PHOTOGRAPHS BY WIRE.

Waikato Independent, Volume V, Issue 325, 17 January 1907, Page 5

PHOTOGRAPHS BY WIRE.

PICTURES TORE SENT IN TWO' MINUTES. Professor Korn, of the Munich Uni,'' versity, has greatly improved his ap« paratus for transmitting photographs ! over telegraph wires. . * . He has succeeded in sending photo* graphs and sketches six or seven inches ' square in this manner from Munich to J ; Nuremberg, a distance of one hundred J miles/ in from ten to fifteen minutes. The professor says that precisely the J same results would be obtained if the photographs were transmitted on a tele- ■ graph line of any length. . The photograph which has tobetrans- ’ mitted is placed on a transparent glass ■! cylinder, which revolves slowly and at the same time moves right to left. A ray of light is thrown on the cylinder by means of an electric lamp and lens, and -' when the ray of light reaches the interior of the cylinder it is brighter or darker according to the coloring of that particu- ' lar part of the photograph over which it passes. Inside the cylinder is some selenium, which transmits electrical current in proportion to the intensity of the light brought to bear on it. The selenium ; transmits current more rapidly in bright light of less rapidly as the light de- - creases. The selenium is connected with the wire over which the photograph has to be transmitted. The receiving apparatus consists of an electrical Nernst lamp placed inside a glass cylinder covered with sensitised j paper. The lamp burns more or less ~ brightly according to the varying current transmitted through the selenium at the other end of the wire. It thus repro- . duces the exact shade of the original photograph, provided that the cylinders V; at each end of the wire revolve at exactly • ■ the same speed. Professor Korn has in- - vented a means of regulating the revolution of the cylinders so that the speed is identical at both ends.

Further improvements to the apparatus Wlll shortly enable a photograph to be transmitted within two minutesi