OCR Text |
Show o HOW PHOTOGRAPHS OF LINDBERGH WERE SENT THE WESTERN UNION While New York still thrilled with first news that Col. Charles A. Lindbergh and the "Spirit of St. Louis" had reached Paris, a motorcycle motor-cycle messenger sped from the West- j ern Union Cable Office at 40 Broad ! Street, New York City, to the office I of the Pacific and Atlantic Photos, Inc., with a small package. The package contained a roll of paper tape, some 350 feet long, five-eights five-eights of an inch wide, and perforated perforat-ed cross-wise with a multitude of tiny holes. Less than an hour later, newspapers were on the streets with actual photographs photo-graphs of Lindbergh and his plane, landing in Le Bourget Aviation field outside Paris. During the days that followed other cabled photographs were published pictures of Lindbergh receiving the plaudits of enthusiastic thousands in Paris, Brussels and London, and still later there were views of Chamber-lin Chamber-lin and Levine in Berlin. Similarly, pictures of the Lindbergh receptions in Washington and New York appeared appear-ed in European newspapers only a few hours after the pictures were taken. These pictures were actual photographs photo-graphs transmitted over the Atlantic cables by the Bartlane method developed de-veloped by H. G. Bartholomew of the London Daily Mirror, and Capt. M. D. McFarlane, affiliated with the Pacific & Atlantic Photos, Inc., New York. The process is intricate, but intensely in-tensely interesting. It consists essentially es-sentially of the conversion of an ordinary or-dinary photograph into a five-unit telee-ranh tane. and the reDroduction of the photograph from the tape transmitted telegraphically. First, the photograph is printed on metal sheets in such a manner as to give tone differentiation. This is obtained ob-tained by making five prints of vary- ing density from the same negative. These prints consist of conducting and insulating portions according to the lights and shades of the original photograph. The metal prints are next placed on a series of rotating cylinders, each of which has a needle in electrical contact, much as the needle is in friction fric-tion contact with the record of a cylinder-type phonograph. The needles nee-dles are connected electrically with a tape perforator such as is used in automatic telegraphy, and the perforations per-forations made in this tape, as the cylinders rotate, contsitute a record of the picture. The tape is then delivered to the Western Union, and is transmitted exactly as if it were an ordinary cable message over the high-speed Permalloy Permal-loy type cables recently laid in ths Atlantic. The signals are received at the distant end of the cable in the form of a perforated tape identical with the original sending tape. The receiving tape is taken to the Bartlane machine and run through the reproduction apparatus. A high-powered light is projected through the holes of the moving tape so that it registers upon a photographic photo-graphic film, and the picture is bult up on the film in accordance with the record of the tape. The time required to transmit a photograph photo-graph is about 35 minutes, and the cost is in the neighborhood of $100. The Bartlane system is susceptible of use on land lines as well as Permalloy Per-malloy cables, and is acutally in operation op-eration between New York and Chicago, Chi-cago, Washington and other large cities. |