.Radio TELEVISION Electronics
TV AND ELECTRONICS FOR 1951
A—Speed-photo transceiver aids criminal investigators. Similar to wirephoto machines used by newspapers for sending and receiving pictures, it transmits and receives fingerprints, photographs suspected checks and other investigation matter long distances over the air in a few minutes. The instrument transmits and receives the pictorial material at the rate of one cross-section inch per minute
Tag "fax"
The actress in question with Wellington Belford was the late Ruth Renick. The “poison tongue” gentry refers to gossip columnists.
.Catching Crooks by Radio
No longer can a crook in a strange town go unrecognized. Finger print photos, broadcast by radio, identify him across the continent in half hour!
By GEORGE C. HENDERSON
THESE cryptic signs, sent together with a fingerprint photo by the telephotographic process through 2,500 miles of space over mountains and desert in a few minutes’ time, constituted a challenge from the New York police to the San Francisco police to answer one question—’”Who is the man? Who is the owner of the fingerprint?”
The device on the second page is interesting. It’s sort of like a mechanical version of an LCD screen.
.Life Size Radio Movies Are Coming
C. Francis Jenkins is inventor of the original movie camera and holder of more than 400 patents, many of them in the field of radiovision. He predicts for the near future life size radio movies and radiovision of news events which may be projected on theater screens at the actual instant they happen. Jenkins describes the present status of television and the lines along which he is working.
by C. FRANCIS JENKINS Famous Inventor
WITHIN a short time, possibly within a year, I expect to see movie screens showing life size pictures of news events as they are happening. We are working now on that problem. We may not be first to solve it, but it is only a question of time until some one does, and it is quite possible that we may be first.
.Home Newspapers by Radio
Your Home a Silent “Press Room” . . . Automatic Facsimile Reproduction . . . Latest News by Breakfast Time . . . Bulletins Are Now Being Broadcast
A PRIVATE newspaper with any spot in your home as the press room, the world’s best editors and reporters on your staff, is available today to anyone in the United States possessing an ordinary radio receiving set. No thundering press will deafen you while your newspaper is being printed; instead, equipment contained in a small attractive box will silently print your “latest edition” while you sleep, completing it in time for reading at breakfast.
.Photos Sent over Phone Wires at Call Rates
News photographs now are being transmitted quickly, clearly and cheaply over ordinary telephone wires. With the aid of a light, portable transmitter, Wide World Photos can transmit pictures by wire from any location where a telephone is available at regular station-to-station long distance rates.
.From Seattle to Miami
To Air-Mail this report: 40 HOURS
To send it by SCAN-A-FAX: 3 MINUTES
Scan-A-Fax is Fairchild’s transistorized facsimile transmission system—a new way for businessmen to communicate WHAT SCAN-A-FAX CAN DO FOR YOUR COMPANY: If your company needs to get errorless facts quickly from one place to another, Scan-A-Fax should be ideal for you. With this system, you can get memos, charts, schedules, blueprints, drawings, and photos in minutes instead of days. For example you can transmit as many as twenty 8-1/2 x 11″ documents in an hour over long-distance telephone lines or by microwave.
Here is the first installment in a series I’ll be posting this week that goes by the oh-so-clunky name “Invented Earlier than You’d Think”. In this series I’ll be taking a look at early examples of modern technologies that are not as modern as they seem. In this part we’ll be looking at a some of the early innovations in fax machines.
The earliest fax-like machines actually predate these by quite a bit, but these are all culled from this site, so that’s what you get. There are more fax related articles available available here.
Secret Documents Sent by Radio (Jan, 1932)
Early fax machines all seem to have one thing in common: they weren’t really fax machines in the sense that we use it to day. The early examples are all radio-fax systems. They don’t transmit over a normal telephone line. This machine however, does have the added bonus of apparently encrypting your image.
New Radio Pen Reproduces Pictures Put on the Air (Jul, 1934)
In the 1930′s the idea of the radio-newspaper was everywhere. I have literally dozens of articles about them. This one was obviously way ahead of it’s time since you can clearly see an early print version of a Mac vs. PC ad on the left.
Television Will Carry the Mails (Mar, 1935)
While the device pictured is another radio-fax machine, the linked article does also talk about telephone based faxes as well. As with all new technologies, pictures of scantily clad women lead the way.
Telegraph Kisses Are New Fad (May, 1938)
Now we’re getting somewhere. Long before cybersex, there was the much more low key, though decidedly more stylish telegraphisex.
“Mail Box†for Telegrams Transmits Messages (Jun, 1939)
This actually seems like a really handy machine. You write your message on a form, drop it in the slot, and it automatically gets faxed… somewhere.
Pictures by Radio (Jun, 1939)
Another radio-newspaper system, though this one actually was actually put into production and had available content for a time.
The left picture gives you a good view of the printing mechanism and picture quality. On the right is the rather handsome looking home receiver. Though with a print speed of three feet per hour, you better hope that lady is a very slow reader.
World’s First Color Fax Machine (Nov, 1947)
This article just floored me. You really have to look at the full size images to appreciate it, but this machine is gorgeous. The left image is of the print mechanism which is composed of a rotating set of actuated color pencils. And just to make sure you knew which pencil went where, they made the rollers out of colored velvet. You don’t get style like that in fax machines anymore.
The print quality is actually pretty stunning considering, you know, its a friggin color fax machine from 1946. The output reminds me a lot of a mid 90′s era color inkjet printer.
Desk-Size Facsimile Machine (Jun, 1952)
This is the closest thing to a modern fax machine, although all of your calls have to be routed through a central switchboard.
.Secret Documents Sent by Radio
M. BELIN, a French inventor, has perfected a machine known as the “Belinogram”, which makes it possible to send by wireless with absolute safety documents of the most secret nature. The sending machine Belin has developed decomposes the message, document or photograph, while the receiver employed assembles the electrical impulses into the original form. Any other machine, although receiving the same document, finds the signals altogether distorted and of no value whatever.
.New Radio Pen Reproduces Pictures Put on the Air
BROADCAST listeners may soon receive comic strips, bridge problems, and road maps over the air through a new device known as a radio pen, now under experimental development by John V. L. Hogan, New York radio inventor. The machine is a simplified adaptation, for home use, of commercial high-speed facsimile apparatus, and is housed in a metal cabinet no larger than a typewriter. An electrical pen traces ink pictures, broadcast from the transmitting studio, upon a moving paper strip four inches wide, requiring about two and a half minutes to complete a sketch.
.Radio-Newspaper Receiver for Home Use
Designed to fit the top of a commercial table receiver which it matches in cabinet style, a complete radio-newspaper receiver for home use has just been placed on the market. All necessary apparatus for receiving and printing news bulletins and pictures transmitted over the air are contained in the unit. The news is automatically printed on a continuous sheet of paper that unwinds from a roll as it is received. The instrument can be used in conjunction with any radio receiver, the manufacturer declares, provided it has an output of at least five watts.
