200 Mr. W. H. Preece on Multiple Telegraphy. [May 23, 



Continental places, and knowing that there was forty minutes' differ- 

 ence in the time he put it on the wrong side ! 



We have in England at the present moment six circuits worked 

 with the quadruplex system. In America the system is carried out 

 to a much larger extent, and sixty-three wires are fitted with it, and 

 over these sixty-three circuits no less than eight million messages are 

 transmitted annually. 



The question may arise in your minds as to why the quadruples 

 apparatus is not used as extensively in this country as in America, 

 and the answer would be that in this country we have not the same 

 necessity for it. We have apparatus in use superior to the quadru- 

 plex. I mean the Wheatstone automatic, an instrument which was 

 in its early stage brought before an audience of this Institution. It 

 enables us to transmit messages and news with enormous rapidity, 

 and makes us quite independent of any of those supposed advanced 

 inventions. 



What has transpired before you this evening is simply one of the 

 innumerable applications of electricity that are now daily in use, and 

 it really makes us regard with wonder what science is doing for us. 

 What you have just seen far exceeds the dream of the wildest 

 alchemist, and the most imaginative necromancer never could have 

 conceived the possibility of four persons talking to each other at the 

 same time separated by a distance of 200 miles ; but when we assail 

 Nature in her strongholds it is astonishing to find how easily she is 

 mastered, how simple are the means by which she veils her secrets, 

 and how rude are the weapons she places in our hands to produce 

 before you these wonders. 



[W. H. P.] 



