ON PRINTING TELEGRAPHS. 
303 
transmission. It may, perhaps, be doubted whether merchants 
or their clerks will give sufficient attention to the preparation 
of the punched ribbon, or write so distinctly on the Caselli 
tablets as to produce a good working copy ; so that it may 
always be necessary that the staff of the telegraph should 
prepare the messages for transmission. Still the advantages 
of the system are obvious. The capacity of each wire is 
vastly increased; and as there need be no limit to the 
number of clerks employed in the preparation of and the 
translation of the despatches, the rapidity of transmission 
may be urged to the furthest. Machinery preserves its supe- 
riority to hand labour even in telegraphing. 
There is a limit to this rapidity. Induction lengthens the 
duration of each current, tending to connect the separate 
signals into a continuous line; and a contact of very short 
duration, unless aided by a powerful battery, is insufficient to 
charge the wire. These effects are not very apparent in short 
distances, but increase rapidly with the length of the line. 
It seems to us that, although greater accuracy may be 
attained, the telegraph service will not be as regular even 
as at present, if fast automatic systems come into use. 
The wires will always be subject to derangement ; and sup- 
posing the work done by each wire is doubled, the stoppage 
of a single wire will delay double the number of messages. 
For the public, the safest apparatus is that which employs 
one wire only, and which works at a low speed. The 
cheapening of rates, however, will not permit the profitable 
use of such a system, and certainty must be sacrificed to price. 
The value of a particular system must be estimated, not 
by the beauty or the singularity of its effects, but by pounds, 
shillings, and pence ; that is, its cost, the expense of working 
and maintenance, its speed, correctness, and freedom from 
derangement. Every system has its own special causes of 
error and its own special faults, which are not always those 
which unprofessional persons would suspect, although, per- 
haps, on no subject do the ignorant give opinions more freely 
or with more confidence. 
So much attention is now given to telegraphy, and so much 
talent is devoted to its improvement, that it is difficult to 
imagine what the next ten years may produce. The appre- 
hension of Tawell was in its day a wonder ; but how inefficient 
the power of giving a verbal description of the murderer, 
compared with that of forwarding his very portrait ! 
