USES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 



correspondents having habitual need of intercommunication, such 

 as mercantile establishments interchanging news of the markets, 

 stocks, sales, and other commercial details ; but for the occasional 

 communications of domestic life it would be quite unavailable. 



It is hinted by ' the Quarterly Reviewer,' that Mr. Wheatstone 

 has invented a cipher which will be applicable to general purposes, 

 and which will attain this object, and that it will be soon placed 

 at the disposition of the public. 



If the same privacy as is afforded by the post-office can be thus 

 secured to telegraphic communications, and if by the multiplication 

 of their wires, and the improved efficiency of their instruments, 

 the companies are enabled to reduce their tariff to a still lower 

 limit, and to base it on some uniform principle similar to the 

 admirable penny postage system of Mr. Rowland Hill, it is diffi- 

 cult to foresee the extent of the revolution which this noble gift of 

 science to mankind may effect. Great as the benefits have been 

 which the post-office has conferred, they will sink to nothing com- 

 pared with those of the telegraph. In estimating the importance 

 of the part reserved for this vast agent of civilisation, it must not 

 be forgotten that it is still in its early infancy, and that its most 

 wondrous powers are not yet developed by time and growth. " 



259. The necessity of disclosing the contents of private des- 

 patches to the telegraphists is sometimes avoided in the United 

 States by the adoption of a cipher, or by a conventional change of 

 the signification of the letters of the alphabet. In some cases, 

 with the telegraph of House, the manipulation of which is easy 

 and simple, the party plays upon the keys of the instrument 

 himself. It is, however, only in rare instances that these 

 expedients are resorted to. The public confidence has been won 

 by the general secrecy observed by the telegraphic agents, and in 

 general no apprehension of disclosure prevents persons from 

 sending the most private and confidential despatches in the usual 

 manner. One of the directors, who for four years has had the 

 superintendence of extensive lines, states, that in that interval 

 he never heard of an instance of the contents of a despatch being 

 divulged. 



Another circumstance which experience has made manifest has 

 given security to the public on this point. It appears that the 

 agents who are for many hours labouring at the machine in the 

 transmission of despatches, word by word, rarely are able to give 

 that kind of attention to the sense and purport of the whole which 

 would be necessary to the clear understanding of it. Their atten- 

 tion is engrossed exclusively in the manipulation necessary to 

 transmit letter after letter, and they have neither time nor 

 attention to spare for the subject of the whole despatch. The case 

 93 



