Platform Agnostic for Nearly 100 Years

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In TImes Past

In 1928, The New York Times wrapped an electric bulletin board around its headquarters to deliver breaking news to the throng of Times Square.

By David W. Dunlap

Why wait for the morning edition when you can write the news in light?

In the early 20th century, newspapers struggled to find faster ways than printing to relay breaking news, especially on presidential election nights. None were as famous as The New York Times's Motograph, a 368-foot-long electric bulletin board. Better known as the "zipper," it sparked to life on Nov. 6, 1928, to inform the crowds in Times Square that Herbert Hoover had defeated Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York.

Five-foot-high words composed of 14,800 light bulbs scrolled endlessly around the sign, wrapped like a ribbon above the third floor of the slender Times Tower on West 42nd Street.

Behind the sign was a control room where operators assembled words from individual 7½-inch-long Bakelite plastic plaques, each bearing a letter made of Monel, a nickel and copper alloy. Picked up by a conveyor chain, the plaques would pass under thousands of metal brushes. Wherever the brushes touched the Monel letters, an electric current would flow briefly to corresponding light bulbs on the exterior of the tower, creating the illusion of movement.

"The apparatus is not merely an electric sign but in one sense a newspaper as well," The Times wrote on Nov. 8, 1928, another way of saying the publisher and editors were "platform agnostic" — unwedded to any single technology for conveying the news.

At 7:03 p.m. on Aug. 14, 1945, mere moments after President Harry S. Truman spoke at the White House, the zipper lit up. "OFFICIAL — TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER," it told the jubilant, giddy throng.

After The Times sold Times Tower in 1961, the sign was rebuilt and sponsored in turn by Life magazine, Newsday and Dow Jones & Company, which dismantled the bulb assembly in 1997 and replaced it with a digital zipper. One Bakelite "S" plaque is on exhibit today in the Museum at The Times.

The In Times Past column explores New York Times history through artifacts.

David W. Dunlap, a retired Times reporter and columnist, is the curator of the Museum at The Times, which houses Times artifacts and historical documents.