Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1896 — WILL SEND PICTURE BY WIRE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WILL SEND PICTURE BY WIRE.

Thomas A. Edison Talks About Hi* Latest Invention. Thomas A. Edison has about perfected his apparatus for transmitting pictures by wire. By the use of the instrument

any kind of a sketch can be sent. In a talk about his new invention Mr. Edison said: “There is nothing absolutely new in this idea. It is simply a development of the old Cassella system, in which the

transmission was made along a sort of pendulum. I had thought out and perfected the machine some years ago, when the telephone came along and stopped me. A business man desiring to give a practical description of a design in dry goods, prints or in forms could make his meaning readily clearer over the telephone. “It afterward occurred to me that the perfection of this little instrument might benefit my friends in the newspaper profession, and it is for them that I have designed it. 1 want to say that no newspaper has or will have a monopoly in the autotelagraph. I shall reserve the patent and sell the machines to any newspaper that cares to buy it. “The process is simple enough. The artist makes his sketch in the usual man-

tier. It doesn't matter what it may be. Directly the drawing is finished he wraps it around the little cylinder at the top of the machine; he presses a button, and in that same instant, while the machines revolve, the man in the newspaper room, say 1,000 miles away, is reproducing that sketch. “I cau now say the instrument is ready for use. You could handle it tft once with absolute certainty. Before I attempt to put it on the market I shall try to reduce it to a portable size, so that the artist sent to Chicago or St. Louis may carry it in his pocket, dump it down on any kind of telegraph table and transmit the drawing with just as much ease and as little ceremony as he would use iu telegraphing a 200-word story. “In less than four mouths from this time the instrument in its portable form will be ready for the market. We can now use the instrument at 500 miles with ease, at 1,000 with reasonable accuracy, and before 1 have finished I will try to span the continent from ’Frisco to New York.”

AS SENT BY WIRE.

EDISON AND THE AUTOTELEGRAPH.