Tuesday, October 26, 2021

'Watch' Baseball Via Play-by-Play Telegraphs From The Associated Press, October 1921

The New Day in News-Sending

The baseball game at the Polo Grounds yesterday was reported in manner that was almost equal to an all-embracing wireless service. Only one operator was employed at the sending office, but the Associated Press had the wires of the entire country so connected up that this operator was enabled to send the news instantaneously over 33,000 miles of telegraph wire, the news going forward at the rate of 186,000 miles a second.”

Baseball enthusiasts in every part of the country, from Mangor, Maine, to Seattle, Washington, Galveston, Texas, and Havana in one direction and Canadian points in another, were keeping track of the game as it progressed. To this wire service the automatic baseball diamond, by means of which the street crowds are enabled to watch the game, move by move, has added a touch of completeness to the instant wire promulgation of baseball news. Only the attendants at the grounds have the advantage of visual inspiration. Except for hearing the shouts of the rooters and seeing the actual playing of the men, themselves, the crowds around The Observer office can watch the game with as much satisfaction as if they were seat holders at the Polo Grounds. News transmission has reached a remarkable degree of perfection, but it is a good proposition that 10 years hence, what we are today remarking upon as something in the nature of the marvelous, will be talked about as “the crude system of a decade ago.”

From The Charlotte Observer, as reprinted on the front page of The Hoke County Journal, Raeford, N.C., Oct. 26, 1921

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