August 4, 1887] 



NATURE 



327 



reverence for those great and illustrious men who have ceased 

 {o be among us, by drinking the same in solemn silence. 



The Chairman then said : — We have most of us perhaps read of 

 ithat tumultuous sensation which the great Wheatstone confesses 

 fto have experienced when the message which he sent on that 

 little journey from Euston Square to Camden Town was sent 

 f back to him by Mr. Cooke. I am perhaps not exaggerating the 

 importance of that occasion when I venture to say that that 

 evening as Wheatstone sat in the small cupboard of an office 

 communicating with his colleague at a distance of some two miles, 

 was one of the great epochs in the history of human progress ; 

 and if ever a spirit of prophecy has filled a man with something 

 of a divine enthusiasm, it may well be that the man with m hose 

 name the system of the electric telegraph must ever be in- 

 separably connected, may have felt his heart throb with some- 

 thing almost supernatural when he realized that the great work 

 had been achieved, that the demonstration had been reached, 

 and that the future of the science was assured. I venture to 

 believe, that when we look back upon the progress of those 

 fifty years, we shall find in them the materials for a greater 

 hope of the future of humanity than in almost any other record of 

 any other period in the history of our race. I would remind you 

 that the instrument which was employed by Wheatstone and 

 Cooke displayed five needles, and that it was from the movements 

 and combinations of those five needles that the whole of the 

 alphabet was made up. Those five needles, we are told, were 

 united by means of five copper wires laid in a groove in a tri- 

 angular block of wood, and I am sure you will be interested to 

 know that a piece of that block is in my hand at the present time, 

 and well deserves to be preserved among the archives of science. 

 Well of course we are with the experience of this half century 

 well aware that this system in the first instance was crude and 

 imperfect. Demonstrations had been arrived at, but perfection had 

 to be reached. The difficulty that was immediately encountered 

 in popularizing the system was obviated by the development of 

 the railway enterprise of this country and the necessity which 

 arose for rapid and certain communication along our lines of rail- 

 way. However, some time elapsed before the real development 

 of telegraphy in this country began. The London and Black- 

 wall Railway was, I believe, the first to utilize the system in a 

 practical way. In 1844 the Government of Sir Robert Peel were 

 the first to realize how far the telegraph might be applied to the 

 service of the State ; and that year saw the establishment of a 

 telegraph line from Waterloo to Gosport, and that I think you 

 may say constituted the first public recognition of the value of 

 the electric telegraph. In 1846 the first telegraph company was 

 formed — the Electric Telegraph Company. In 1850 the first 

 attempt was made to lay a submarine telegraph cable. A gutta- 

 percha wire, without any metallic covering, was laid between 

 Dover and Calais in August of that year, and you will be 

 interested to know that I have also here a portion of that cable, 

 which was fished up by a ship in the Channel so recently as the 

 year 1875. In 185 1 a cable was laid in substitution of this 

 gutta-percha cable, which was protected by iron wires, and which 

 was the commencement of a regular system of inter-communica- 

 tion between England and the Continent, and this cable I believe 

 I am not wrong in associating with the name of one of those 

 gentlemen who is happily still spared to be among us — I mean 

 Mr. Crampton — and it must indeed be a great satisfaction to 

 anyone who has been connected with great works of this 

 sort to have lived, as Mr. Crampton has done, to witness their 

 enormous development in the service of mankind. The first 

 Atlantic cable was laid in 1858, and other companies arose during 

 those years to compete with t'-.e first electric telegraph company, 

 and multiplied throughout the length and breadth of England 

 the agency of the telegraph. In 1870 the multiplication of the 

 companies had become so great that their competition, though in 

 some respects advantageous to the public, was yet so imperfectly 

 regulated by State requirements, that the Government of the day 

 determined to acquire the whole of their enterprises, and to place 

 the telegraphs of the Kingdom under the direction of the Post 

 Office. Now, I should like to say one or two words with regard 

 to the instruments of telegraphy. We are aware that the first 

 telegraphic apparatus employed by Wheatstone and Cooke was 

 one which required five wires through which to transmit their 

 message. It was found gradually that two wires would suffice to 

 forward a message, and afier that the progress of science enabled 

 the operators to depend upon one. But after a time it became 

 ascertained that a wire could be used for sending messages in two 

 directions, and after that time four messages came to be trans- 



mitted on a single wire, two in either direction ; and, as I dare 

 say most gentlemen who are present to-night are aware, at the 

 present time a single wire is being used at the central telegraph 

 station in such a manner as to admit of six me-^sages being sent 

 in one direction, or one in one direction and five in the other, or 

 any other combination of six messages. The first five-needle 

 instrument was succeeded by the double needle, and the double 

 needle by the single needle ; all those systems were visual. Then 

 came in the system of printing on a band of paper. At first the 

 signs representing the letters were embossed on the band. This 

 was further improved by Prof. Hughes's printing instrument, 

 by which the actual letters were printed in ink. Then came yet 

 another — the sounder instrument, by which messages are trans- 

 mitted by sound without any record. With regard to speed, 

 when the first electric telegraph was established the speed of 

 transmission was from four to five words a minute on the five- 

 needle instruments. In 1849 the average rate of transmission 

 of a certain number of messages addressed to the Times news- 

 paper was 17 words a minute. The present pace of the electric 

 telegraph between London and Dublin, where the Wheatstone 

 automatic instrument is employed, amounts to 462 words a 

 minute, and thus what was regarded as miraculous fifty years ago, 

 has multiplied a hundredfold in the course of one half century. 

 Now you may perhaps like to know, though it is rather descending 

 from the higher walk of this great subject, the number of telegrams 

 which were sent through the Post Office in the United Kingdom 

 last year. The number was 5I,500,CXX5 ; that is nearly 

 1,000,000 per week, and that number is still steadily increasing. 

 41,000,000, or rather more than that number, of these were 

 inland messages, and of course a very great proportion of them 

 were Press messages. I think you should realize the immense 

 boon which the electric telegraph has bestowed upon the Press. 

 I gather from such information as I have been able to obtain 

 that the rate for Press messages, which as everybody is aware is 

 very much less than the rate for other messages, is on the average 

 not much more than zd. per 100 words ; and it is owing to these 

 extraordinary facilities, affijrded by the Post Office to the trans- 

 mission of Press news, that the whole of the United Kingdom is 

 put in possession at its breakfast table every morning of every- 

 thing which it is necessai-y or important for anybody to know, as 

 well as of a great many things which are neither necessary nor 

 important. I believe that I am not wrong in saying that the cost 

 to the public revenue of this reduced rate to the Press is not less 

 than ;f 200,000 a year, and that the newspapers of this country 

 practically receive a subsidy of £iCO,<xX) a year in order to 

 enable them to assist in the diffusion of intelligence. I imagine 

 that the country is well satisfied that this should be so, and that 

 there are very few people who would wish to abridge that privi- 

 lege, having regard to the enormous importance to all classes of 

 the community of being placed at the earliest moment in posses- 

 sion of the fullest knowledge of what is going on. But it is a 

 fact that, owing to the recent reduction in the tariff' of telegrams, 

 the value of the telegram on the average to the State is now only 

 8</., whereas two years ago it was is. id. ; and before the State 

 took over the telegraphs it amounted to as much as 2s. 2d. I 

 think you may measure something of the enormous gain which 

 the public has achieved by the acquisition by the State of the 

 telegraph system when you look at these figures and reflect that 

 the average price of a telegram at the present time is only about 

 a third of what it was only seventeen years ago. I am saying 

 this as if I were one of the public ; but as Postmaster-General 

 you must be aware that I have to regard this result with some- 

 what mixed feelings, and I am endeavouring, as far as I can, 

 to denude myself of any official prepossession in putting 

 before you from the popular side the advantages which you 

 have obtained by the State employment of the telegraphs. 

 I would add that if you would wish to obtain further 

 knowledge of this most interesting subject, put in the most 

 terse and pregnant way, you cannot do better than study 

 a paper communicated to the Society of Arts by my friend 

 Mr. Preece. The great agency of telegraphy which seems to 

 form the vital principle of this planet upon which we live, this 

 great agency which has not only gone so far towards annihilating 

 space, but which seems at the present time to be regenerating 

 light and revolutionizing motion, has all the future before it. 

 Those who are enrolled in its service are probably the disciples 

 and the apostles of a new and absolutely beneficial dispensation, 

 and with them rests the future, in no small degree, of the human 

 race, and the means of linking not merely ourselves to our distant 

 colonies — and my noble friend who is beside me (Lord Onslow) 



