How Images Move

The film on pictures and moving images shows the different ways the human eye needs constant moving images. Different ways one can play with light is by moving images to distort them to show a moving picture. Chinese shadow was used in the 16th century. We seen how white positive result in large black negatives. Hand shadow is always a popular game and it still played today. Light plays a major role in images. There are many ways to play with image through different techniques:

Scratch off

Submerged in water

Angular

light

Fire

Mirrors

Chapter 6

“The general shift toward government regulation under the banner of Progressive reform gave force and direction to specific dissatisfactions with the telephone market" (p. 209)

In the first two decades of the nineteenth century, social transformations merged with technological advances to create mass-readership newspapers, which aided the emergence of mass political parties. Late in the century, the appearance of opinion magazines nurtured policy-oriented interest groups that gave voice to the middle-class Progressive reform movement. As telephone technology soon began to compete with the telegraph, and the Bell Company became an equal to Western Union, an increasing role of the government in terms of antitrust and other regulation became increasingly significant

Hobsbaum Grape Vine

Hobsbaum article shows how the idea of communication came in the "grape vine telegraph." The telegraph was a way slaves would get their news. Normally one slave would be sent to the post office to retrieve mail, and he would return with the news he just heard by the local white men at the post office. Ultimately slaves knew about the defeat of the South before anyone else knew. The "grape vine telegraph" was kept busy night and day. The news of great events were swiftly carried from one plantation to another. Today the concept of hearing the news from off the streets is more common than actually reading or watching about it.

The Early Telephone and Telegraph

As an invention, the telephone originated in an effort to improve and extend the telegraph, not to replace it. (Starr p.193)

In the 1860’s and 1870’s their were many different inventors and promoters trying to come up with new ways to improve the telegraph, since it was a pretty rough form of communication and only people who knew Morse code would be able to understand the messages. So small boxes with switches were placed in people’s homes and allowed them to call for the police or firefighters with the press of a button. This was an improvement, but still crude. William Orton who was Western Unions president at this time raised capital for his growing business by way of stock tickers and relative information. With this new capital, he was able to finance new ways to improve the telegraph, such as the Duplex or Quadruplex which were improvements to the telegraph that allowed two messages to be sent in opposite directions at the same time. As time went on many inventors were trying to figure out a “harmonic” telegraph, which would carry different tones and many different messages all at once. In trying to invent this, the telephone was created. Although to us the telephone seems much better in every way then the telegraph, it was not scene that way back then. This was because at the time, the telegraph seemed to meet the needs of communication. At the time the early telephone had limited range and was cumbersome and produced no written record of conversations, but the early telegraph faced these obstacles as well.

Turning the telephone from a novelty into a network meant putting an infant up against a giant (Starr p195)

The Picture above is of an early telephone.

Telephone expansion

Once Bell's patent monopoly expired in 1894, competition among independent companies brought about a major increase in telephone development. Independents concentrated their growth in small towns among the North Central states. In addition, development increased through "cooperatives". These coops were started by small groups of farmers. They were governed by elected boards and their goal was to keep costs to a minimum. In order to do this they utilized fence wire for transmission, party lines and did their own maintenance. As we have learned, competition is a good thing. During this time period, prices for telephone service decreased. Bell was under pressure to become more efficient and more creative in devising equipment. He developed a less expensive phone for rural service. In 1894 the 285,000 telephones were mostly Bell phones as compared to 1904, where the total reached 6.1 million, nearly half belonging to independents.

Chapter-Associated Press

The penny press, in the 1830's, had developed a growing demand for timely news. The "Sun" and "Herald" had the financials to rush news via pony express, then via train. Interesting to note that at the same time the telegraph industry was establishing itself, another monopoly was forming. This was the NYAP, the New York Associated Press, a news organization which provided news to major daily newspapers throught the US. The NYAP became the most powerful news service in the country because of its ability to relay European news via telegraph and the seaports in eastern Canada and the ability to control this route due to the papers' vast financial resources. Starr states (p. 175):

"With the triumph of Western Union over its competitors, there developed the first bilateral monopoly in the United States--a monopoly telegraph in close partnership with a monopoly news service."

The penny press created the need for publishers to become more innovative in terms of reporting and receiving interesting news from arenas outside local sources. The Associated Press was one such example of meeting these needs.

Chapter 5.

Chapter five shows us how the telegraph came into the light. The telegraph brought the world of communications to a different level. This new telegraph promised the connection of people from all over the world. The idea of the telegraph came from the word itself which means "distant writer", came from a signaling system made for military purposes in recolutionary France. The telegraph was made around the same time as the penny print. The penny print was newspapers sold for a penny a copy: they sold to a wider market.

Journalism As Information

In Chapter 19 entitled The New Journalism written by Michael Schudon he writes about journalism as information and the rise of The New York Times. Before the Times was established in 1896, papers weren't very successful in instituting a standard. The Times became that standard newspaper. Will Irwin in 1911 wrote that "[The Times came] the nearest of any newspaper to presenting a truthful picture of life in New York and the world at large."

The original publisher of The Times was praised in 1926 for his new way of printing the newspaper. Unlike the sensational papers that came before him, Adolph Ochs said that decency meant dollars. This theory is what made the Times one of the best papers of his era and kept its longevity's. Ochs became the first to sell the paper using the telephone which also helped the growth of the paper. After the paper starting coming out and gaining power to be seen reading the paper became a "stamp of respectability. "