ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHS. 417 



rapid little Pony Sounder. It is rather a remarkable fact that in this 

 instrument, which contains no record whatever of the message which 

 has been sent, we have an instrument which is the most accurate that 

 has ever been produced. The reason for that is simply this : 



The sending of the clerk i^ guided by his ear. If his ear has been 

 trained to read the dots and dashes properly upon this instrument, 

 his hand, which follows his ear, must record the messages he is 

 receiving accurately, and experience proves that to be perfectly true. 

 A short time ago I was visiting a station where some eighteen months 

 since the Morse apparatus had been replaced by the Sounder, and the 

 postmaster told me that although that instrument had been at work 

 eighteen months, not one single case of error had been brought to his 

 notice, whereas, previous to that, scarcely a week elapsed without some 

 mistake having been made in a message. Another great advantage of 

 it is the rapidity, for a clerk having his own attention confined to 

 reading, is in just the same position as you are to me at the present 

 moment. I might be for instance in Southampton, and you here, 

 and yet this little instrument, if your ears were skilled, would have 

 conveyed to you almost as fast as I speak the words I am uttering. 



Now as business increases, as circuits become crowded, as messages 

 increase, so the necessity far rapidity arises, and then we fly to 

 Wheatstone's automatic apparatus, which records messages in many 

 instances as fast as they come in ; but even then between very busy 

 places between London and Glasgow, for instance that apparatus is 

 not sufficient, and we are now, by means of Bains's Chemical Recorder, 

 still further increasing the rapidity with which the work is done ; so 

 that we hope to be able to keep ahead of the work by improving the 

 rate at which the instruments record. 



Now the question naturally arises when considering these various 

 forms of instruments, to whom are we to ascribe the chief merit of a 

 successful and practical invention ? Is it to the philosopher who sug- 

 gests in a misty future some -visionary project? Is it to the engineer 

 who renders the abstract concrete the dream a reality ? Is it to the 

 financier or the commercial man who risks his fortune on his foresight, 

 and on his estimate of the value of the philosophical idea and of the 

 engineer's skill and practice ? In all these applications of science to 

 practice these three characters are involved. Take, for instance, tele- 



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