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260 THE RISE AND PEOGRESS OE TELE GRAPHS
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.
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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 ...
cation in this countrv , it must not lbe forgotten that it was the first to eater the fieldthat it caine forward with a large capital , speedily
, secured to itself the different lines of railway , and bought up , one after another , most of the patents that stood any chance of
competing" with its own . From December , 1852 , to the same month of the following year ,
no less than three hundred and fifty thousand five hundred messages were which forwarded were £ 84 , 184 or receive 16 s . 4 d d . b thus y this paying comp 1 the any company , the recei dividends pts of
at the rate of seven per cent , per annum . The telegraph company between London and Liverpool receives ,
or did receive a few years ago , a thousand _poLinds a year for doing the business of this railway company : The " Times " pays the
same sum per annum for the transmission of a certain amount of daily news , paying in addition for all extra communications of
importance . The rate at wMch a commercial message is charged is a penny a
mile for the first fifty miles , and a quarter of this charge for any distance under a hundred miles : some linesthe South-Eastern
, for instance , are even higher than this in their rates of charges . There are two kinds of telegraph worked by the company , viz .
the Needle Telegraph , which is preferable for all ordinary transactionsbecause it transmits its messages with the greatest rapidity ,
, the and spectator Morse ' s more Recording perhaps Telegrap than the h . nimble The latter working instrument 1 needle strikes
apparatus , but its action is equally simple , strips of variable length , representing lettersbeing punched upon a long strip of paper ,
, called the _message strip , which is placed between a revolving " cylinder and a toothed spring . Such is the celerity with winch the
notation is transmitted by this method , that in an experiment performed by M . Le Terrier and Dr . Lardner before Committees of
the Institute and the Legislative Assembly at Paris , despatches were sent one thousand miles at the rate of nearly twenty thousand
words an hour . In ordinary practice , however , the speed is limited to the rate at which an expert clerk can punch out the holes , which
is not above a hundred a minute . Where the object is to forward long documents , such as a speech , a number of persons can be
employed simultaneously in punching different portions of the message , and thus the message strips can be supplied as fast as the
machine can work . The speed with which the attendants upon these instruments read
off the signals made by the needles on the needle telegraph _, is really marvellous : they do not , in some cases , even wait to _sj _^ _ell the
words letter by letter , but jump at the sentence before it is concluded ; and they have learned by practice , as Sir Francis Head says
in " Stokers and Pokers , " to recognise _immediately who is telegraphing to them , by fche peculiar expression of the needles , —the long
drawn wires thus forming a kind of human antennae by which indi-
260 The Rise And Peogress Oe Tele Graphs
260 THE RISE AND PEOGRESS OE _TELE _GRAPHS
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1859, page 260, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121859/page/44/
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