AP Was There: Covering the previous coronation in Britain

By ALLEN G. BREED
AP National Writer

On Saturday, The Associated Press will deploy a small army of journalists to cover the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III. But for his mother’s crowning 70 years ago, the world’s oldest news cooperative enlisted the help of an air force as well. With networks of satellites, today’s news rockets around the globe in seconds. But in 1953, it took eight minutes to transmit a single black-and-white photograph, provided the weather conditions and phone lines cooperated. So among the methods AP employed to deliver photos from London to its American newspaper clients was an arrangement to put them on Royal Air Force bombers.