THIS WONDERFUL AGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20708, 4 May 1929, Page 4

THIS WONDERFUL AGE.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY WIRE. - SYSTEM IJf AUSTRALIA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) ' p SYDNEY. April .25. Within a few months it will be possible to walk into the General Post Office in Sydney or in Melbourne, lodge' a photograph for transmission by wire to a friend or relative in cither one of those cities, and go away in the sure and. Certain knowledge that, within from three to five minutes, a perfect reproduction of it will be ready at the other end for despatch to the one to whom it is'addressed. Whether this latest wonder of the wizardry of science, to be known locally as “ Pictu regrams,” now in operation abrpad, will be extended to the other capital cities depends upon the-success of the system in Sydney and in Melbourne. It will now be possible to get in Sydney, within two or three minutes, a photo of the Melbourne Cup, for example. “Crooks” wll also find their .style cramped with pictures of finger,.prints and of wanted persons flashing from, one State to another in a few minutes. The appai-atus will be installed immediately it is delivered in Australia from abroad, within the next month or six weeks. We. are living in a wonderful age.- Mr Brown says it will be possible, under this new system, to annihilate space 'between the two States and to transmit and receive within" a few' minutes by wire ,no.t only ordinary, photographs, but pictures, X-ray photographs, finger prints,, drawings, fashion plates, cartoons, advertisements, both illustrated -and ordinary, chemical and other formulas, cheques, prospectuses, bond issues, even shorthand notes, balance sheets, agreements and other legal documents, news reports, pictures of missing and wanted, persons, and what not. The system will be operated, briefly, through the application to pictures and documents of light rays ; capable of being converted into electrical impulses which, amplified, will flash along special wires absolutely faithful reproductions of the matter, transmitted. At tile other _ end the picture or letter, photographically recorded on ■ sensitive papei;,' will be developed ns in ordinary photographic practice.. The world is already a very small place; science, in its ministry to .man, appears to. be making it even smaller every day.