678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for my wants," was delivered " Five fat sows and four feet " ; a 

 cricketing message from Lord's, " Jack, bring up two ground-nien," 

 was delivered " Jack bring up 2 10s." And, at the time that Com- 

 modore Goodenough was appointed to a station in Australia, the 

 message received was, " A commodore has been appointed good enough 

 for the Australian colonies." The system of telegraphy I have just 

 shown is the ordinary one-way method ; but it is possible to send two 

 messages in the opposite direction at the same time upon one wire, 

 and this I can make clear, without going into a detailed explanation, 

 by asking Liverpool to send dashes or long sounds to me while I send 

 dots or rapid sounds to him. [This was done.] We go still further, 

 and send four messages in opposite directions, at the same time upon 

 one wire; that is called quadruples telegraphy. But the acme of teleg- 

 raphy has been produced in this country by the Wheatstone automat- 

 ic apparatus. I have a complete set of this apparatus before me. In 

 it the messages are prepared by being punched with little holes (as 

 you now see being done), and I now hold a slip of paper bearing per- 

 forations representing the alphabet, which look very much like the 

 patterns used in the Jacquard loom for lace-making. The perforated 

 paper is put in the transmitter, which sends on currents of electricity, 

 representing the holes upon it ; these currents of electricity are re- 

 ceived by a "receiver," by which they are made to represent dots and 

 dashes recorded on a long slip of green paper, and these dots and 

 dashes indicate to the clerk at the receiving station the message sent. 

 The peculiarity of this instrument is its rapidity, for, by it, instead of 

 being only able to send from thirty to forty words a minute (the 

 limit of the human hand) from 250 to 300 words a minute can be 

 transmitted. At the present moment, there is not a town in this 

 country, where a daily paper is published, that is not in direct com- 

 munication with London, and receives its intelligence by means of 

 apparatus of this description. Whatever news it is, whether an ac- 

 count of the Canonbury Railway accident, or a panic that may have 

 happened this afternoon in some theatre, or something else now going 

 forward to the country papers, it is being sent by means of this per- 

 forated paper and automatic instrument. Those who are interested in 

 the apparatus will be able to examine it closely at the end of the lect- 

 ure ; but it is impossible for me to describe it minutely now, because 

 it would occupy more than one lecture to understand the whole work- 

 ing of the system. It is most extensively employed in this country, 

 where the growth of telegraph business has been enormous. I spoke 

 in somewhat glowing terms of the duties and doings of this automatic 

 apparatus when in Paris, and my Parisian friends rather doubted my 

 statement. However, I induced the French Government to send an 

 officer over to England to examine for themselves the working of this 

 instrument, and to my great pleasure when he came here he found 

 that my statements were under the mark, and only a few days ago, 



