Sleeping Beauty Wire Photo: Aurora

Aurora

MEDIUM: Original Wire Photo
PRODUCTION: Sleeping Beauty, 1959
IMAGE SIZE: 9" x 7"
SKU: CCV2598

ABOUT THE MEDIUM: The wirephoto process, invented in 1921, allowed photographic images to be transferred through telephone lines. The original photograph was placed inside the wirephoto machine. Much like with today’s computer scanner, an electronic eye scanned the photograph and translated it into electrical impulses. These impulses were sent through the telephone wire to the identical wirephoto machine at the receiving end. At the receiving machine, the impulses were translated to light that was used to develop the image onto photographic paper. The development would take minutes to over an hour, as the photographic paper was slowly exposed line by line. In fact, the ultimate way to identify the wirephoto (the received image) is to look for the tiny horizontal or vertical lines in the image.