Want to really appreciate how amazing it is that you can take and send photos from your mobile phone? Check out this educational film from 1937, which explains how photographs were sent across the wire:

It’s actually wildly fascinating (and gets pretty “technical” in the middle).

If you didn’t know the film was from 1937, it wouldn’t sound entirely out of place today when talking about snapping and sending photos on iPhones, Flip Cams, or Blackberrys to frame a news event as it unfolds:

“Every available development of science and engineering has been utilized to get the story to the reader in the shortest possible time.

It is only a matter of minutes after a news event has occurred before newspapers all over the country are carrying pictures that tell the story more graphically and completely than the printed word. Pictures sent from any location, by simply picking up a telephone.”

What once was old is new again…