Wirephoto
Wirephoto or
telephotography is the sending of pictures by telegraph or telephone. Western Union transmitted its first halftone photograph in 1921. AT&T followed in 1924, and RCA sent a
Radiophoto in 1926. The Associated Press began its Wirephoto service in 1935, and held a trademark on the term
AP Wirephoto between 1963 and 2004. The first AP photo sent by wire depicted the crash of a small plane in New York's Adirondack Mountains. Technologically and commercially, the wirephoto was the successor to Ernest A. Hummel's
Telediagraph of 1895, which had transmitted electrically scanned schellac-on-foil originals over a dedicated circuit connecting the
New York Herald and the
Chicago Times Herald, the
St. Louis Republic, the
Boston Herald, and the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Édouard Belin's
Belinograph of 1913, which scanned using a photocell and transmitted over ordinary phone lines, formed the basis for the AT&T Wirephoto service. In Europe, services similar to a wirephoto were called a Belino. The first wirephoto systems were slow and did not reproduce well. In 1929, Dr.