Science: Radio Pictures

Six months ago Edouard Belin, French inventor, completed an invention for transmitting photographs by wire (TIME, April 7). Last week the Radio Corporation of America sent a photograph by wireless from New York to Warsaw, Poland, and back again—9,000 miles. It was a picture of Major General James G. Harbord, President of the Corporation, and the reproduction was perfect. The picture was not reproduced in Warsaw because the requisite machinery is not yet installed there. The inventor is E. F. W. Alexanderson, radio innovator. Each variation of light and shade in a photograph is translated into punctures of ticker tape, which, when drawn through a transmitter, causes the waves to assume a corresponding pattern. At the receiving end is a magnet, moved by the waves, which controls either a beam of light acting on a photographic plate or an ink drawing instrument. The main benefit of the process will, of course, be in quick transmission of pictures for newspaper use. By it banks can verify signatures of foreign tourists.