Edouard Belin (1876 - 1963)
1897: Edouard Belin, a French engineer, began to experiment with facsimile transmission Édouard Belin (b. March 5, 1876, Vesoul, France d. March 4, 1963, Territet, Switz.), French engineer who has 1907 made the first telephoto transmission, from Paris to Lyon to Bordeaux and back to Paris, using an apparatus of his own invention.
A" first-day " postcard on " EDOUARD BELIN " Theme dated June 24, 1972 at VESOUL (Birth-Town of Belin) from my collection
The first transatlantic transmission was made in 1921 between Annapolis, Md., and Belin's laboratories at La Malmaison, France. His equipment was adopted in Britain in 1928 and used almost exclusively by European news media during the 1930s and '40s, when the term "Belino" came into general use for all kinds of picture transmission. In 1907 Belin transmitted a photograph from Paris to Bordeaux and back to Paris. This impressed the French authorities so much that they eventually agreed to adopt his system commercially. In the same year, Korn sent a photograph from Munich via Berlin and Paris to London, thus making the first international facsimile transmission. The need for very high quality photographs for publication in newspapers kept a constant pressure ondevelopments and improvements to the two systems over the next twenty years. Belin's system became fully established in France and some other parts of Europe, to the extent that the term 'Belino' was adopted as the colloquial term for a photograph so transmitted. In English-speaking countries, a facsimile transmission of photographic quality became known a 'picturegram'. Korn's system was taken up by the German police to transmit fingerprints and photographs of criminals. IN 1921 Belin sent the first transatlantic picturegram, from his laboratories in La Malmaison to Annapolis in the United States. Korn followed in 1923 with a transmission between Rome and Bar Harbour in the USA.
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