4o3 SECTION MECHANICS. 



and the third to the letter " e," and so on ; by that means any letter of 

 the alphabet is instantly indicated to the observer. Now you will ob- 

 serve that this instrument has five needles and requires five wires, but 

 very short practice, very small experience, soon showed that the re- 

 quired letters of the alphabet could be formed by means of four needles 

 instead of five ; so that we come now to the four-needle telegraph, 

 which was practically used for the conveyance of messages in this 

 country up to the year 1844. Here is also an actual original piece of 

 the wires that were used on that occasion. This was dug up on the 

 incline between Euston and Camden, and you will see if you examine 

 it that it contains five copper wires covered with hemp, tarred and 

 let into wood. This was buried below the ground, and used in con- 

 nexion with this instrument. That instrument was employed on the 

 Blackwall Railway, and it happened that two operators at two distant 

 stations on the Blackwall Railway brothers found that by making 

 certain preconcerted signals on this instrument, instead of using, as 

 was previously done, one motion to the left and one to the right by 

 taking two needles and using two and three motions to the right or 

 left, they were able to converse between these intermediate stations. 

 This at once showed to Mr. Cooke that it was possible to reduce the 

 four wires to two. Accordingly, immediately afterwards this instru- 

 ment was introduced, which is the original double-needle instrument. 

 This identical instrument was used at the Slough station on the Great 

 Western Railway ; and there are many interesting records of the mes- 

 sages strange in those days which were carried by this wire. In 

 fact this identical instrument has engraved upon its foot-plate a mes- 

 sage which was sent in the year 1845 tnat l d to the capture of a cele- 

 brated murderer, the Quaker Tawell. One curious point connected 

 with that is this, that neither of these instruments form the letter Q, 

 so that when the word " Quaker" had to be sent there was a great dif- 

 ficulty in supplying it, and it was sent " Kwaker." The clerk at the 

 distant station Paddington could not at first conceive what 

 " Kwaker" meant ; but after a short time the truth occurred to him, 

 the message was delivered, and the man was captured. Now this, as 

 you see, is a heavy and cumbrous instrument, which only transmitted 

 its message at the rate of about five or six messages an hour, a rate of 

 speed which would at the present day cause all our wires to become 



