Taking fast photos before polaroid and smartphones
Toronto. 1941, war-time, and as the lawyers say, “time is of the essence”. Traditional photography took hours or days between the taking and the viewing of the results. But how do you get the results taken, and then viewed many many miles away just in a few minutes?
Trust the Americans to figure out a way! This article in the May, 1941 issue of Electronics magazine shows how a combination of military aircraft, high speed processing, special paper and radio facsimile combine to take and transmit military images to far away control centres in just a few minutes.
This was long before digital technology in smartphones made sub second transmission of high resolution colour images next door or around the world so simple a child could (and often does) do it. Ah! tempus fugit (as the Romans once said)!
And thanks to friend, PHSC member, photo historian, and very active retired industrial photographer and videographer, George Dunbar for sharing this remarkable bit of sleuthing.
