[f. as TELEPHOTE sb. b, c + -GRAPH.] A picture or image electrically reproduced at a distance, a telectrograph; also, an apparatus for doing this. So Telephotographic a.1, applied to an apparatus (telephotographic instrument) for producing photographs at a distance by means of an electric current. Telephotography1, the reproduction of pictures or scenes at a distance by means of the electric current as in the telegraph and telephone; = TELEPHOTY, phototelegraphy.
(This application of telephotograph and its derivatives had priority of date over that of TELEPHOTOGRAPH2, by which it has been almost superseded in current use.)
1881. S. Bidwell, in Nature, 10 Feb., 344/1 (heading). Telephotography. Ibid., 343/1. I made a pair of ‘tele-photographic’ instruments…. They produced a ‘tele-photograph’ of a gas-flame. Ibid., 563. Mr. Shelford Bidwell’s telephotographic machine.
1887. Standard, 30 Dec., 5/3. Mr. Shelford Bidwell’s Telephotograph has gone far to prove that the actual handwriting of the sender of a message, as well as drawings … may be transmitted by telegraph and reproduced at the other end.
1891. G. M. Minchin, in Philos. Mag., March, 235. The second problem … is the electrical transmission of an image to any distance; in other words the construction of a telephotograph.
1895. Current Hist. (Buffalo, N. Y.), V. 962. The Telephotograph. This Swedish invention will reproduce to the eye pictures transmitted from a distance.
