THE ELECTKIC TELEGEAPH. 



gross revenue amounted to 56919/., and that the dividend was 

 7 per cent, per annum on the capital. 



The receipts would represent an average daily business of 

 about 6200 shilling messages. 



This company possesses the English patent of many forms of 

 telegraph, including those of Bain. It works, however, chiefly 

 with the double needle telegraph, impelled by currents from the 

 ordinary plate battery of zinc and copper, excited by acidulated 

 water. The transmission of each despatch, consequently, occupies 

 two conducting wires, and two batteries with their accessories. 



On certain lines, as for example between London and Liverpool, 

 the instrument of Bain is used. This is attended, as compared 

 with the needle instrument, with two advantages ; first, that it 

 requires only one line wire ; and secondly, that it writes its own 

 despatch. With the needle instrument two copies of each despatch 

 must be made, one to be delivered as addressed, and the other to 

 be retained by the office. In using Bain's method, that which is 

 written in telegraphic cipher by the instrument is retained by the 

 office, so that the time of one clerk is saved. 



In the organisation of its establishment, the Electric Telegiaph 

 Company have made an innovation on our national customs, which 

 cannot be regarded as otherwise than happy and judicious, by 

 rendering electro-telegraphy the means of enlarging the sphere of 

 female industry in this country. In no part of the civilised world, 

 except perhaps the United States, where our customs have beea 

 retained, are females excluded from so many employments suited 

 to them, as in England. In France they are extensively employed 

 as clerks in various branches of commercial business. As money - 

 takers or ticket -sellers in railway offices, theatres, concert-brooms, 

 and in short in all public exhibitions they are engaged, to the 

 entire exclusion of the other sex. As box-keepers and box-openers 

 in all the theatres, and in numberless other occupations in which 

 no bodily labour is needed, they are preferred to men. 



Now the working of telegraphic instruments, and the general 

 business of telegraphic offices is precisely the kind of occupation 

 for which they are best fitted, and we notice with great pleasure 

 the independent and enlightened step taken by the Electric 

 Telegraph Company in their employment, which it may be 

 hoped will prove only the commencement of a general movement, 

 having a tendency to improve the condition of that portion of 

 the sex who are obliged to seek the means of living by their 

 industry. 



The battery department is not one of the least interesting 

 objects presented in the Lothbury establishment. The cellars of 

 the building are appropriated to this generator of electric currents. 

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