Australia Experiments with Telephotography

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 602, 2 March 1929, Page 19

Australia Experiments with Telephotography

TACTION is being taken by the Victorian Postal Department to establish a system for the transi#r I mission of photographs M fSSlfr and other pictorial matter by telegraph between Melbourne and Sydney. Although practically a new art. the publication of telegraphed photographs has become a regular teatuic of British and American newspapers, and keen interest is being displayed in the announcement that a similar service will shortly be available to the Australian public between the two

capitals. The almost instantaneous transmission over telegraph or telephone wires of anything that can be photographed is a convenience of immeasurable value, particularly to commercial and industrial organisations as well as to the general public. It is anticipated that the service between Melbourne and Sydney will be brought into use in April or May of this year. It will be available to the general public, and will be controlled and operated by the Postal Department. The advantages which such a system offers are many and varied, not only in the promotion of commercial and industrial business, but in the pictorial presentation of events of general or particular interest.

Pictures as well as advertisements, news photographs, cheques, drawings, motor-car designs, cartoons, fashion styles, prospectuses, bond issues, trial balances, annual statements, photographs of missing persons, fingerprints, chemical formulae, X-ray pictures, and other images lodged for transmission in either Sydney or Melbourne may be reproduced in the distant city within the hour at comparatively small cost, and in a form suitable for publication in half-tone line cuts of the usual commercial grade without retouching. The telegraph picture service, of course, relates to the transmission of “still” pictures, and it is thus fundamentally different from television, which relates to the transference of moving pictures. Television belongs to an entirely different field to that of “telegraph picture” transmission. While television is still in the advanced experimental stage, picture transmission has now been reduced to a commercial basis. As indicating

Invaluable aid is given to the police b't the lelcphotograph. l inger prints su< It as that of the right forefinger here reproduced. retain the minutest detail when transmitted to distant places. speedy identification possible . the class of work handled over the telegraph picture service, the picture reproduced in this article is an example of actual transmission over this system. It depicts the finger print of a criminal, and shows how the “telephoto” service may prove of invaluable aid in the arrest of criminals.

The transmission of a picture occupies a period of approximately four minutes for a 4in x 4in picture, while a picture 7in x lOin will take approximately 19 minutes to transmit. The maximum size picture which can be transmitted in the system which will be used between Melbourne and Sydney will be 7in x loin. Larger pictures of course may be handed in for transmission, but it would be necessary for them to be reduced in siz. prior to transmission and then reproduced to the larger size at the distant station. With the equipment which is being installed, it is stated that the maximum size to which pictures can be reproduced for delivery is 12iu x ISin. Larger pictures may in future he produceable, but the department does not contemplate any increase in size in the near future.