AP at 175, Part 6: One World, 1961-75

The Associated Press (AP) celebrates its 175th birthday in May 2021. To mark this milestone, the AP Corporate Archives has assembled a concise visual history of the organization, offered here in an eight-part monthly blog, “AP at 175.” This is the sixth of eight installments.

Valerie S. Komor
Director, AP Corporate Archives

The engineer who launched Wirephoto, Harold Carlson, retired in 1961, the year the silicon chip was invented.  Edward Blanton Kimbell succeeded him, with the new title of head of research and development.  Kimbell, a self-taught mechanical wizard, had joined AP after graduating from high school during the Depression. 

“There was an effort to get high-speed on everything,” Kimbell recalled, “especially the stock market where time was very critical.  Stock exchanges didn’t close until three o’clock in the afternoon.  Most newspaper around the country had to get the closing stock lists by 3:30 and in 1961 the market transmission was a very slow speed.  Computers were just coming into use.  Almost all were used only for business operations, accounting, that kind of thing.  And it seemed obvious to us that they could do the kind of thing we needed for stock tables.  So we went to several large computer manufacturers and finally settled on IBM.  It took us about a year to get the preliminary programming done.” 

In late 1962, Kimbell and his staff flew to Palo Alto for final testing of the IBM 1620.  The new equipment arrived in New York in December and was installed in the required air-conditioned quarters on the fourth floor of 50 Rockefeller Plaza.  There, on Feb. 6, 1963, the 1620 began receiving and tabulating the daily stock market report at the rate of 10,000 words per minute, with reports arriving in newspapers 25 minutes after market close.  The machine replaced 50 human tabulators.   

Within five years, IBM’s first mainframe computer, the 360, had superseded the 1620.  At the time, AP was already working with the Digital Equipment Corporation on the PDP or Programmed Data Processor, DEC’s first minicomputer. The PDP-8 arrived in the Atlanta bureau in June of 1970, serving as the computer hub for a regional editing system that soon encompassed all bureaus.  “Pete,” as the computer was known, could hyphenate, justify and automatically transmit AP stories. 

In 1971, the first CRTs appeared--so-called because their monitors used cathode-ray tubes to project images onto a glass screen.   “After this very short experience,” remarked Milwaukee bureau chief Dion Henderson, “we are still a little dazzled by the electronics...In just ten days we have all incorporated it into our professional lives.” 

Although the word “digital” did not appear in the AP Stylebook until 1984, the digital revolution was off and running, with Kimbell handling text and Hal Buell, a generation younger, handling photos.  AP General Manager Wes Gallagher, who as a young reporter had followed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower from London to Nuremburg by way of North Africa and Normandy, pushed for these transformations while coordinating coverage of the era’s biggest stories:  NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Perhaps no one else was so prepared to do so.

Model 15 Teletype, 1965. The Model 15, manufactured by the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company of Skokie, Illinois, was in continuous production for 33 years beginning in 1930. At AP, the last teletype went out of service in 1986 at the West Plains, MO. Daily Quill. AP Photo.

AP engineers unveil the IBM 1620 in New York, Aug. 13, 1964. From left: Mel Fennell, administrative assistant; Blant Kimbell, head of research and development; and Bob Hall, administrative assistant. The IBM 1620, the first widely used data-processing system for small businesses, justified lines for market reports and later, for sports scores. AP Photo.

“A Short Guide to News Coverage in Viet Nam,” [June?] 1962. Title page. APCA.

Saigon bureau chief Malcolm W. Browne composed this manual for Horst Faas and Peter Arnett, who arrived on June 26, 1962. Browne’s manual set journalistic standards for the duration of the war; this copy went with Browne to ABC television in Saigon in 1966. A powerful trio, Browne, Faas and Arnett went on to win sequential Pulitzers, Browne in 1964 for international reporting, Faas in 1965 for combat photography, and Arnett in 1966 for international reporting.

Four Saigon bureau chiefs pose at the Saigon bureau, April 28, 1972. AP Photo.

From left: George Esper (1932-2012), who wrote more words on Vietnam than any other reporter with his daily roundups but never served as bureau chief; Malcolm W. Browne (1932-2012); George MacArthur (1924-88), Edwin Quigley White (1922-2012) and Richard Pyle (1934-2017). Photographer Horst Faas, who set up and ran the photo operation in Saigon, also died in 2012. With the deaths of Esper, Faas, Browne and White coming within months of each other in the same year, there was a feeling among colleagues that they had somehow agreed to join the starry heavens together.

Associated Press Saigon photographer Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut works in the darkroom of the AP bureau in the Eden Building in 1966, shortly after he was hired. AP Photo.

Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick, was barely out of childhood when Horst Faas hired him in March of 1966.  For safety reasons, Nick had left his parents to live in Saigon with his older brother, Huynh Thanh My, a gifted AP photographer who gave Nick his first photography lessons.  When My was killed by the Viet Cong, his family pleaded with Horst to hire Nick.  They needed an income and had already lost another child to the war. 

Horst finally agreed, and Nick entered the darkroom where he began processing film and making prints.  He made his first combat photos during Tet and from then on, he was a combat photographer.  The years of darkroom and editing work had developed his eye for the good picture.  By 1972, he had seen and made many.        

South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972 accidentally struck civilians who had sought cover. AP Photo/Nick Ut.

Nick Ut made this picture around midday. He brought his film to the bureau later that afternoon where Jackson Ishizaki was among the first to see it. When Horst Faas saw the print, he ordered it transmitted immediately. It was sent from the PTT office by radio signal to Tokyo and then on to New York. 

At 50 Rockefeller Plaza, Chief of Photos Hal Buell stood by when he heard the words, “Saigon is upcoming in five minutes.”  As the signal was recorded on film, Buell examined the image closely. “So the picture came out by radio,” he remembered, “and we discussed it for ten minutes or so around the desk.  Nobody—we couldn’t—even within our own ranks, we didn’t have any objection to the picture because it was not prurient, it—yes, nudity but not prurient in any sense of the word.  It was the horror of war.  It was innocence caught in the crossfire, and it went right out, and of course it became a lasting icon of that war—of any war, of all wars.”

The picture won the Pulitzer for Spot News Photography in May 1973. At the time, Nick was the youngest photographer ever to win that prize.

The last three staffers in The Associated Press' Saigon bureau, reporters Matt Franjola, left, Peter Arnett, rear, and George Esper, second from right, are joined by two North Vietnamese soldiers and a member of the Viet Cong on the day the government of South Vietnam surrendered, April 30, 1975. One of the soldiers is showing Esper the route of his final advance into the city. AP Photo/Sarah Errington.

Esper served his visitors Coca Cola and pound cake and immediately filed a story. Later that night, he and Arnett composed the final installment of their “Vietnam Diary,” writing:

“Communications with our New York office are broken. It is raining heavily outside. You can’t see a thing. Are the Viet Cong in town already? One wonders.
Did they cut the power? The lights soon go on again, the soldiers go home to sleep it off, we file our night report and the first day without the Americans is over.”

Teletypesetter (TTS) Circuit wire copy (Sheet 1 of 27), hand-edited, prior to transmission, Nov. 22, 1963. APCA.

Teletypesetter (TTS) Circuit wire copy (Sheet 2 of 27), hand-edited, prior to transmission, Nov. 22, 1963. APCA.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas just before 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963. His limousine arrived at Parkland Hospital five minutes later, and the president was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m.  News of his death, conveyed in a Flash, was delayed until 1:32 p.m. to allow Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to leave the hospital for Love Field, where he would be sworn in aboard Air Force One before accompanying the president’s body and Jacqueline Kennedy back to Washington.

The first bulletin announcing that the president had been shot moved on the “A” or national wire at 12:40 p.m. Central Standard Time. Wirephoto operator James W. Altgens, who had seen blood on the president’s head while making pictures, called in the news from a payphone near Dealey Plaza, reaching Dallas bureau chief Robert Johnson, who began taking down Altgens’ account as he spoke.

Working against time, and conscious of the transcendent events unfolding, editors marked the all-caps text to indicate the need for capitalization, added paragraph markings, and edited the copy.  In their haste, they pulled the paper out of the machine as it continued to type, resulting in single letters splayed down the right margin. The editor added the missing text by hand.  

Reporter Kathryn Johnson (1926-2019), of the Atlanta bureau (left) accompanies Charlayne Hunter as she and Hamilton Homes seek to integrate the University of Georgia at Athens, Jan. 11, 1961. AP Photo.

Johnson grew up in Columbus, Ga., during the Jim Crow era. After graduating from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, she joined the AP as a secretary and took a degree in journalism at night. She was as tireless as she was fearless and wholly devoted to the work of reporting. At a time when there were no models for entry level female staff to emulate, she became a model for others.

As a reporter, she made her mark covering the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., his wife, Coretta Scott King and the civil rights movement they led. With characteristic ingenuity, she obtained the only eyewitness account of Charlayne Hunter’s first day of classes at the University of Georgia, deploying her petite stature while profiting from being ignored by the male journalists around her—a common enough occurrence.

In an oral history interview conducted by the corporate archives in 2007, Johnson recollected that day in detail.

“I had covered Hamilton Homes and Charlayne Hunter at their court hearings for several days before they were allowed to go in….It's probably the oldest university, I think, in the US, and there had been always absolute segregation. In fact, it was all — absolute segregation all over Georgia at that time.

And I was sent up there to cover it….I was still young enough, then, and so I got loafers, and a skirt, and blouse, and took some books with me, and I thought I'd take a chance on going to class with them. And it — so — I went up the stairs, and but... At the bottom of the stairs, there were photographers galore, including UPI, AP, and so forth, and I — I've always felt everlasting grateful to the UPI guy, because in today's world, they would yell, "Hey, she's AP," you know... But then they let me go up without saying a word.

And at the top, there was a professor at the door, and he said, "What class are you?" And, of course, I had looked up what class [Charlayne Hunter] was in, and so forth, and I gave it, the Psychology 101, and so he let me in, and I sat several rows behind Charlayne….There were empty seats on both sides, and in front of her. There were quite a few girls and boys across — across the aisle. But — and she sat there quietly in a history class, and it was — making history herself….

I was able to go downstairs fast after the class ended, and call in that. It was an exclusive and at that time, I heard from Bill Waller, who was delighted, you know, to have that. He said that my — my copy... I had a telegram sent, and my copy was as hot as a firecracker ticket. I was also tear gassed very badly, there.”

AP Special Correspondent, Linda Deutsch, at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice, calls in a story to the bureau during the murder trial of Charles Manson. AP Photo.

Another reporter who blazed a trail for countless women was Linda Deutsch, who retired from AP in 2014 after 48 years. She joined the AP in Los Angeles in 1966 after a stint working for the San Bernardino Sun-Telegram in Rialto, California, the place, Deutsch recalled, “Joan Didion wrote about in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, where women kill their husbands out of boredom.” She managed to stumble upon a very big story when she drove past a field of rotting grapes and learned from the owner that there was no one to harvest them; the braceros (seasonal agricultural workers from Mexico) were on strike. Her front page story caught the attention of Los Angeles Bureau Chief Hubbard Keavey, who hired Deutsch on the spot later that year.

Viticulture would not be Deutsch’s beat. Celebrity trials would be—Patty Hearst, Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and many others. In a 2007 oral history interview, she talked about how she, at the age of 25, came to own the coverage of the murder trial of Charles Manson, which began at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice on June 15, 1970. There would never be another trial like it.

“I was still quite young.  And I was not that much older than the Manson people who had been arrested.  They decided that Art {Everett] would come out, and he would cover it with me.  And he would do the AM's, and I would do the PM's.  That's how we did it then.  We split cycles. 

And Art came out.  And Art was wonderful.  He was a very dignified gentleman, always had a handkerchief in his pocket.  And didn't like to be away from home for long periods.  Liked orderly trials.  And he came into this chaotic scene, in which the Manson women were camped on the sidewalk outside the courthouse, threatening to immolate themselves like the Vietnamese nuns.  We were having people having LSD flashbacks in court.  Charlie Manson leaped at the judge with a pencil in his hand, saying, "Someone should cut your head off!"  It was quite a scene.  And they were predicting it would last a year. 

And Art came up to me one day, and he said, "You know, I think I had a vacation scheduled."  And he left, and he never came back!  {laughter}  And so I was there alone for a year, covering what arguably is one of the most historic trials in American history.  It was a trial that reflected the 60's, reflected the drug culture, the cults.  It was the first real cult that we had heard of.  It was about celebrity, with Sharon Tate and her Hollywood friends.  It had something for everybody.”

Notes of reporter Linda Deutsch, transcribing the closing arguments of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi on Jan. 14, 1971 as the murder trial of Charles Manson came to a close. APCA.

"Attention Earth People!" AP advertisement for the work of aerospace writer Howard Benedict and for AP’s space coverage in general, 1966. APCA.

Benedict, a native of Sioux City, Iowa, joined the AP in 1953 in Salt Lake City and became head of AP’s bureau in Cape Canaveral in 1959. Two years later, the same year Alan Shepard became the first American in space, Benedict became the first AP reporter to be given the title "aerospace writer."

As the dean of space writing, Benedict developed terminology to explain the complexities of space travel in everyday English. While NASA referred to "revs" or "revolutions" around the Earth, for instance, Benedict wrote "orbits," and he introduced to the general public such early space terms as "retrofire," "multistage rockets" and "rendezvous," which referred to two spacecraft meeting in space.

His precision in writing carried over into his careful maintenance of the records of the Canaveral bureau, which included NASA publications, wire copy, biographical materials on the astronauts and background on each of the missions he covered, from Mercury to the Shuttle.

The Flash, timed off at “318pcd” or 3:18 p.m. Central Daylight Time, sent by Aerospace Writer Howard Benedict, announcing “astronauts land on moon,” July 20, 1969. The Bulletin follows. APCA.

Cover of AP World magazine, 1973, Number 1. APCA.

The credibility of the press weighed on reporter Peter Arnett after a decade of reporting from Vietnam. In his 1973 “Memo to a Young Reporter,” he wrote: “Our legacy is that no reporter in this generation will no longer automatically believe a general again….And I think the reporters of post-Watergate Washington will be similarly reluctant to worship the White House.” The resignation of President Richard M. Nixon was still two years away.

Text and photo editing by Valerie Komor, Director, AP Corporate Archives.

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