Use of the Word “Telephotography”

Abstract

NATURE of August 29 contained an article by Dr. Shelford Bidwell entitled “Practical Telephotography.” May I enter a protest against the use of the word “telephotography” to describe the method of transmitting pictures to a distance? Without wishing to go into the merit of the term, I would point out that it has been applied for years to photography by means of a lens consisting of a negative as well as a positive element, as in the well-known “telephoto” lens of Dallmeyer. There is already an extensive literature in which the term “telephotography” is used with this meaning, and to employ it now to describe something totally different can only ultimately result in confusion. Would it not be better to employ the term customarily employed, viz. “phototelegraphy”?