PICTURE TELEGRAMS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 43, 20 February 1930, Page 9

PICTURE TELEGRAMS

SERVICE WITH GERMANY

COMPLIMENTARY MESSAGES

(Fro*n "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 9th January.

A new telegraphic system has been inaugurated betweon London and Berlin. J?cople may now send messages betweenl, these two cities by photographic, transmission, and they will pay by the area of the photograph and not by the Jiumber of words included in the messaged .

The ordinary rate to Germany is 3d a word. A message can now be- reproduced photographically in Berlin on payment of a minimum fee of £1 for fifteen scfuare inches, so that, for long telegrams, the cost will probably work out considerably cheaper than the word rate.

Senders are recommended not to reduce th'a .lettering to dimensions smaller than average typescript.

Just Jbeforo the new service was thrown -open to the public on Tuesday the British Postmaster-General (Mr. H. B. Lees-Qmith, M.P.) and tho German Beichpoefc Minister (Dr. Sehatzel) exchanged photographs and complimentary messages. In 20 minutes transmission was complete, and a few minutes afteanvards tho photograph of the portrait and message from Germany had been developed and the first print taken fnovn it. Both picture and handwriting were excellently reproduced.

Mr. I^aes-Smith's message was in these tenvs: "The sending of this photograph', and message by picture telegraphy: inaugurates a new enterprise on ijhe part of the British Post Office and the German Administration. The service establishes yet another link between o\ir two countries, and I earnestly hope- that it will strengthen the friendly reflations already, existing between the British and the German peoples." . The following is a translation of Dr. Schatzol's message: "May the introduction of picture telegraphy promote and strengthen tho relations between our two countries. Friendliest greetings to you and your Administration." THIS MACHINERY. Tho room (at the Central Telegraph Office in which tho pieturo telegrams are dispatcihjed and received contains a good deal <if electrical machinery, but the instrunu&uts which perform the visible work ar<> small. Anyone who remembers the old-fashioned gramophone that was caßlcd a phonograph will understand tihe principle on which these instrrunißnts work. The records used with th(j. phonograph were not discs, but hoflow cylinders. As the cylinder rotated the needle travelled Blowly along a. horizontal path, and the combined efljaiyt of these movements was that the needle traced a fine spiral on the cylinc&Mr. The main differences i: the machisiia which telegraphs pictures are that ;the needle has become a spot of light, titie record a picture bent into a cylinder, and the result of their contact an elejsfcric current, fluctuating with the varying tones of tho picture, in place of tShai sound-waves that the photograph produced. Tho receiving machinery is afimilar, but it reverses the process by translating the electric current into a fftuctuating spotlight, and this in turn iujto an impression on a photographic Al,ai. The drum round which this films is curled rotates at exactly tho saai<y speed as the transmitting drum. Bafore a picture is transmitted the address to which it is to be delivered is tifelqphoned over the same circuit. t J