ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHS. 415 



totally failed to obtain the same results on our open lines. The result 

 was that punching, as it was called, or automatic sending fell into 

 disuse really because it was not wanted. The instruments we then 

 used were able to transmit messages as fast as the public favoured us 

 with them. The result was that the same desire for fast telegraphy 

 did not exist in the years 1846 and 1848 as it does in the present day. 

 In the present day telegrams have flown in so fast and so thick that 

 the ingenuity of every telegraph engineer is devoted to increasing the 

 capacity of his wires to transmit messages. Forty words a minute, 

 fifty words a minute, sixty words a minute, is not enough. We have 

 to go up to 100, 150, and even to 200 words a minute, and yet the cry 

 is still for more. At the present time the instruments we have prac- 

 tically in use dc> not exceed 130 words a minute. We have now in 

 work Wheatstone's automatic apparatus, where the messages are 

 punched by means of a little apparatus that is on the table. Clerks are 

 able to punch messages at such a rate that the ear can hardly distin- 

 guish differences in the sound, and by such operations these papers 

 are stripped. These punched strips are placed in an instrument, and 

 record the letters of the alphabet upon these strips. 



Now there are other forms of automatic senders, one of which I 

 should have liked very much to have shown you. It is in operation 

 downstairs, and it is also the production of Mr. Siemens. There are 

 a series of keys like the keys of an accordion, and the clerk, by 

 moving these keys, is able to raise a species of type which sends the 

 currents in their proper order. The rate at which this instrument 

 works is not so rapid, but for many purposes accurate sending, 

 duplex working, and so on it is one which is very likely to receive 

 considerable attention. 



There is another form of instrument to which I must allude, but 

 which I am unable to exhibit to you, and that is an instrument called 

 Thomson's Recorder, which is used in connexion with submarine 

 cables. In working a submarine cable we incur difficulties that are 

 not met with on open lines the currents flow more slowly, more 

 sluggishly, and we are also obliged to use currents of considerably 

 less intensity, less strength, than upon land lines. Consequently the 

 desire of the telegraph engineer is to form an instrument which shall 

 move with the slightest possible current and with the greatest possible 



