When photos flew at 100 m.p.h.
The Post was proud #100yearsagotoday of the daring pilot who transported the first World Series photos from Pittsburgh to D.C., in time for print
The Nats crushed the Pirates in the first game of the 1925 World Series in Pittsburgh 4-1.
But what got the newsroom aflutter was the bold and daring way they got photos from a Pennsylvania ballpark to Pennsylvania Avenue in time for the morning edition.
“Within less than four hours from the moment Gov. Pinchot threw out the first ball to start Washington on the road to victory in Pittsburgh, news pictures of the game were in The Post building being prepared for publication and were available to the entire city in the first edition of The Post appearing on the streets at 9 o’clock,” said the triumphant, Oct. 8 sidebar about the photo race.
Post photographer Hugh Miller hopped on a motorcycle to whisk his film to Mayer airfield near Pittsburgh.
He passed the film to pilot A.H. Kreider, who took off at 3:47 p.m. in a “Washington Post” branded airplane powered by a 90-horsepower motor. In two hours and five minutes, he landed at Bolling Field. Then a driver sped to the Post newsroom by motorcar.
The front page the next morning was a modern triumph:
All to do what hitting the “send” button on our phone screens does today.
The day had a shaky start when Kreider, a former Army Air Service pilot, was struck by a propeller at his Hagerstown airfield before he left for Pittsburgh. He nevertheless hopped in his plane with an injured arm to get to the game on time, the story said. A flight surgeon was there for his arrival at Bolling to tend to his injuries.
It was a pioneering move toward information speed by The Post. Other innovations appeared in the 1930s.
First it was these guys.
I’ll always remember, when I worked at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, the photo displayed in the newsroom of photographer Edward Agnelly launching a carrier pigeon flying his film to the newsroom from a Tulane football game.
“Trudy and Georgie, speedy stars on The Times-Picayune/New Orleans States homing pigeon team, flashed in classy ‘wing-back’ formation from Tulane Stadium Saturday to the newspaper offices with action pictures of the Tulane-North Carolina football game in time to ‘make’ early editions,” the paper wrote in October 1936.
A year earlier, the Associated Press unveiled the AP newswire, which transmitted photos electronically at “the speed of light,” reported The Hartford Courant on Jan. 13, 1935. But pigeons were more affordable for most papers.
The Courant was one of about 50 newspapers in the nation that had access to the wire photo system. They had to pay for a share of the $5 million project.
