Wireless photo transmitter

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Robert Richardson

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MOMENT IN TIME: PHOTO ARCHIVES

NW-MIT-ARCHIVE-1101
Canadian-born William Stephenson with the wireless photo transmitter he invented in 1922. A photograph scanned by the machine was translated into signals that could be sent over radio or telephone lines. A receiver reversed the process by unscrambling the transmission, then precisely controlling the amounts of light necessary to produce an exact copy of the photograph. HANDOUT
Sir William Stephenson invents the radio-photo
For more than 100 years, photographers have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we’re celebrating the invention of wire photos.
Sir William Stephenson, a Canadian war hero, inventor and millionaire, was also a spy, liaising with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt from a suite in Rockefeller Center during the Second World War. Stephenson’s escapades in foreign intelligence were detailed in the 1976 biography A Man Called Intrepid and he is thought to be the model for his friend Ian Fleming’s James Bond character. Before Stephenson became a spy, he studied engineering at the University of Manitoba and invented a radio facsimile method of transmitting pictures without telephone or telegraph wires, later known as the radio-photo. In 1924, he and his partner, George W. Walton, patented their inventions, including a wireless photo transmitter. That same year, RCA used Stephenson’s technology in the first successful transmission of photographs by radio from London to New York. The invention helped usher in a new age, in which images, especially news photos, could be sent across vast distances in just minutes. Solana Cain

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