Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 17, 1994 TAG: 9403170116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray Reed
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: The one who guessed satellite gets the high-fives.
An electronic camera that uses a tiny computer disk instead of film lets pictures of athletes such as Dan Jansen or Nancy Kerrigan be received in Roanoke 30 minutes after they were taken in Norway. No processing is required.
The slowest part of the trip is from Roanoke to Pembroke. It takes about 10 hours to put that color picture on a newspaper page and deliver it by truck or car.
TV sends us live images, but print media such as newspapers are almost as high-tech. Using a Nikon camera modified with electronics and computer chips, the image that's photographed is never touched by human hands.
The disk is taken out of the camera and inserted into an uplink computer that changes the image into digital information and beams it to a satellite. The picture bounces to newspapers around the world in less than a minute.
This camera and satellite replace technology that took half an hour - after processing - to send color pictures over telephone lines.
The electronic camera is brand-new and costs about $16,000, and lenses are extra. Its first really successful picture was taken during the Super Bowl and showed Emmitt Smith scoring a touchdown for Dallas.
A regular Nikon news photographer's camera that uses film costs about $800 - again without lenses. Because the electronic camera is so new, the film cameras still were used for most of the Olympic pictures. Even the film image can be transmitted in an hour, now that the satellite is available.
Real gold in the medals
Q: Are Olympic medals really made of gold, silver and bronze? Who manufacturers them? D.N., Roanoke; L.E., Dublin
A: They're gold-plated and silver-plated, meaning they're cast of other metals and covered with the expensive stuff. The bronze ones are real, clear through.
Minimum standards say there must be at least six grams of gold in a gold medal. That's about $75 worth of gold, enough to do a good plating job. The silver probably is worth about the same amount.
The country that is the host is responsible for making its own medals, so they're different each time. The real cost is in the die work for cutting in the symbols, rather than in the precious metals.
Long-lived nickels
Q: What coin stays in circulation the longest period of time? I've found a few nickels from the '30s and '40s. M.B., Daleville
A: Older nickels are more likely to turn up, because their design hasn't changed since 1938, said Reginald Luck of the Roanoke Coin Exchange.
People tend to hoard coins on the possibility the old design's value will increase - which may or may not happen.
Another key year for coin hoarding was 1965, when the silver was replaced with nonprecious metals.
Got a question about something that might affect other people, too? Something you've come across and wondered about? Give us a call at 981-3118. Maybe we can find the answer.
by CNB