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Sunday 3 March 2013

Early Scanning (Plus a Few Typewriters in a 1930s Newsroom)

I complained the other day in a post on old newspaper production technology about not being able to find equivalent video of  newsrooms with typewriters. The same source for that particular post, Ronan Quinlan, moderator of the Irish Press Journalists Facebook group, has since come up with this classic. There are only a few seconds of typewriters in it (and no mention of how the story in question was transmitted?!), but I think the detailed description of early photograph scanning is quite fascinating. Similar techniques were still being used in the 1970s, while stories continued to be filed by telephone through copytakers:

2 comments:

Bill M said...

God video and a great explanation of how those early facsimile machines worked. Surprising that any quality imaging made it when one considers the audio quality of the early phone system even though only tones were being transmitted.

That seemingly crude machine was the foundation of modern facsimile machines and the scanners we all use to post to our blogs.

Richard P said...

What a wonderful invention, and the explanation in the film is very clear. Thanks!