Color Telephony

Last June, successful tests were made transmitting pictures by telephone (TIME, June 2). The process was to have a light impulse transmitted to an electrical impulse and back into a light impulse. The transmitted to an electrical impulse and face of a picture, taking successive light impulses from it in lines as it went repeatedly across the film. At the receiving end, the same device reversed cast a varying ray of light on a photographic film as it went across its surface on adjoining lines.

Last week, a successful attempt was made to transmit a colored picture. It involved merely another application of the same device. A colored picture of Rodolph Valentino, in M. Beaucaire, was photographed three times, once with a blue screen to take the blues, once with a yellow screen to take the yellows, once with a red screen to take the reds. These photographs were then transmitted separately. The only difference of method was that the lines of each picture were at a different angle across the plate, so that when they were reproduced they would blend instead of blur.

The three photographs were transmitted from Chicago to Manhattan. A color plate was made from each and the three plates were printed one after another on paper, reproducing the original picture in full color. Not only were the three primary colors obtained--blue, yellow and red--but several secondary colors including green, purple, orange, violet, pink.

Stephen H. Horgan, Associate Editor of the Inland Printer of Chicago, assisted the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. in the tests. Necessarily, these methods of picture transmission, being in their infancy, still require improvements; but their feasibility has now been demonstrated.