When I sat down to watch this 1937 video explaining how photos were already being transmitted via cable to newspapers, I had no idea what to expect. Certainly nothing adrenaline-filled that kept me glued to the screen. And so it is, the rhetoric of the "newsreels" is that, as are the bland rhythms. But it was interesting and I share it with you, because it shows a fascinating insight into a technology that has revolutionized journalism and, surprisingly, also the world of fashion. I'll explain better.
An ingenious process
The video starts out a little slow, as I mentioned, but really takes off once you get into explaining how photos were sent from one part of the country to another using regular phone lines. The entire setup was portable: just connect to a wire on a telephone pole, ask the operator to free the line, and send a scan of a photo via cable via an analog modem. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
The process itself was relatively simple, although it took years to perfect. It wasn't a matter of sending the entire photo in one go, but of breaking it down into thin lines, sending them over the cable, and reassembling them at the other end. Imagine having a photo made like a “collage” of tightly wound string. If you start at one end, taking the photo line by line (or string by string), you can pass the string through a tube and reassemble it at the other end, until the original pattern is recreated. Ah! But wait a moment: in the meantime I'll put the video here, to understand better. Then, if you want to bypass it or are interested in the explanation, resume reading whenever you want.
Cable photo, how? With lights, shadows and electric currents
In cable photo transmission, the photo is electrically “unrolled” into lines of different shades of gray. A light scans the original image and, depending on the amount of light reflected from each point (more light for light areas, less for dark ones), a corresponding amount of electric current passes through a photoelectric cell and is sent via telephone to the receiving device.
Here, the currents are translated into corresponding lines on a photographic negative. A lot of current (corresponding to a light spot in the original) exposes more of the negative at that spot, while little or no current (from a dark spot) leaves the negative unexposed. In the end, you end up with a negative that is essentially the original photo “rewound.” I hope I have explained myself clearly...
The impact on journalism and fashion
Before cable photos it took days to send a photo by train, and hours by plane. With this new technology, it only took minutes for newspapers to publish photos of events that had just happened. This was the real revolution for journalism.
But the impact also extended to the world of fashion. As reported Wikipedia, after the Second World War the designer Frederick L. Milton he used technology Belinographe (Genoese, don't laugh: it was simply a French version of the cable photos). And what was he doing? Simple: he "captured" the models from the Paris fashion shows and sent them to his subscribers, who could thus copy the latest trends. This led to one of the first forms of “fast fashion,” but also to a lawsuit: in 1955, four major French couturiers (Lanvin, Dior, Patou, and Jacques Fath) sued Milton for piracy, claiming that the speed of transmission afforded by cable photos hurt their business. In a sense, today's debates about copyright and Intellectual Property in the digital age have their roots in those early experiments with cable photography. Once again, as you see, the future was born yesterday.
A window into the past and future of cable
Watching this video from 1937 was like stepping into an era where technology was changing the world in ways we take for granted today. The transmission of photos by cable, with its ingenious system of lights, shadows and electrical currents, paved the way for developments that would transform the way we communicate and share information. Even the story of Frederick L. Milton and his ante litteram "fast fashion" reminds us that every innovation brings with it not only opportunities, but also challenges and ethical issues to face.
In short, this seemingly simple video hides a fascinating insight into history, technology and society. When you proudly share a photo of your plate of pasta and potatoes with the next click, take a moment to think about those pioneers of 1937 who made all this possible. We will never forget, HEROES :)
