Wirephoto

A system for transmitting photographs over telegraph, telephone or radio lines by converting the image into an electrical signal and reconstructing it at the receiving end, letting a newspaper publish a photograph from across the country or the ocean within hours instead of days. Edouard Belin's Belinographe of 1913 laid the technical groundwork, and the Associated Press's commercial Wirephoto network, launched in 1935, made same-day photo transmission a standard part of wire-service news reporting.