I Rememeber When I Shook the Polaroid Picture

OK. so I really didn't shake it.  The Polaroids I took were the peel-apart type, so you waited 30 seconds, peeled off the paper, and voila, your photo was fully developed.  A couple of weeks ago Polaroid announced they were discontinuing all instant film, I was a bit disappointed but not surprised.   I didn't take a lot of Polaroid photos, but in college I picked up a used Polaroid Reporter camera at Gary Camera.  I don't recall the price, but it was pretty cheap. It used pack films like the fabulous 667 black and white.  Polaroid 667 was rated iso 3000 and incredibly fine-grained for a film that speed.   (By that time in the late '80s Polaroid pack films were mainly used by professionals with medium format cameras fitted with a Polaroid back.)  Unfortunately, while it was fun to play with, the Reporter was pretty much a piece of crap camera.   It was a rangefinder-type camera with a focus setting you just guessed at.  I think the lens was made out of plastic.

My intention was to use to use the camera when shooting photos for the Debris for instant "feedback" on a shoot, but in reality more often it was used for quick snapshots, whether it be to capture a problem one of my study partners and I had worked out on a chalkboard or a friend like Bubba at a party.

Telex network still in operation?

 This week the FCC invited comments from parties interested in Verizon's application to discontinue Telex service in all 50 states. Honestly, I was shocked to hear this as I would have thought this had already happened... Email and faxes supplanted the service a number of years ago. Telex (along with it's Bell System cousin, TWX) was a customer-dialed network that was a true forerunner to email, allowing users to send text messages instantly around the globe. Well, as instantly as 75 baud would allow. Interestingly, Telex was launched by Western Union in 1958, so this year the service would celebrate its 50 year anniversary. Telex is the last vestige of the once-ubiquitous Western Union telegraph network that predated the telephone network. (See the Western Union Alumni website for a lot of interesting info on the company...)



For awhile Telex was the most widely available telecommunications service in the world, even more available than voice. This was at least partially true until recent times as I recall folks from Caterpillar telling me that this was how they were communicating with many of their dealers in third world countries in the 1990s. Often when a government was toppled and the country's voice connections were severed, Telex connections were still available. (Probably because they could easily be tapped and recorded...)




It will be interesting to see if the Commission gets a lot of comments on this proceeding. It will also be interesting to see if this topic gets any press similar to the "Last Telegram" news stories of 2006. I rather doubt it as hardly anyone remembers what Telex was...