Mufax K-300-C/A automatic photographic receiver Serial No 450717 by Muirhead & Co Ltd, England, 1968, on wheeled base, with spare XL601 crater tube and thermostatic heater for chemical tank. Used by Daily Mail.

Picture transmission works, like television, by a process of synchronised scanning. However, the transmission rate is lower and the picture is much more detailed, so a picture takes minutes rather than milliseconds to send. Development has always been in the direction of higher speed, improved picture quality and the reduction of operator skill and equipment size.

This K300, used by British newspaper the Daily Mail, represents an interesting intermediate step between the valve-technology D355 of 1946, with its mass of controls in separate 2m-high rack, and the digital equipment which has replaced it. It offers transistorised simplicity in a modest cabinet, but not the speed and quality that digital systems can give.

The K300 was made by Muirhead, one of the oldest names in telegraph equipment. The company was active in press picture transmission (‘wirephoto’) from the 1930s onward.

The K300 automatic photographic receiver is a large receiver of the type used by all major newspapers in the late twentieth century to get pictures from agencies and their own photographs all over the world. Receivers of this type were largely replaced by digital technology by the end of the twentieth century.