On this page
-
Text (1)
-
. THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF TELEGRAPHS. 2...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
The Next Electric Telegraph In Order Of ...
transmit the messages of the public ; and liere commences the first popular Bthe end use of of the the telegrap 1845 h lines in Eng exceeding land or in five any hundred other miles country in .
extent y _-were in operation year in England , , working Messrs . Wheatstone and Cooke ' s patents , and in the following year the powerful
Electric and International Telegraph Company sprang into existence . " Jammed in between lofty houses at the bottom of a
narrow court in Lothbury , we see before us a stuccoed wall ornamented with an electric illuminated clock . Who would think that
behind this narrow forehead lay the great brain—if we may so term it—of the nervous system of Great Britain ; or that beneath
the narrow pavement of the alley lies its spinal cord , composed of two hundred and twenty-four fibres , which transmits intelligence as
imperceptibly as the medulla oblongata does beneath the skin ? Emerging from this narrow channel the ' efferent' wires branch off
beneath the different footpaths , ramify in certain plexuses within the metropolis , and then shoot out along the different lines of railways ,
until the shores of the island would seem to interpose a limit to their further progress . Not so , however , as is well known , for
beneath the seas , beneath the heaving waves , down many a fathom deep in the still watersthe moving fire takes its darksome way ,
, until it emerges on some foreign shore , once more to commence afresh its rapid and useful career over the wide expanse of the
Continent . " The function of this central office is to receive and re-distribute
communications . Of the manner in which these ends are accomlished little or nothing can be gained from a glance round the
inp strument rooms . You see no wires coming in , or emerging from them : you ask for a solution of the mysteryand one of the clerks
, leads you to the staircase and opens the door of what looks like a long wooden shoot placed perpendicularly against the wall . This
is the great spinal cord of the establishment , consisting of a vast bundle of wiresinsulated from each other by gutta percha . One
set of these conveys , the gathered up streams of intelligence from the remote ends of the Continent and the farthest shores of Britain ,
conducts them through London by the street lines underneath the thronging footsteps of the multitude , and _asceiads with its invisible
despatches directly to the different instruments . Another set is composed of tlae wires that descend into the battery chamber .
It is barely possible to realise the fact , by merely gazing upon this brown and dusty bundle of threads , that we are by them put
into communication with no less than four thousand four hundred and nine miles of telegraph in England alone .
It must be remembered that , although we have only spoken of the Electric and International Telegraph Company , there are
several other companies in the United Kingdom , working different patents : and if it is a source of wonder to our readers that one
company should virtually possess the monopoly of telegraphic comniuiii-
. The Rise And Progress Of Telegraphs. 2...
. THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF TELEGRAPHS . 259
-
-
Citation
-
English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1859, page 259, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121859/page/43/
-