First Fax

In the lobby of Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, people stopped to stare. With no hum, no click and no whir, a machine that looked like a cross between a radio and a teletype was rolling out a pony-size newspaper page. Under the headline MICHAEL I ABDICATES, it printed a picture of Michael and Princess Anne (see FOREIGN NEWS). The dinky paper was the maiden issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer's facsimile edition.

In getting it started last week, Publisher Walter Annenberg's Inquirer beat John S. Knight's Miami Herald to the draw as the first U.S. newspaper to broadcast regular, daily facsimile editions to its readers. At week's end the Herald, whose first receivers were delayed by weather, got on the air too, for readers at a supermarket. The New York Times and a dozen other dailies were getting ready. They weren't quite sure where facsimile would lead them, but the press had once badly underestimated radio and television, and it did not intend to be caught napping again.

It Comes Out Clear. The air newspapers of Miami and Philadelphia were no immediate threat to opposition papers, because nobody had found how to make them pay. The gadget was not yet a threat to the peace & quiet of the home, because a receiver still cost $600 to $900. But time and mass production might take care of all that; the big news about "fax" was that, technically, the bugs were pretty well worked out of it. Editors still had a lot to learn about type and makeup for an 8 1/2 in. by 11 in. page. But the sheets turned out last week (at the rate of four pages in 15 minutes) were clear and readable, with cuts as finely detailed as in offset printing.

Facsimile had been a long time coming. Among others, Inventors John V. L. Hogan and William G. H. Finch, who have rival systems, have worked on it for 20 years. In the 1930s, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Columbus Dispatch and other dailies experimented with it, but reproduction was slow and the carbon-paper product didn't seem to have a future. The war interrupted research; in 1944, eight radio stations and 17 newspapers, linked as Broadcasters Faximile Analysis, matched $250,000 of Hogan's money to get it going again.

It Comes Out Here. Hogan developed a simplified system: for the transmitter, a photoelectric scanner that "read" copy from a revolving cylinder; for the receiver, an electrolytic printer that left a thin metal deposit on damp paper (it came out dry). The paper cost a dollar for a 400-ft. roll, enough to last a subscriber for a month.

The arrival of FM radio was a big help. With conventional AM, the static from any passing streetcar could distort a "fax" page. FM made for smooth reception, but it raised an intriguing question. Since a broadcaster could convert to facsimile for $10,000 to $15,000, what was to prevent anyone with an FM license from going into the newspaper business?

There were other problems. To get a facsimile edition on the air, a paper had to have a radio license, and licensing of a newspaper is abhorrent to the press. In granting licenses, would FCC allow papers to broadcast their editorial opinion, a right it denies to radio? If FCC permitted facsimile editions to carry ads, would it let a non-newspaper station sell an entire edition to a sponsor? Would facsimile kill off little newspapers, or spawn a new breed of small papers? Before these questions were answered, there would be headaches for the press, the radio and probably for the public.

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