, but instead it's just a raw content, no dataframe whatsoever, very ingenious!

[@Inetman]

Except that modems (and fax machines) are converting 0s and 1s to analog signal and back (hence the name: MOdulator/DEModulator), and this stuff is purely, 100% analog.

[@jbalazer]

@@Inetman, a modem's modulator is not a digital-to-analog converter. The output of a digital modulator is a digital signal in modulated form. It is not an analog signal. The only thing analog about the old-fashioned dial-up modem is that its digital modulation is designed to be carried over the analog telephone network. Analog signaling means some property of the signal (voltage, power, position, etc.) varies continuously in proportion to the value being encoded. A modulated digital signal is not analog. An analog telephone is analog because the electrical signal's voltage (or power) varies in proportion to the sound pressure level of the sound being transmitted.

[@johnbattista9519]

Fax, a very crude version, was invented in the 1840’s I believe.

[@arieflaksono9600]

just to be clear, nobody gonna expect any digital modulation back in 1930's, the transmitted light intensity would be encoded over audible frequency range, hence it's an analog transmission. i'm just referring on how a phone line have been a backbone of information exchange, people nowadays seems to underestimate the historical weight we've put on those line over some internet connection, yes, but I love internet too.

[@Mi_Fa_Volare]

That's what you call (pure) analog.

[@cyperus4589]

This is such a great explanation. Nowadays things seem to be explained in a rather abstract way, but this is a wonderful description of the technology in play

[@ceoatcrystalsoft4942]

That's because you can't explain things abstractly when they are so advanced

[@kisstune]

@@ceoatcrystalsoft4942 More like using our proprietary process we capture the image once we validate the license through our always on DRM and send it through our proprietary process to clean it up and then we use our proprietary process to send it to the other person where our proprietary process reassembles the image but only if they have a valid license that is validated through our always on DRM.

[@Punisher-1]

These old videos do better a job in explaining things than modern videos.

[@FabiokiOjedaBuitrago]

I work in Tv and digital cinema production field and the rolling rope this is THE BEST explanation I've ever seen on how scaning works. Thank you!

[@axeman3d]

Jam Handy must have made thousands of these educational shorts. Pretty much every one I see has their stamp on it. You can also see why Mystery Science Theatre loved them so much as well, so many fun things to point out.

[@laterlater8348]

the precision needed and the effort to discover that precision without the help of computers, uff hats off.

[@michaelc.3812]

I’m an electrical engineer, and I’m impressed by this early tech.

[@arbjful]

They don’t teach you this stuff in college?

[@volo870]

I am quite surprised that the signal is not amplitude modulated audio. On the contrary - it is depicted as a continuous stream of low frequency brightness value. Shouldn't telephone lines filter out low frequencies?

[@kapralas]

​@@arbjful why would they

[@bobsmoth-iv3sp]

Isn't it still basically the same but with pixels ?

[@grant_111]

@@arbjful Can you imagine how long it would take you to graduate college if they taught you all the history of engineering in every manifestation? Even if they did, why wouldn't someone still be impressed by this early tech? I get people misspeaking and saying something stupid, but typing something stupid is quite impressive when you actually have to think and look at what you thought.

[@TheOriginalJphyper]

What's really crazy is that the ability to send pictures over wire was already over 90 years old when this film came out. The first fax machine was invented for telegraph lines in 1846.

[@FrancescoDedo]

I was thinking that it could be a positive effect of our residual pareidolia. We see patterns in stuff, like telegraph signals. Dots and lines forming, i don't know, a face or a cat, or something like that. Maybe a somewhat creative telegraph user tried to create a picture out of morse signals, like a 19th century emoticon. Next thing you know, engineers are creating the fax and the television out of a lateral thinking event mixed with an ancestral instinct.

[@TheOriginalJphyper]

@@FrancescoDedo Don't believe me? Google it. Don't make assumptions like that. I'm not making this stuff up.

[@rossbrumby1957]

@@TheOriginalJphyper I have a copy of The London Journal 1848 which has an article of the first fax machine to be effectively reliable and put to practical use. Numerous others were working on the idea beforehand, but not very practical or easy to use.

[@g.b.macfuddson2143]

​@@rossbrumby1957 They never said commercially viable or particularly useful, but Alexander Bain did develop a chemical method for sending images between 1843 and 1846. It used a pair of synchronized pendulums as transmitter and receiver. The image actually had to be transferred to a copper plate as lines, which the pendulum could 'scan' as it swung past. The receiver worked by passing the corresponding current from the transmission through a chemically treated paper, which would darken it to show an image. I am guessing your source is referring to Bakewell's work, which followed the same idea as Bain but used a much more practical set of paired rotating cylinders instead of the pendulums. He got a lot of credit after demonstrating a working setup at the 1851 World's Fair, and the 1848 date comes from when he first had a working prototype. Both designs were fairly limited, able to transmit handwriting and simple line images, which is why you also see others credited with inventing the fax machine in later years.

[@daapf8232]

So this is the legendary prequel all sequels were derived from.

[@NackDSP]

If that tone played was an example of the signal it seems to be an amplitude modulated tone. That same tone could be used to drive a synchronous AC motor on both the scanner and the printer so the rotation of the drums would track perfectly at both ends.

[@Philflash]

Yes quartz crystal sync motors.

[@peterduhme2714]

I think phones back then were effectively a wire directly connected from the caller to the receiver once the operator patched them together, so maybe there is not even a need to encode the signal into tones. It's just a wire running from one machine to the other.

[@5roundsrapid263]

Soon after, they started using shortwave radio to send these photos. It was incredibly valuable during WWII. It was used up until at least the 1970’s.

[@michal_king478]

always love the demonstrations in these old documentaries.

[@kjamison5951]

We take a lot of what we have now for granted. It was built in the shoulders of the geniuses who went before.

[@dwindeyer]

Imagine what it was like having newspapers constantly 3-4 days behind, and then opening one and seeing something from yesterday, wondering how on earth that was possible.

[@rossbrumby1957]

Everyday on the nightly news tv, there's semi local, no big deal news that's 3 days old.

[@whistlingsage9817]

...And then realizing that it was just a stupid fluff piece about an airplane stunt that wasn't very impressive, even for the time.

[@NoosaHeads]

All Jam Handy films are outstandingly good, clear, instructive and easily understood.

[@OperationPitbull]

I’m here after watching Walter Cronkite announce the death of JFK. He showed a picture that was wired to their NYC studio shortly after JFK’s death and I was intrigued. Growing up with the internet, I was unaware that wired photo transmission has been around for so long. I saw the photo Cronkite held up and was like… wait.. Cronkite just said JFK was just shot and here he is holding up a picture of the shooting before JFK was pronounced dead by his doctors! How?! Well.. now I know. I am guessing wiring photos lead to the development of the fax machine. Very interesting stuff.

[@Cheesemonk3h]

television was a fully functional technology in the 1920s. mechanical television was limited to 50 lines or so instead of 400 but it worked. the technology they give to the public as toys to placate them and manipulate them is years behind what is known to be possible.

[@tjmarx]

Most things zoomer think are new, are just iterations of old tech or existing societal norms. You stand on the shoulders of giants.

[@mavigogun]

@@Cheesemonk3h Ah, yes- every circumstance can be viewed as a nefarious conspiracy. Must be rough.

[@dfirth224]

Yes, this is where the fax machine came from. This is also how analog TV works. Before wire photo was invented newspapers only had local pictures.

[@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive]

The fax machine predates the telephone. It just didn't become widely used until a century later outside of some major organizations.

[@CottonTailJoe]

This is more amazing than anyone now can realize.

[@nagualdesign]

Even you?

[@imjustsaying2769]

and I just watched the entire video on a device, no one ever could have imagined back then.

[@skybluescholar]

these old 1930s archive tape do a better job of explaining things than most teachers do today

[@osco4311]

That's a benefit of having an entire team of people looking over scripts, supplemental images, and production, versus one person trying to teach a subject they're not necessarily an expert on.

[@JayGee6996]

@@osco4311plus they’re teaching one topic which the viewers are interested in as they’ve clicked on the video. Try teaching 5 whole courses that at least 50% of the audience have no interest in..

[@22mikemike]

Great stuff, thanks for posting! I was looking for a video about AP wirephoto and found this original period piece. Cheers mate.

[@guneethh1201]

Why do videos from this Era explains stuff more clearer and easier than my teacher screaming lessons into my ears

[@daveharden5929]

For sure! Those academic docs of the 1930's/40's explained their subjects very clearly while significantly reducing any further screaming needed as reinforcement. Then again, back then, they didn't need explainers for quantum mechanics, computer science and/or nuclear, aerospace or biochemical engineering just to name a few.....

[@dawright1988]

Very clever! A high school electronics class could easily build one of these nowadays, but to come up with it from nothing is pretty insane. Especially since a lot of the electronic components used were pretty fresh for the time.

[@MadameSomnambule]

When he mentioned light scanning the image, I immediately thought of how modern day scanners work. It's amazing how they thought of how to send electronic scans of photos all the way back then before digital computers were capable of displaying graphics (or even before it existed). It kinda is like faxing in the way we know it today.

[@WATCHMAKUH]

all instructional videos back in the 1900s were the best analogical videos. they explained concepts so easily and clearly. brilliant minds back then

[@mrcydonia]

The solutions they found in the time of analog technology is really mind blowing. I remember seeing a video about an old adding machine that performed calculations using a complex series of gears and levers.

[@Petefx86]

You should see inside an old teletype machine. The things had hundreds of moving parts. It really makes you wonder about how anyone figured out how to make such things work.

[@hey.you.in.the.bushes]

Look up mechanical logic circuits. Super cool.

[@nathonso_edits]

There's just something so much more fascinating about analogue technology, sure the advancements in digital technology have been huge in my lifetime, but it must have been crazy living through that period going from radio to transmitting whole pictures!

[@savyconstruction]

This is all over my head. But simply amazing how someone came up with this stuff and where we are today.

[@Dougohere]

Really interesting and surprising to see how relatively simple the technology was when broken down - it was explained and illustrated to us really well also.

[@tehpanda64]

god I love these old engineering explanation videos. Whoever thought to make them deserves more recognition. How do they all have the same guy doing the voice overs too?

[@WitchKing-Of-Angmar]

Because it is the same guy, saying that to you before some idiot comes on here talking to you about the mid-atlantic accent and how everyone sounded the same which is a complete lie.

[@gavmansworkshop5624]

To think everyone in this video is long gone now. These windows into the past are precious.

[@roblovski300]

This is so simple and yet so genius. Its so interesting to see what people were able to do in the old times with such little instruments

[@crustycurmudgeon2182]

That was a pretty clever system, especially considering the rather primitive state of electronics at the time.

[@XMarkxyz]

Look up the Pantelegraph of Caselli, it was able to do pretty much the same thing but a century earlier, quite anazing, the only limitation being that the image or the writing must be traced in a cunductive ink

[@Therizinosaurus]

todays system is a pretty clever system, especially considering the rather primitive state of electronics at this time

[@halfsourlizard9319]

@@Therizinosaurus Bringo!

[@cactusjackNV]

Was it so "primitive" though?

[@arbjful]

I wouldn’t call it primitive….

[@lox_5017]

This old stuff is cool to watch i can't get enough of it.

[@Zekium]

Before the end, I was wondering how the receiver would print the result and the method used is simply genius !

[@jonathantan2469]

It would project the image on the photo paper like an enlarger... except that it was done line by line on a rotating drum. Also, this step was done in the darkroom with a safelight (usually red or yellow light).

[@sarowie]

@@jonathantan2469 the amazing part is that to a newspaper, this image transfer tech sounded like technobable, except that the input is a photo on a drum and the output is an undeveloped film on a drum. Developing a film and a phone line is all that is needed? We can do that! It involes some tiny rolling drums? Cute, so it is a simple little machine compared to the printing press. That the whole chemistry and process to develop film is an art in it of self, yet was trivial daily to even the smallest news paper. It is brilliant how this technology just "trivially" combines two highly developed and mature technologies in a way intuitive to the traditional process already inuse.

[@jonathantan2469]

@@sarowie Yes. However, at the recipient end it wasn't film that they placed on the drum, but photo paper. It's the same photo paper, perhaps with minor differences, used to make paper prints of pictures from the negative film.

[@ragnarok7976]

Crazy to think that even today most of our communication relies on similar principles of breaking big pieces of information into tiny parts and sending them through wires! Imagine what the people back then would think if they could see what we are watching this on now!

[@M-A-Siddiqui]

The conceptual demo to send the picture line by line at 3:45 is great!!!

[@Lawman212]

I used this technology as late as 1988. I wired a photo from the Raleigh AP bureau to the NYT.

[@tashalino]

Feels like I’m taking a photography class and I’m learning the history behind photos and picture taking. This was really cool to learn about even though society has kind of dropped it in favor of a new method a few decades ago.

[@mathflow-jr]

I just love how the explanations in this kind of videos are so excellent

[@johneygd]

Just mind blowing how ahead they were with such technology almost 90 years ago , just wow.

[@jishcatg]

Did it seem to anyone else like the inside of the van was bigger than the outside?

[@ferencgobor749]

No, those two technician is only 4 feet tall! 😃

[@patio87]

The inside part of the van is a studio set.

[@Wolfie_Rankin]

TARDIS

[@aaronjaben7913]

and how about those safety rails?

[@samholdsworth420]

​@@Wolfie_Rankin this

[@rifqisstandupcomedy2387]

Respect for them. Without their amazing effort there will be no KZbin

[@toomanyhobbies2011]

Thank you for the video, an excellent overview of how images were transferred in the 1930s, with photo-sensitive vacuum tubes on each end. We still do that, but our sensors can take in an entire area, then store that into bits, which are then read, sent, and displayed on a light emitting device. Have we really advanced that far?

[@AA-gl1dr]

I agree. While the modern technology is the entire massive apparatus on a microchip. Still using the methods our grandparents built for us, just way way smaller. Can’t wait to see what we build for generations down the line

[@stuartmiller732]

This was fantastic. Very informative!

[@nottechytutorials]

Very cool. The line-by-line approach it still used today, like how paper is printed line-by-line, or how TVs work as well.

[@theprof291166]

I still use a drum scanner today, which works in much the same way, except the impulses are converted to a digital signal. I used to run Kodak LVTs, which were the equivelent idea - they had a Red Green and Blue LED that was focused to a very fine spot that then exposed a sheet of film or photo paper. The results were perfectly photographic with resolutions of over 2000 dpi.

[@juhajuntunen7866]

I build something like this with my brother late 80's, using dotmatrix printer and photodiode as reader and audio digidizer in Amiga to generate image. But pictures were distorded because timing was impossible...

[@giampaolomannucci8281]

@Pheeb it was, the most cherished time of my youth, personally.

[@davidramey7186]

Thank you so much for making this available

[@liamg1995]

Incredible that they were doing this back then! The image quality is surprisingly good given the fairly simple buy ingenious technology.

[@nuassul]

Una de las cosas que más disfruto de esta clase de videos es la explicación de conceptos que a priori pueden ser bastante confusos o complicados a las personas no dedicadas al tema. La verdad es algo fascinante ver el como se aprovecha la conexión de la red telefónica para enviar imágenes pro medio de artilugios bastante ingeniosos. Por cierto la mayoría de los comentarios de este video son bastante interesantes de leer, saludos y gracias por subir este gran aporte.

[@whitetiana3022]

why are these old timey videos always so much better at explaining concepts than videos today?....

[@agencequebecpresse7427]

they had time and budget.

[@philipbirch9183]

The first images from the moon were sent using a similar process to this. Luna 2, a Soviet probe successfully landed in September 1959. It contained an automatic camera on board which took photos and developed the film itself. The scans were done exactly like this and beamed to Earth. The Russians had 'lost' the probe but the Radio Telescope at Jodrell Bank in England tracked it and received the first pictures. Using a borrowed fax machine they pieced together the images. Until the advent of the first NASA digital cameras all space probe photography was done like this.

[@Gunbudder]

I have an older scanner that works the exact same way, it just has an aperture that is 15 times smaller. This old timey scanner has about 100 dpi and my modern version has about 1500 dpi. You can't find a scanner with less than 300 dpi today, but it was impressive they got it to work at all

[@hydroblitz3307]

“This is called scanning” i have no words how blown away i am for seeing the creation of scanning

[@TheSongGame]

3:45 "In fact, there is only one single thing in the world that isn’t a sequel. It's this. We don’t know what it is or why it exists but it’s the prequel from which all sequels are derived."

[@nexidava]

Glad somebody said it 🤭

[@MeMyself_andAI]

If you asked me when photo scanning was invented, id have said 1980 or 1990. But 1930?! Incredible. And to think i considered myself a history buff!

[@Ryyi23]

This video still blew my mind and makes me appreciate how far we've come.

[@thefrub]

This is a really clean restoration, and back in 2013 we didn't have nearly as many video correction programs as we do now

[@daniellemullen5035]

I had no idea how long photo scanning was an available technology. It goes to show us how the modern, internet-based media infrastructure of today really is adapted from older technologies of earlier decades

[@thethinkdifferentman]

Watching this video in 4k streamed... Something they could not have imagined back then.

[@baldevis]

If you watch the Steve McQueen film "Bullitt," you can see that the same technology was still being used in 1968, though it was a bit faster by then. I can still remember seeing that scene back then and thinking "hey, what the hell is that?"

[@smadaf]

I remember that scene! They used a lot of wire-photo and analog faxing in the original Hawaii Five-0 television series (1968-1980), too.

[@sfacets]

Yesterday my entire family face-timed my 90 year-old grandmother for her birthday. She was born in the 30's and couldn't have fathomed something like this happening in her lifetime. It's difficult for me, born in the 80's, to comprehend how something like data transmission couldn't be understood. Makes you think

[@NOELQUEZON]

Was so good. Long time without Fax Machine.

[@aussieatheist960]

2023 and this is still how our internet works here in Australia!!!

[@pereiradelima]

Muito interessante saber como as primeiras tecnologias funcionavam, parabéns aos que conseguiram este vídeo original e compartilharam conosco.

[@orufam]

So very well explained! Timeless!

[@goomba008]

I didn't even know this amazing technology existed until today. Truly remarkable device! Funny enough, i looked this up because I'm watching the first episode of the series Columbo (circa 1970), and the detective mentioned he transmitted a picture through wire photo. I was like tf is wire photo?!