In our world of digital photography and high speed Internet, photojournalists can quickly and easily send large numbers of high-res photos to the other side of the globe. Things weren�t always so convenient.
The video above shows what a photo transmitter looked like back in the 1970s. What you see is a United Press International UPI Model 16-S, which scanned photos and then transmitted them using a telephone line.
In a 2012 blog post for The Dallas Morning News, photo director Chris Wilkins offers a glimpse into how the UPI 16-S worked.
First, you place a print on the drum and start the transmitter. The drum then rotates at a consistent speed while a scanning beam would move slowly across the photo, scanning one line at a time. Transmitting the analog signal required a connection to a phone line. The Dallas Morning News shares this photo showing how the UPI 16-S could be connected to a rotary phone:
Photograph by Andy Scott/The Dallas Morning News
Using this type of transmitter was painfully slow: one black and white photo took 8-9 minutes to send, and subsequent devices for color photos weren�t faster.
�If you were lucky enough to get a perfect telephone line for sending the picture, one color photo took a minimum of 26 minutes to transmit,� Wilkins writes. �Sending internationally took twice as long, sometimes up to an hour per photo.�
The UPI 16-S was used from the early 1970s up through around 1991 as better technologies emerged for transmitting photos.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.