NEWS PICTUREGRAMS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 764, 10 September 1929, Page 9

NEWS PICTUREGRAMS

FIRST USE IN AUSTRALIA YESTERDAY VERY FAIR REPRODUCTIONS SYDNEY, Monday. The first picturegrams to be transmitted in Australia were exchanged between Sydney and Melbourne today. The evening newspapers in Sydney published illustrations received through the medium of a special apparatus installed by the Postal Department. One half-page picture was that of a crowd of people on the way to business outside Flinders Street railway station, Melbourne. This picture was developed and lodged at the Post Office. Half an hour later it was completed in Sydney ready for the newspaper process block-maker. The details necessarily were somewhat blurred, but the pictures gave a very fair reproduction of the original scenes. The picturegrams, or photograms as they are also called, included not only newspaper illustrations, but advertisements, finger-prints and documents. It is expected that the system will be particularly valuable to the police in tracing criminals. It will be operated only between Sydney and Melbourne for the present. A reproduction of the leading article in this morning’s issue of the Melbourne “Argus" is published in this afternoon’s editions of the Sydney “Sun.” Picturegrams of Sydney people going to work were sent to Melbourne by the same process.