^ATUEAL PHILOSOPHY. 125 



dispatch ; these messages are distributed to a given number of com- 

 positors, who set them up in ordinary type with great rapidity ; the 

 first that is finished is handed to the operator, whose wagon has al- 

 ready been pushed to the upper end of the raii and is held there by 

 a simple catch ; he places this dispatch in the opening destined for it, 

 and in the second opening he places a plate of metal upon v.-liich have 

 been laid four, five, or six strips of paper prepared with a solution of 

 nitrate of manganese ; this done, he turns a small handle, and watches 

 if the operator at the other end has done his work ; the wagon is at 

 once freed from the catch, and is set in motion by a simple weight, 

 the pace being regulated by a fan ; the type of which we have spoken 

 is thus brought under the action of the dispatching comb, and runs 

 lightly under its teeth from end to end; one-half of the journey 

 being made, the writing comb comes in contact with the prepared 

 paper. If the operator at the other end has had a message to send, 

 it will have been printed in clear, legible characters, of a deep brown 

 color, answering, with unerring fidelity, to the forms over which 

 the corresponding type comb has passed, while the operator (the 

 reader) learns that his message has as surely been received ; the mes- 

 sage is stripped ofi, the wagon remounted, the type-box changed, 

 and the process of transmission and reception repeated. All this, 

 which takes so long to describe, is so rapi^fty accomplished that from 

 Jour hundred and fifty to five hundred messages may be dispatched per 

 hour, the passage of the wagon occupying ten to twelve seconds, dur- 

 ing which time a message has been sent and received at each end of 

 the line. It will be seen at once that it is morally impossible that 

 any demand should arise that would over-tax the transmitting powers 

 of this system, the whole question resolving itself into rapidity of sup- 

 ply. Now, ordinary compositors can set up a message of thirty words 

 in one and a half minutes ; this period is, of course, divisible by the 

 number of compositors, ten giving ten messages each minute and a 

 half, twenty giving twenty messages, and so on. By this happy ap- 

 plication of electric science to the typographic art, it is believed that 

 the price of dispatches will be reduced to a minimum, and the rapid- 

 ity of distribution vastly increased, while the chances of mistake are 

 almost annihilated, being reduced to the possibility of typographic 

 error, in the first and only process in which error appears to be possi- 

 ble. It is scarcely needful to say that the dispatch received is actually 

 sent out ; as the wagon descends it is stripped from the plate, passed 

 for a few seconds under a stream of water, blotted oif, dried by hot 

 rollers, and put into the envelope, which is by this time ready to 

 receive it. 



When it is remembered that no existing system is capable of dis- 

 patching with a pair of machines more than an average of twenty- 

 five messages per hour, and that these are transmitted and received 

 in conventional signs, it will be evident that a great step has been 

 taken, and the public cannot but be interested in what promises to 

 produce so great a revolution in the science of telegraphy. 



It is clear that the application of this system to autographic tele- 

 graphy is a simple question of time. What seven, or eight, or eleven 

 wires passing by the agency of combs over the surface of type can 

 accomplish, a greater number passing over manuscript can equally 

 11* 



