Thomas Connelly, a Times-News employee, stood next to a machine the size of a slot machine and took off the large strip of paper that it fed out. He studied the pictures on the page, gave his nod of approval and the Cumberland Daily News and Cumberland Evening Times became the first newspapers in Maryland to use the Photofax, a new process for transmitting pictures, in August 1955.

The first photograph had been transmitted electronically in 1922 over the telephone lines in Washington, D.C. By 1935, the Associated Press had adapted the technology to send pictures to its member newspapers.

The Associated Press was formed in 1848 as newspapers tried to cover a growing number of events with a limited number of reporters. AP was formed as a cooperative organization between newspapers. One reporter could cover an event and share the article with member newspapers. So it was important for the reporter to be able to get the photographs from the event to the member newspapers in a timely manner.

Since telephone lines in the early part of the 20th century were party lines, the AP used leased telephone lines on which only their photos could be transmitted. A single picture took minutes to send and in the days before e-mail, this was the fastest way to send images all over the world.

Electronic transmission of photographs gave birth to the "golden age" of photojournalism. Newspapers and magazines began attracting readers with the photographs they ran. Photographers like Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White and W. Eugene Smith became well-known because their photographs appeared in a large number of magazines and newspapers. And the reason that could happen was because of electronic transmission of the photographs.

However, transmission using leased lines could only send the image to one newspaper at time, which made the process time-consuming. In 1952, a new machine was introduced that automated the process and made it even faster. The machine was called the Photofax.

The Cumberland Evening Times reported that by eliminating some of the operations required in leased-wire transmissions, the process would be simplified and bring "radical change in the reception of news pictures by wire."

Under the Photofax process, pictures were delivered for immediate use by a mechanical engraving process rather than the photo-electric process used by leased lines.

"Photofax is a facsimile process which receives news pictures on sensitized paper, instead of photographic film or photographic paper. The picture comes from the machine ready for the engraver and in a matter of minutes is ready for publication in a newspaper," reported the Cumberland Evening Times.

A Photofax could send a picture to 400 newspapers in seven minutes.

"Its installation in Cumberland means that every picture transmitted will be on hand for study and selection of the best to be used in the Times and News," reported the Cumberland Evening Times.

The first major test of Cumberland's Photofax system was to send out pictures from Cumberland's bicentennial celebration, which began the following day. Because the newspaper was able to send out photos to many other newspapers quickly, the celebration got a lot more national recognition than it might have otherwise.