24 Mr. Francis Gallon [Jan. 27, 



may be justly inferred that rougher designs can be easily dealt with 

 in the same way. 



At first sight it may seem to be a silly waste of time and trouble 

 to translate a drawing into a formula, and then, working backwards, 

 to retranslate the formula into a reproduction of the original drawing, 

 but further reflection shows that the process may be of much practical 

 utility. Let us bear two facts in mind, the one is that a very large 

 quantity of telegraphic information is daily published in the papers, 

 anticipating the post by many days or weeks. The other is that 

 pictorial illustrations of current events, of a rude kind, but acceptable 

 to the reader, appear from time to time in the daily papers. We 

 may be sure that the quantity of telegraphic intelligence will steadily 

 increase, and that the art of newspaper illustration will improve and 

 be more resorted to. Important local events frequently occur in far- 

 off regions, of which no description can give an exact idea without 

 the help of pictorial illustration ; some catastrophe, or site of a 

 battle, or an exploration, or it may be some design or even some 

 portrait. There is therefore reason to expect a demand for such 

 drawings as these by telegraph, if their expense does not render it 

 impracticable to have them. Let us then go into details of expense, 

 on the basis of the present tariff from America to this country, of one 

 shilling per word, 5 figures counting as one word, cypher letters not 

 being sent at a corresponding rate. It requires two figures to per- 

 form each of the operations described above, which were performed 

 by a single letter. So a formula for 5 dots would require 10 figures, 

 which is the telegraphic equivalent of 2 words ; therefore the cost 

 for every 5 dots telegraphed from the United States would be 

 2 shillings, or 21. for every 100 dots or other indications. 



In the Greek outline there is a total of 400 indications, including 

 those for directive dots, and for points of reference. The transmis- 

 sion of these to us from the United States would cost 81. I exhibit 

 a map of England made with 248 dots, as a specimen of the amount 

 of work in plans, which could be effected at the cost of 5Z. It is easy 

 to arrange counters into various patterns or parts of patterns, learning 

 thereby the real power of the process. The expense of pictorial 

 telegraphs to foreign countries would be large in itself, but not large 

 relatively to the present great expenditure by newspapers on tele- 

 graphic information, so the process might be expected to be employed 

 whenever it was of obvious utility. 



The risk is small of errors of importance arising from mistakes 

 in telegraphy. I inquired into the experience of the Meteorological 

 Office, whose numerous weather telegrams are wholly conveyed by 

 numerical signals. Of the 20,625 figures that were telegraphed this 

 year to the office from continental stations, only 49 seem to have 

 been erroneous, that is two and a third per thousand. At this rate 

 the 800 figures needed to telegraph the Greek profile would have 

 been liable to two mistakes. A mistake in a figure would have 

 exactly the same effect on the outline as a rent in the paper on which 



