[Associated Press Wire Photo of John Kennedy Jr. Saluting His Father's Casket]

Unknown

November 25, 1963 · Electrolytic facsimile print from wire transmission · Photographs

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.

Artist

Unknown

Date

November 25, 1963

Medium

Electrolytic facsimile print from wire transmission

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Gift of Weston Naef, by exchange, 1999