EARLY INVENTORS

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 40, 20 April 1928, Page 16

EARLY INVENTORS

The dream of an American inyenor eighty years ago will be realised if the i‘ederal Radio Commission grants permission to the Radio Corporation of America to erect a station at Rocky Point, New York, for facsimile transruission of pictures, messages, and docutmeuts. In 1848 Alexander Bain, the first man lo experiment with facsimile transmission, worked out a crude system of reproducing pictures in code for sending by telegraph. He xeceived the first United States patent for picture transmission, but his system proved unworkable, aithougli it contained the fundamentals of presentday methods, Like all forms of communication, the transmission of facsimiles has reached the stage of commercial application only after a Jong period of development aud research. In May, 1891, N. S Amstutz, of Valparaiso, Ind,, sent a picture over telexrapi wires for a distance of twentyfive miles This is said to be the first successful transmission. Professor Arthur Korn, of Berlin, made further improvements, and in 1906 transmitted pictures over several hundred miles of telephone wires In 1908 he sent pictures by radio. The pictures were converted into a regular code message and transmitted as such. ‘The World War foreed the abandoument of plans for transatlantic picture transmission, and tt was not until 1923 that various laboratories in the United States again undertook tlie development of long-distance sending of photos. The first picture sent across the Atlantic by radio was in June, 1922, by Professor Korn. ‘The transmitter was located at Rome, and the receiver at Bar Harbour, Maine. Other transoceanic transmissions followed It is said that more than 2,000,000 dollars a year is being spent in the Unit-

ed States in research work along these lines. Nearly 800 patents covering the art have been issued,