Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 136, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1919 — WORK OF SIGNAL CORPS IN WAR [ARTICLE]

WORK OF SIGNAL CORPS IN WAR

Official Reports Show Wonderful Service Rendered During Struggle. HAD 96,000 MILES GF WIRE Special Form of Wire Made and Many Telephone and Telegraph Stations Were Set Up in France. Washington.—Official reports on signal corps equipment for the war, made public, show that one special form of telephone wire, unknown to commer-i cial use before the war, was being turned out at the rate of 26,000 miles a month at a cost of nearly $6,000,000 when the armistice was signed. The American telegraph and telephone system in France totaled 96,000 miles when the fighting ended, this being the semi-permanent installations. When fighting was at its peak the corps was approximating the use of 68,000 miles of outpost wire a month in addition, one development of the war being the necessity of two-wire circuits for front line operations to prevent the

enemy from “listening” in on the old style single wire equipment. Wire wastage was enormous, as it*had to be abandoned whenever an advance, was made. ■ Of Special Design. There had been set up in France last November 282 American telephone exchanges with 14,956 lines reaching to 8,959 stations. Even the telephone instruments u'Sed were of special design, combining both telephonic and telegraphic communication, and the production of these in the quantity needed was a problem in itself. At the close of hostilities the United States had 133 fully equipped telegraph stations in France,, which were handling a daily average of 43,845 messages of 60 words each during the last days of the fighting, or within about 5,000 of the peak load. An instance of the enormous demand that developed for field glasses, lenses for which before the war largely w’ere obtained from Germany,

lies in the work of the Bausch and Lomb company of Rochester, N. Y., which beginning with a capacity of 1,800 pairs of field glasses a year in 1914 had reached an output of 3,500 pairs a week In November, 1918, and was then aiming toward an output of 5,500 pairs a week by January, 1919. Similar expansions of facilities ,were necessary in many other plants. The requirement of the forces in France for the six-power artillery glass alone was approximately 100,000 pairs and 106,000 pairs w’ere shipped from the United States. Motion-Picture Photography. The report devotes considerable space to discussion of the progress made in motion-picture photography during the war. By these means, it is pointed out, the signal corps has created “a new kind of history of the war, a history written entirely In pictures for future generations to scan.” Carrier pigeons, never before employed extensively in the American army, were widely used in France. Jfore than 15,000 were purchased and trained for that service and the report adds that “in actual use on the field the pigeons delivered more than 95 per cent of the messages intrusted to them, flying safely through the heaviest shell and gas barrages.”