April 13, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWL.EDGE ♦ 



221 



of tlie G36 sets of apparatus distributed over the room, 

 occupying desks extending, altogether, to 3,0G0 ft, and 

 that during the course of a year (18SI-2) as many as 

 14,293,383 telegrams passed through the office. Doubtless 

 the old lady who, anxious that her son in a distant part of 

 the country should be well shod, persisted in her applica- 

 tion to have a jiair of new boots sent to him by telegraph, 

 and who was quite satisfied on receiving the next day a pair 

 of old ones in return, wondered how such prodigies could 

 be performed on a wire less than a quarter of an inch thick. 

 Those who are acquainted with " Giles's Trip to London " 

 have probably smiled when reading of lus surprise on finding 

 that the white i)aper on which he had had a message written 

 had been dyed pink during the process of transmission. But 

 Giles was not far behind a particular gentleman who a few 

 •weeks since expressed at the end of his telegram a hope 

 that the addressee would " please excuse bad writing." 



It is an open question which is the more deeply 

 impressed — an electrician, or a man who professes total 

 ignorance of the subject. 



On entering the office the visitor is introduced to the 

 " News " division, where there are thirty-one sets of 

 Wheatstone automatic apparatus, some of them working 

 all day, and the others after 6 p.m., to, on the aggregate, 

 thirty-seven stations. It is here that a parliamentary 

 speech, as supplied by the various agencies to provincial 

 newspapers, may be despatched and delivered at the 

 various destinations within a few minutes of the orator's 

 resuming his seat. The result of such an event as the 

 University Boat-Race is made known all over the Kingdom 

 in less than three minutes after the judge has declared his 

 verdict. During the year 18'*l-"2, press messages amount- 

 ing in all to t<8,7i5-l,80.5 words, or sufficient to fill the whole 

 of the DaiJij Telfijraph for two and three-quarter years, 

 were despatched in this division. This work is growing 

 .very rapidly, and it is nothing unusual on a night when 

 there is an important Parliamentary debate to be re- 

 ported for .")00,000 words to be despatched, sufficient to 

 fill 250 newspaper columns. To many, however, even 

 greater interest centres in the "Test-Box," which is, in 

 reality, a large lioard, or series of boards, fixed verti- 

 cally, and studded with 7,800 double binding-screws or 

 terminal.s, from which wires are led, on the one hand to the 

 battery-room* and the street-work, and on the other hand 

 to the instruments. It is an interesting fact that the 

 wires under the floor, connecting the instruments with the 

 test-box, would, if stretched out in one line, reach from 

 Xx>ndon to AV)erdeen. This wire, at about £13 per mile, 

 represents in itself a small fortune. 



Like the office itself, the test-box is claimed to be by far 

 the largest in the world, and by its means the officers in 

 charge are able to prove the condition of the 1,000 

 wires radiating from it in all directions, and to put various 

 stations in communication with each other in such a way 

 as would be absolutely impossible without it. It is, in fact, 

 the key of the British telegraph system. 



Standing with his back to the test-box, the visitor is 

 face to face with the main portion of the room, a sea 

 of heads before liim, and a constant buzz pervading the 

 atmosphere and ringing in his ears, with such bewildering 

 intensity as to frequently render him oblivious to any 

 distinct sound or conversation. He may from this stand- 

 point behold at one time as many as 600 clerks seated at 

 the various instruments, the greatest number on duty at 

 one time being about 1,000, out of a total staff of 1,700. 



_• The battery-room is in the basement b( the building, and con- 

 tuns somethin!^ like 20,003 cells, ranged in order on about three 

 miles of shelving. 



Between 2 and 7 a.m., there are, generally speaking, only 

 70 on duty. Amongst so large a staff, it is not to be 

 wondered at that there are occasionally one or two prone 

 to err, although, taken as a body, the proportion of blun- 

 derers is really infinitesimal. A remarkable error, due in 

 part to indistinct writing, came under notice some little 

 time ago. A newspaper correspondent wished to convey to 

 his chief the intelligence that in a certain horse-race "the 

 favourite made all the running, and won by a neck." Con- 

 ceive the editor's amazement on reading that " the favourite 

 made all the moniiiir/, and won by a ireek." Sometimes 

 errors are caused by indifierent manipulation or negligent 

 transcription. As an instance of this it is recorded that 

 on a particular occasion a gentleman who was away from 

 home was informed that he had that day been made the 

 happy father of a "deal box." Of course, "dear boy" 

 was intended. It is however, somewhat surprising that 

 more errors arc not made than is really the case, and the 

 most uninitiated will admit this when he learns that to 

 telegraph thirty words in a minute (an ordinary fair- 

 working spetd) the clerk has to press down the key of his 

 instrument no less than 450 times, the duration of each 

 signal, and the interval of time separating the signals, 

 having always to be carefully and variously measured. 

 Morse, when he first invented the code system, did not 

 conceive it possible for the human hand to be capable of 

 sufficient mechanical accuracy, and was greatly astonished 

 to find his automatic apparatus easily and speedily outdone. 

 Terrestrial influences and faulty adjustment are occa- 

 sionally responsible for errors causing at one time consider- 

 able amusement, and at others an equal amount of difficulty 

 and annoyance. " G" and " p" are letters whose "codes " 

 are very similar, a dot placed in front of the former 

 ( — — ■) converting it into the latter (■ — • — ■). A 

 nobleman in town once telegraphed to his servant to meet 

 him at the railway station with a "gig" Imagine his 

 surprise on finding the man waiting his arrival and holding 

 by a rope a fine young " pif/." Fine, however, as he was 

 in his way, it would hardly have been becoming for my lord 

 to approach his manorial demesne straddling the youthful 

 porker. 



One of the most attractive features of the office is the 

 " pneumatic " system, by which messages are placed in 

 carriers, and forced through leaden tubes, pressure being ex- 

 erted on outgoing carriers, and a vacuum created in front 

 of incoming carriers. There are about fifty tubes in all, 

 including fourteen which connect various parts of the office 

 one with the other, obviating thereby the inconvenience 

 that would result from constant streams of messengers 

 running about the office in all directions. The speed at 

 which the carriers travel varies slightly with the length of 

 the tube, averaging about a mile in two minutes. The 

 system is being rapidly developed for local traffic, and 

 works very satisfactorily, but is not, however, economically 

 practical for a greater distance than about two miles. 

 The longest tube is to the House of Commons, a distance 

 of about three miles, which is accomplished in two stages. 



It is officially stated that the Department will soon insti- 

 tute a sixpenny tariff" ; but it is only natural that those re- 

 sponsible for the working of the ser-s-ice should evince no 

 vei-y strong desire to leap in the dark. A public company, 

 responsible only to its shareholders, may reduce its tarifi 

 for an e.xpeinment, and subsetjuently restore it to its pre- 

 vious minimum (a proceeding frequently resorted to by the 

 Transatlantic Cable Companies to stifle a new competitor); 

 but a Government undertaking cannot he can-ied on in 

 such a manner — the invariable policy being that a tariff 

 once estaVilished is never to be increased. There is, never- 

 theless, very good cause for the agitation in favour of a 



