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The multiplex telegraph is truly a marvellous invention. It has been
developed by the engineers of the Western Union Telegraph Co. working
with the engineers of the Western Electric Company. The principle
on which this instrument works is that if separate instruments are
given connection with the wire one after the other during very short
intervals of time, the effect is as though the wire were split up, and
each instrument works just as if it alone were on the wire. Not only
does the multiplex telegraph thus send four messages in one direction
and four messages in the opposite direction, simultaneously over a
single wire, thus keeping no less than sixteen operators employed on
one wire, four sending and four receiving at each end, but each message
instead of being sent by the ordinary Morse key, is written upon a
typewriter keyboard at one end of the line and appears automatically
typewritten at the other end.
If you live in a big city, go into one of the larger branch offices
of the Western Union Telegraph Co. and ask to see printing telegraph.
Most of the large branch offices communicate with the general operating
department in the city by means of what they term “short line
printers,” which are instruments on which the message is written upon a
typewriter keyboard and appears typewritten at the other end.
Who Invented the Electric Telegraph?
It is hard to say just how the telegraph originated in the mind of men.
We have already shown how the savages sent signals over distances by
means of the smoke rising from his fire. Every boy and girl has used a
little mirror, held in the sun to flash a bright spot here and there.
This principle has been used by the army to signal at distances. The
sun’s rays are flashed from a small mirror, long and short flashes
indicating the dashes and dots of the Morse telegraph code.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR S. F. B. MORSE, INVENTOR OF THE TELEGRAPH.]
Progress towards the perfection of the electric telegraph began with
the first researches of scientists into the natural laws which govern
that great natural agent, electricity. Clever, painstaking men,
studying and experimenting for the love of the work, discovered bit
by bit how to control the force. Stephen Gray with his Leyden jars,
which stored up a charge of electricity, inspired Sir William Watson to
experiment, and he sent current from one jar to another two miles away.
The First Suggestion of the Electric Telegraph.
For a long time no one thought that this opened the way for the making
of a useful servant for man. In 1753 this thought occurred to an
unknown man in Scotland, who wrote a letter to a newspaper suggesting
that messages be sent by electric currents.
One of his schemes was that there should be a light ball at the
receiving end of the wire which would strike a bell when it felt
the electric impulse come over the wire from the Leyden jar, and by
devising a code depending upon the number of strokes of the bell and
the time between them, he suggested that messages could be sent and
interpreted. Some believe this man to have been a doctor named Charles
Morrison of Greenock, Scotland. Whoever he was, he suggested a method
which comes very near to being that in use to-day.
The difficulty with proceeding on this suggestion was that the current
from the Leyden jar was static electricity, which has not the strength
nor can it be controlled as can the current of low potential which
is used to-day. Volta discovered this new and more stable form of
electricity and many different men labored investigating what could
be accomplished with it. The names of Sir Humphry Davy and Michael
Faraday are inseparably connected with this advance. It was Oersted’s
and Faraday’s discovery of the connection between electricity and
magnetism, and how an electric current may be made to magnetize a piece
of iron at will, that really opened the way for the invention of the
telegraph we know to-day.
The First Real Telegraph.
But before the much greater practical value of Volta’s current was
discovered, one man developed a real telegraph which worked with
electricity of the static kind, produced by friction. This man was
named Sir Francis Ronalds. He worked along the lines laid down by the
unknown Scotchman, whom we have supposed to be Charles Morrison. The
machine he built and operated in his garden at Hammersmith utilized
pith balls, which actuated by the charge of static electricity sent
along the wire caused a letter to appear before an opening in the dial.
When perfected he offered it to the British Government, who refused
it. They were very stupid in their refusal, for they said “telegraphs
are wholly unnecessary.” Sir Francis Ronalds’ invention cost him much
care, anxiety and money. He lived to see the more practical voltaic
current taken up by others and put to successful use. Being unselfish
he rejoiced that others should succeed where he had failed.
Two Men who Invented our Telegraph almost Simultaneously.
The telegraph, working on the electro-magnetic principle, as used
to-day, was developed almost simultaneously on the two sides of the
Atlantic Ocean. In England Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William
Fothergill Cooke worked out a practical method and instruments, which
with few changes, are in use to-day. Cooke was a doctor and had
served with the British army in India. Wheatstone was the son of a
Gloucester musical instrument maker. The latter was fond of science and
experimented continually with electricity and wrote about it and other
scientific subjects. As a result of his work he was made a professor
at King’s College. There he conducted important researches and tests,
among which was one which measured the speed at which electricity
travels along a wire. So Cooke, who was a doctor and a good business
man, entered into partnership with the scientist Wheatstone, and
together they completed their invention. It was first used in 1838
on the London and Blackwall Railway. At first it was expensive and
cumbersome, using five lines of wire. Later this number was reduced
to two, and in 1845, an instrument was devised which required but one
wire. This instrument, with a few minor changes, is the one in use
to-day in England.
While these two men were working in England, an American artist, S. F.
B. Morse, was studying and experimenting in the United States along his
own lines but with the same end in view, namely to produce instruments
which would satisfactorily send messages over a wire by electricity.
An American, however, is given the honor of First by Slight Margin.
Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1791. He was gifted as
an artist, both in painting and sculpture, and in 1811 went abroad to
England to study. While on a voyage from Havre to America in 1832 he
met on board ship a Dr. Jackson, who told him of the latest scientific
discoveries in regard to the electric current and the electro-magnet.
This set Morse to thinking and after three years’ hard work on the
problem he produced a telegraph which worked on the principle of the
electro-magnet. With the apparatus devised by Morse and his partner
Alfred Vail, a message was sent from Washington to Baltimore in 1844.
There has been some question as to whether Morse or Wheatstone first
invented a workable telegraph. As will be evident from this history,
the telegraph in principle was a gradual development, to which many
minds contributed. To Morse, however, the high authority of the
Supreme Court of the United States has given the credit of being
the first to perfect a practical instrument, saying that the Morse
invention “preceded the three European inventions” and that it would
be impossible to examine the latter without perceiving at once “the
decided superiority of the one invented by Professor Morse.”
Uncle Sam Helped Build the First Telegraph Line.
~FIRST TELEGRAPH LINE FROM BALTIMORE TO WASHINGTON~
At the time Morse’s Recording Telegraph was invented there were, of
course, no telegraph lines in any part of the world, with the exception
of the short lines of wire put up by investigators for experimental
purposes. To remove the obscurity as to the purpose to be served by the
telegraph was the first problem which presented itself to Morse and his
backers. In 1843 an appropriation was secured of $30,000 from the U. S.
Government, with which a line was built from Washington to Baltimore.
This was built and operated by the Government for about two years, but
the Government refused to purchase the patent rights. So the owners
of the patents endeavored to get the general public interested in the
telegraph as a commercial undertaking and gradually companies were
founded and licensed to use the invention.
By 1851 there were as many as fifty different telegraph companies in
operation in different parts of the United States. A few of these
used the devices of a man named Alexander Bain, which were afterwards
adjudged to infringe the Morse patents, and one or two used an
instrument invented by Royal E. House of Vermont, which printed the
messages received in plain Roman letters on a ribbon of paper. This at
first seemed to have an advantage over that of Morse, which received
the message in dots and dashes, in the Morse Code, and these had
to be translated and written out by an operator before they could
be delivered. However, as time went on, the operators came to read
the Morse messages by the sound of the dots and dashes, instead of
waiting to read the paper tape having the dots and dashes marked on
it, and finally the recording feature was given up and the sounder, or
instrument which simply clicks out the message, came into general use.
In the early days, the possibility of the business were little
understood and many telegraph companies failed. April 8, 1851,
papers were filed in Albany for the incorporation of the New York
and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Co. This company, which
soon afterwards changed its name to Western Union, was destined to
absorb the various companies throughout the country until it, in time,
operated the telegraph lines over practically the entire United States,
and has its blue sign in nearly every town and hamlet in the country.
[Illustration: AN EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT NECESSARY TO-DAY