[Associated Press Wire Photo of John Kennedy Jr. Saluting His Father's Casket]
Not on view
Before the advent of wire photography in the 1920s, it was almost impossible to use photographs of current events as illustrations in newspapers across the country. Printers had to wait for the postal service to deliver a photograph before they could convert it into an ink-printed image, which prevented the use of time-sensitive material. Wire photography, however, made it possible for a photograph taken in Chicago to appear in a newspaper in San Francisco on the same day, thereby facilitating the rapid and wide distribution of newsworthy images. The process worked by scanning a photograph in one location with an "electronic eye," transmitting it as a signal over a wire, and printing it in another location with a "light eye." The image had to be scanned and reconstituted piece by piece, which explains the presence of lines in this wire photo, which reproduces NBC's television footage of President John F. Kennedy's funeral caisson. As the casket passed by the president's widow and children, the three-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. saluted his father-an innocent yet inadvertently powerful gesture that would become an iconic image of the 1960s.
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![[Associated Press Wire Photo of John Kennedy Jr. Saluting His Father's Casket], Unknown (American), Electrolytic facsimile print from wire transmission](/Rodan/dist/img/1x1-d7dcde.gif)
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![[Associated Press Wire Photo of John Kennedy Jr. Saluting His Father's Casket], Unknown (American), Electrolytic facsimile print from wire transmission](/Rodan/dist/svg/rolling-0.9s-30px.svg)
