The Belin Machine
The “Belinograph” is the invention of Edouard Belin, of Paris. With these machines “the first step in transmitting a picture is to convert the latter into a bas-relief. Or a drawing can be made in a special ink, which, when dry, leaves the lines in relief. The picture when ready for transmission has an uneven surface, the irregularities of which correspond with the pictorial details. The transmitter resembles the cylinder of a phonograph. The picture is wrapped around this metal cylinder, and a style presses down on the picture cylinder as it is rotated by clockwork. As the style moves up and down over the irregularities of the picture, a microphone varies the strength of an electric transmitting current.
“At the receiving end another cylinder in a light-tight box carries a sensitized paper upon which a point of light is reflected from the mirror of a galvanometer actuated by the incoming current from the distant station.”
Two very accurately regulated chronometers are employed to keep the machines in synchronism, one chronometer for the sending machine and one for the distant receiving machine. (From Review of Reviews, 1922.)
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