Jamie Jelinski | Face the Fax: The Development and Unrealized Potential of Wirephoto at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

This event will be held both on-campus and online via Zoom (a link to the online stream will be sent to registered attendees).

PLEASE NOTE VENUE CHANGE: This talk and all following seminars will now be held in the ANU School of Art & Design Lecture Theatre (Room 1.42)

In early 1960, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) sent two police identification photographs and a single fingerprint thousands of kilometers across the country via a wirephoto transmitter—essentially a fax machine—provided by the Canadian Press. Motivated by this trial, an RCMP contingent became keen to expand the use of this technology. By 1966, the force had established its own internal wirephoto network. This presentation explores how, despite strong institutional support and backing from political figures, the RCMP’s efforts to implement wirephoto technology were marred by persistent challenges from the outset. Wirephoto, it will be argued, symbolizes the force’s aspirations for technological advancement and its inability to fully realize the technology’s potential. The presentation also highlights the influence of institutional bureaucracy, which allowed wirephoto to be continuously promoted despite its ongoing shortcomings.

Jamie Jelinski is an incoming Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. He earned his PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University and has held postdoctoral fellowships at McGill University, Dalhousie University, and the University of Toronto. Jelinski’s first book, Needle Work: A History of Commercial Tattooing in Canada, was published in 2024 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. He is currently writing a second book, under contact with Wilfrid Laurier University Press, provisionally titled Unseen Images: Crime, Visual Culture, and Access to Information in Canada. He is also conducting research for two major projects: one examining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s production of facial composites from the 1950s onward, and the other exploring the use of visual culture at Quebec’s forensic crime laboratory in the early twentieth century.

The School of Art & Design Seminar series will continue weekly on Tuesdays from 1-2pm, between 17 February and 21 October 2025, co-convened by Dr Alex Burchmore and Alia Parker.