Satellite Used For Setting News

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30156, 13 June 1963, Page 10

Satellite Used For Setting News

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CHICAGO, June 11. A newspaper dispatch flashed into space to a relay satellite yesterday from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was within seconds being set up in newspaper column lengths by automatic machines in the United States.

As the “Relay’’ satellite, launched last December, was on its one thousand three hundred and ninety-second orbit high over the central Atlantic, a news dispatch was transmitted by teleprinter from the Rio office of United Press International to the Chicago office of Radional, a subsidiary of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, U.P.I. said.

The electronic impulse generated by the transmission was beamed by Radional up to the satellite Relay I which re-transmitted it to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ground station at Nutley, New Jersey.

The signal was relayed without interruption to a computer in Camden, New Jersey, which processed the news dispatch to fit the standard column-width of American newspapers.

Auto-Editor When it reached the computer, the dispatch was in the form of a normal telegram. It was entirely in capital letters. and each line, consisted of about 10 words was too long for a newspaper column. The computer “edited" the dispatch, leaving only the proper letters in capitals and turning the others into lower case.

It also shortened the lines, hyphenating where necessary, to proper newspaper column width.

A revised electrical impulse containing the information and a set of "instructions" was then fed into the nationwide teletypesetter circuit of Unned Press International from the Chicago bureau. At subscribing newspapers it produced perforated tape which enabled, the newspapers to set type automatically, with keyboardless Harris-Intertype line-casters. A similar operation planned between the United States and Britain was hampered by mechanical difficulty at Goonhilly, Cornwall. Post Office Error In London, the Post Office today apologised for misleading three British newspapers that a press message from Chicago had been relayed by the communications satellite. In fact, the message was carried across the Atlantic by cable and was automatically set in type in accordance with the second stage of the experiment. Mr Gerald Fay. London editor of the '‘Guardian” said today he was confident that the process of relaying dispatches by satellite and setting them in type would come about “very soon.” Other newspapers in the experiment with the ‘‘Guardian” were the “Scotsman,” Edinburgh, and the “Glasgow Herald." The Post Office said today that “unfortunately, just as the demonstration was about to start a minor fault on the aerial control at Goonhilly Downs resulted in the signals from America being lost. “The fault was rectified within minutes, but in the meantime the post office switched into the circuit of the Canadian Transatlantic telephone cable and the message from America was received by the cable and not by way of the satellite. The newspapers published stories giving the text of the message transmitted and saying that it had been bounced off the satellite and set up in type without manual operation.

Mr Fay said he apologised for putting out a story in good faith that had turned out to be partly wrong. “The Post Office technicians working in our Fleet Street wire room were not told of the breakdown. Nor were we,” he said.