People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1895 — ENGLAND'S STATE OWED POSTAL TELEGRAPH. [ARTICLE]

ENGLAND'S STATE OWED POSTAL TELEGRAPH.

The Great Electric Wire Web Flourishes As a Government Monopoly. IT HAS BEEN FOUND A GOOD THING FOB THE PEOPLE.

London, Feb. I.—Twenty-five years ago the telegraph act of 1868 came into operation, and the most important of modern applications of electrial science became a government monopoly. The telegraph system of England, which up to that date had been organized and carried on by competing private companies, as the sub-marine cable systems are now, was handed over —instruments, conductors, batteries, staff, and all—to the postmaster general, then the present duke of Devonshire, to be reorganized and carried on for the public benefit. It is only necessary to refer to a few figures concerning the telegraph business of the country at that time to understand the importance of the step taken by the government in 1868. There was in existence three principal companies, formed for the transmitting of news and private messages by telegraph, for they combined the functions both of telegraph companies and news agencies. These were the Electric and International, which purchased the Cook and Wheatstone patents in 1837, and was incorporated in 1846; the British and Irish Magnetic, which first established telegraphic communication with Ireland; and the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph, which first introduced the Morse and Hughes instruments. The tariff varied according to distance, with a minimum of 1 shilling for twenty words within 100 miles; and a message of that length between London and Valentia. in Ireland, cost as much as 6 shillings. Now it is 1 jience. The average cost of a private telegram was in 1869 2 shillings and 2 pence. In the present year of grace the average is only 7f pence. Under the old companies the highest" number of messages sent in one year was no more than 6,500,000. It leaped in the first year of government administration-in 1870-71-to 9,850,177, and has steadily grown, until now it has exceeded 70,000,000 in one year. The number of offices taken over by the government was under 3000; now there are over 9000. The old companies possessed 60,000 miles of wire; the postoftice now has 200,000 miles, of which 12.000 miles are laid underground.

Press messages sent by the old companies amounted to a very small total in a year, because of the high tariff; but now they have reached 5,500,000 per annum, representing 600,000,000 words telegraphed. Although the parliamentary powers of the postoffl.ce over the ■ telegrams came into operatien Jan. 28, 1870, it was not until the night of Feb. 4 and 5 that the actual transfer took place from the old companies to the staff organized by F. I. Scudamore. The night w T as a night of great anxiety to the new postoffice stall', which had been hard' at work for months previously planning out the concentration of the various companies’ systems into one—a task of great difficulty, as the services of the telegraph companies were by no means perfect, and many large towns were, comparatively speaking, neglected in favor of olhers where there was competition. An increased traffic w T as anticipated from the institution of a uniform shilling rate, and new wires had to be connected, new T instruments bought, and a uniform code of regulations adopted. Perfect success might have been obtained at the outset in meeting the demands of the public but for the difficulties inherent to the welding of staffs working different systems, and to the enormous increase in the number of telegrams wrhich at once took place. The whole system was blocked from the outset, and for weeks. Telegrams accumulated on busy circuits by the hundred, and could not be dispatched for hours. It took months to get the central offioe staff into working order and to get the conntry postmasters and their cleiks instructed in the workings of even simple instruments ,and the marvelous perfection to which electrical transmission has now attained has been a slow but a steady development. The present-day aspect of that great focus of ceaseless energy, the central telegraph office, is the most impressive testimony to the wonderful development of the government telegraphs under W. H. Preece, C. 8.. the engineer in chief and electrican; J. C. Lamb. C. 8.. assistant secretary to the postjnaster-general,

andH. C. Fischer, the controller, who can literally feel the pulse of Europe. One-half of the whole telegraph messages of the country are transmitted from or through the central telegraph office, for most of the southern towns send their messages to the north, east or west through London. The cable-room, in which alone, 16,000 messages are dealt with every day, is in direct communication with Paris, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Frankfort, and other chief continental cities, and rows and rows of Hughes printing instruments, with their pianette-like keyboards, are sending or receiving messages between London and the most distantparts of Europe. The Hughes instrument prints the message on topes like those in use in the clubs and newsrooms. It is the oldest printing telegraph, and though it has been improved it has not been superceded by any better instrument for long wires. Distance is no object. It prints a message from Vienna with the same facilities as if it only came from Brighton. The great sight, however, is “The Gallery,” which is really an entire floor of the building. Here all the instruments communicating with Great Britain and Ireland are grouped in blocks and sections of the little tables crowded with instruments, each with its attending clerk. The midlands and the north occupy the center of the great room, Scotland another section, Ireland another. Kent and Sussex are grouped in one corner and the southwestern counties in another, while the press telegrams are dealt with in a separate section. All are disposed in geographical order, and on a careful plan. Nearly 100,000 messages a day pass through the Gallery, and wonderful are the contrivances for saving time. The Wheatstone automatic transmitter, which twenty-five years ago could only be got to send with accuracy eighty words a minute over a comparatively short length of wire, can now be made to reel through the previously prepared tapes to the most distant parts of the north of Scotland at a speed of between 500 and 600 words a minute! The message is “punched” first of all on tapes, in a series of little holes, so placed that when the tape is passed between two rapidly revolving brass rollers representing the line wire on the transmitter, the current is made, reversed, and broken by shorter or longer pulsations accordingly as a dot or a dash is meant to be transmitted, in the signs of the Morse code. The dots and dashes are produced on another tape on the receiving instrument by an

inked revolving wheel, which makes a dot ora dash accordingly as the pulsation is short or Jong. Not only is this high speed possible in regular practice with carefully adjusted instruments and a good current, but the same message can be transmitted to a number of places at same time. A speech of Lord Salisbury’s, for instance, can be transmitted by the same operation to Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford, and Leeds, at each of which places the receiving instrument registers the signals simultaneously from the one instrument at the sending office. As if this were not sufficiently wonderful, there is in use on the Brighton table in the Gallery an instrument tliar sends from six different transmitters in London to six different receiving instruments at Brighton, and vice versa, at one and the-same time over the same wire. The process by which so many conflicting signals can be transmitted, and each reach the corresponding receiver at either end, is too technical to explain here. There is another floor above the Gallery, where all the London

branch office wires are, and these, alone deal with 20,000 messages a day. Most of the city and west end offices send up their messages to the central office by pneumatic tube, and the tube room is itself a remarkable sight, as each “carrier.” with its each batch of messages, is sucked in or driven out by the powerful beam engines down in the basement. The batteryroom, where all the current required is constantly being generated, is more gloomy than impressive, and it is readily credible that the vast vault contains three and a half miles of shelves packed with nests of Fuller’s bichromate, Daniell’s and Leclanche batteries, working always and consuming tons of “blue vitrol,” bichromate, and sal ammoniac in the silent ere; - tion of current. Many of the older telegraphic instruments, now out of date, are kept as curiosities, the most interesting collection being at South Kensington, where there is to be seen the identical instrument by means of which, in 1839, the murderer who escaped from Paddington by train was arrested at Slough: also the old fiveneedle instruments and the earlier forms of the double and single needle. The latter is still in use on railways, and in small country offices. The quarter century has also seen great strides in the application of the telegraph to public convenience, as in the transmission of money orders and savings bank withdrawals, and the institution of the telephone to Paris.