810 REPORT— 1895. 



not being passable for camels ; but for this the wire would have been into Chitral 

 by May 12 — as it was it did not reach there till midnight of the 17th. 



On account of the scarcity of timber it was necessary to use iron poles very 

 extensively ; at the Lowari Pass, however, there is a fine pine forest ; wooden poles 

 were afterwards used. 



After May, cutting the wood became very frequent, and even very difficult 

 to stop. 



After the start the traffic, which was exceedingly heavy, was dealt with, with 

 but little delay ; in April 24,370 aud in May 58,935 messages were dealt with, 

 and their length was much above the average. Shortly after the Malakand fight, 

 by clearing the line right through to Simla, the Commander-in-Chief was enabled 

 to talk direct to General Low, and in spite of heavy rains at the time the com- 

 munication was excellent. 



To give some notion of what was accomplished, it may be stated that a telegram 

 dated Chitral Fort, May 19, was published in the London papers of the same date. 



The Telegraph Department al.'^o assists in defending camps by running wires 

 round the camp, so arranged that an alarm is at once given by the ringing of a 

 bell in the Quarter Guard should a night surprise be attempted, and in many other 

 ways much aids and assists the military authorities. 



Medals and decorations are given to the stafi' at the conclusion of the campaign. 



2. A Movement Designed to attain Astronomical Accuracy in the Motion 

 of Siderostats. By G. Johnstone Stoney, F.R.S, 



3. Oii Modern Flour Milling Machinery. By F. W. Turner. 



4. On the Production of Letterpress Printing Surfaces ivithout the use 

 of Types. By John Southward. 



The author describes a recent invention, known as the ' Linotype ' Composing 

 Machine, which enables certain kinds of letterpress printing — namely, the plaintext 

 of books and newspapers — to be done without the use of types. The invention 

 constitutes a remarkable improvement upon the present methods of typography, 

 which, in all essential particulars, have remained unchanged during the last four 

 and a half centuries. 



Hitherto, letterpress printing surfaces of the kind referred to, or those repre- 

 senting alphabetical characters, have been formed by combining together, or 

 'composing' — to use the technical term — movable interchangeable types, having 

 cast upon them in relief the characters they are to represent. In the Linotype 

 system, instead of such types being composed, matrices, corresponding to them to 

 the extent of having characters engraved upon them, but in intaglio, are set up. 

 When a sufficient number of matrices to form a line of given length are assembled, 

 they are cast from, and a bar of metal formed, which has a surface in relief, 

 precisely equivalent, for printing purposes, to one consisting of separate types. A 

 large number of newspapers in this cotfntry, and especially in the United States, 

 have within the last year or two adopted this .system, aud entirely dispensed with 

 types for the whole of their contents, with the exception of what are called ' dis- 

 played ' or ornamental advertisements. Many books have lately been printed in 

 the same manner. 



The Linotype machine comprises mechanism for — first, composing the matrices; 

 second, casting from them when they complete a line of reading matter ; thu'd, 

 distributing them back again to their proper magazines in order that they may 

 again and again be used to form succeeding lines. These three operations are 

 carried on concurrently ; that is to say, while the matrices for one line are being 

 composed, those of the previous line are being cast from, and at the same time the 

 matrices for the line before that again are beinsr distributed. The result is that 



