own expense, and was permitted by the directors to do so on condition of
sending their railway signals free of charge, and of extending the line to
Slough. In return, he was allowed to transmit the messages of the public.
Here commences the first popular use of the telegraph in England, or in
any other country. The tariff was one shilling per message. The effect of
this low charge was to develop a class of business which seems beneath the
notice of the powerful company now in possession of most of the
telegraphic lines in the kingdom. The transactions of the retail dealers
are considered too petty, perhaps, for their attention; but there can be
no doubt that the comfort of the public would be vastly increased, and
also the revenues of the company, if they would only condescend to take a
lesson by the commercial experience of this shilling tariff, the working
of which we will illustrate by transcribing from the telegraph book at
Paddington a few specimens of the messages sent:--
"Commercial News. 1844, Nov. 1, Slough, 4.10 P.M.--'Send a messenger
to Mr. Harris, poulterer, Duke-street, Manchester-square, and order
him to send twelve more chickens to Mr. Finch, High-street, Windsor,
by the 5.0 P.M. down train, without fail.' Answer: Paddington, 5.5
P.M.--'The chickens are sent by the 5.0 P.M. train.'
"Slough, 7.35 P.M.--'A Mr. Thomas B., a first-class passenger, 6.30
P.M. train, left a blue cloak with a velvet collar in first-class
booking-office. Send it by mail train if found.'
"Paddington 7.45 P.M.--'There are two such cloaks in the
booking-office: has Mr. B.'s any mark on any part of it?' Slough, 7.47
P.M.--'Mr. B.'s has the mark × under the collar, inside.'
"Paddington, 7.55 P.M.--'Cloak found, and will be sent on as
requested.'
"Slough, Nov. 11, 1844, 4.3 P.M.--'Send a messenger to Mr. Harris,
Duke-street, Manchester-square, and request him to send 6 lbs. of
white bait and 4 lbs. of sausages, by the 5.40 train, to Mr. Finch, of
Windsor they must be sent by 5.30 down train, or not at all.'
"Paddington, 5.27 P.M.--'Messenger returned with articles which will
be sent by 5.30 train, as requested.'"
The first application of the telegraph to police purposes took place about
this time on the Great Western Railway, and, as it was the first
intimation thieves got of the electric constable being on duty, it is full
of interest. The following extracts are from the telegraph book kept at
the Paddington station:--
"Eaton Montem day, August 28, 1844.--The Commissioners of Police have
issued orders that several officers of the detective force shall be
stationed at Paddington to watch the movements of suspicious persons,
going by the down-train, and give notice by the electric telegraph to
the Slough station of the number of such suspected persons, and dress,
their names if known, also the carriages in which they are."
Now come the messages following one after the other, and influencing the
fate of the marked individuals with all the celerity, certainty, and
calmness of the Nemesis of the Greek drama:--
"Paddington, 10.20 A.M.--'Mail train just started. It contains three
thieves, named Sparrow, Burrell, and Spurgeon, in the first
compartment of the fourth first-class carriage.'
"Slough, 10.48 A.M.--'Mail train arrived. _The officers have cautioned
the three thieves._'
"Paddington, 10.50 A.M.--'Special train just left. It contained two
thieves: one named Oliver Martin, who is dressed in black, _crape on
his hat_; the other named Fiddler Dick, in black trowsers and light
blouse. Both in the third compartment of the first second-class
carriage.'
"Slough, 11.16 A.M.--'Special train arrived. Officers have taken the
two thieves into custody, a lady having lost her bag, containing a
purse with two sovereigns and some silver in it; one of the sovereigns
was sworn to by the lady as having been her property. It was found in
Fiddler Dick's watch-fob.'"
It appears that, on the arrival of the train, a policeman opened the door
of the "third compartment of the first second-class carriage" and asked
the passengers if they had missed anything? A search in pockets and bags
accordingly ensued, until one lady called out that her purse was gone.
"Fiddler Dick, you are wanted," was the immediate demand of the
police-officer, beckoning to the culprit, who came out of the carriage
thunderstruck at the discovery, and gave himself up, together with the
booty, with the air of a completely beaten man. The effect of the capture
so cleverly brought about is thus spoken of in the telegraph book:--
"Slough, 11.51 A.M.--'Several of the suspected persons who came by the
various down-trains are lurking about Slough, uttering bitter
invectives against the telegraph. Not one of those cautioned has
ventured to proceed to the Montem.'"
Ever after this the lightfingered gentry avoided the railway and the _too_
intelligent companion that ran beside it, and betook themselves again to
the road--a retrograde step, to which on all great public occasions they
continue to adhere.
The telegraph, even up to this period, was very little known to the great
mass of the public, and might have continued for some time longer in
obscurity but for its remarkable agency in causing the arrest of the
quaker Tawell. This event, which took place on the afternoon of Friday,
January 3rd, 1845, placed it before the world as a prominent instrument in
a terrible drama, and at once drew universal attention to its
capabilities.
It must not be imagined, however, that Mr. Wheatstone's was the only
patent taken out for a telegraph in the year 1837. A number of inquiring
minds were simultaneously with the Professor wandering in the tangled wood
of doubt, and when he burst his way through, others speedily emerged at
different points, one after another. Consequently, the year 1837 was
distinguished by a complete crop of telegraphs, any one of which would
perhaps have held its ground had it stood alone, but not one of them was
practically equal to the first, and they have all long since departed to
the tomb, already stored with the abortive results of so many merely
ingenious minds.
The rapidity with which the needle instrument transmits messages, the
small amount of electricity required to work it, and the simplicity of its
construction, are its chief recommendations. Upwards of 200 letters can be
forwarded by it within the minute. Its great drawback--a drawback that
will appear greater every year--is that it can only be worked by a system
of signs, which requires some practice to understand. As long as the
public is content to send its messages open to the light of day, this plan
will hold its ground, as a practised manipulator can indicate the letters
as fast as it is possible to read, much less transcribe them, at the other
end of the wire; but immediately that the public come to demand
secrecy--to put a seal as of old on its letters--this telegraph will, we
predict, fall into _public_ disuse; and the revolving dial telegraph,
invented by Mr. Wheatstone, in 1840, or the recording telegraph of Bain or
Morse, or, more likely still, the American printing telegraph of House,
will come into play.
This latter instrument appears to contain within itself capabilities of
very high excellence; for instance, it requires no one to interpret, and
then to re-write its messages--this it does itself. In fact it extends the
compositor's fingers as far as the wire can be stretched. Messages are
thus printed at the rate of fifty letters a minute, say at five hundred
miles distance, in common Roman characters, on long slips of paper similar
to those used on the recording instrument. Any description of its
complicated mechanism would be utterly unintelligible to general readers.
"While the arrangements of the telegraph of Morse," said Mr. Justice
Woodbury, of America, in giving judgment in a patent case, "can be readily
understood by most mechanics and men of science, it requires days, if not
weeks with some, thoroughly to comprehend all the parts and movements of
the telegraph of House." His system is in use for thousands of miles of
the American lines. Bakewell's copying telegraph is naturally suggested by
the telegraph of House, from the fact that it reproduces its messages,
although in a different manner. The sender of the message may be said to
write with a pen long enough to stretch to the most distant correspondent;
that is, he not only forwards instantaneously the substance of a message,
but it is conveyed in his own handwriting. The principle is similar to
that of Davy's chemical recording telegraph. The person sending the
message writes it on a piece of tin foil with a pen dipped in varnish or
any other non-conducting substance; this message is then placed round a
metal cylinder, which is made to revolve at a certain regulated pace. In
contact with this cylinder is a blunt steel point, which, by the action of
a screw, makes a spiral line from the top to the bottom of the cylinder,
thus touching every portion of the written message enveloping it. In
connection with the steel point is the conducting wire, and at the end of
the wire is a similar steel point working spirally upon a like cylinder.
It will be at once seen that the current will always be transmitted,
except at those portions of the tin foil which are covered with the
non-conducting varnish, and which, therefore, cut off the flow of
electricity, and the handwriting will appear at the other end of the
telegraphic wire upon a piece of chemically-prepared paper rolled upon its
cylinder, and moving synchronously with it. The transmitted letter appears
to be written in white upon a dark ground, the white parts, of course,
indicating where the current has been broken, and where, consequently, no
decomposition of the chemical paper has taken place.
To return, however, to our subject after this little digression. At the
same time that the first working telegraph was being simplified and
improved, the system was gradually spreading, and, by the end of the year
1845, lines exceeding 500 miles in extent were in operation in England,
working Messrs. Wheatstone and Cook's patents. In the following year,
capital, as represented by the powerful Electric Telegraph Company,
commenced its operations, and an immediate and rapid development of the
new method of carrying intelligence was the result.
"A period of eight years has elapsed," as they say in a certain class of
drama, and let us now look upon the condition of electric-telegraphy in
England. We left it exerting its influence in a disjointed manner over a
few railways, and striking out its wires here and there at random, without
governing head or organization; and how do we find it?
Jammed in between lofty houses, at the bottom of a narrow court in
Lothbury, we see before us a stuccoed wall, ornamented with an electric
illuminated clock. Who would think that behind this narrow forehead lay
the great brain,--if we may so term it,--of the nervous system of Britain,
or that beneath the narrow pavement of the alley lies its spinal chord,
composed of hundreds of fibres, which transmit intelligence as unperceived
as does the medulla oblongata beneath the skin? Emerging from this narrow
channel, the "efferent" wires branch off beneath the different footways,
ramify in certain plexuses within the great centre of intelligence itself,
and then shoot out along the different lines of railway until the shores
of the island would seem to interpose a limit to their further progress.
Not so, however:--beneath the seas, under the heaving waves covered with
stately navies, they take their darksome way, until, with the burden of
their moving fire, they emerge once more upon the foreign strand, and
commence afresh their career over the wide expanse of the Continent.
And now, like a curious physiologist, let us examine the various parts of
this ingeniously-constructed sensorium, and endeavour to show our readers
how in this high chamber, fashioned by human hands, thoughts circulate,
and ideas come and go. The door of the "Central Telegraph Station" leads
immediately into the Central Hall, an oblong space, open quite up to the
roof, which presents an appearance something like the Coal Exchange or the
Geological Museum, two tiers of galleries being suspended from the bare
walls, and affording communication to the different parts of the building.
If we ascend the first gallery, and lean over the balustrade, we shall get
a very clear bird's-eye view of the method in which messages are received
and transmitted. Here, man, like the watchful spider, sits centered within
his radiating web, and "lives along the line." Beneath us runs a sweep of
counter forming three sides of a quadrangle, divided into compartments of
about a square yard by green curtains. A desk and printed forms, to be
filled up, are placed in each of these isolated cells, towards which we
see individuals immediately make, and then bury themselves, being for the
time profoundly intent upon the printed form.
We all know the jocose excuse of the correspondent for having written a
long letter--that he had not time to make it shorter. And truly it
requires some art to be laconic enough to satisfy the pocket in this
establishment. Let us watch, for instance, yonder youth: he seems to have
filled his sheet very close--now he gives it in to the receiving-clerk,
and something evidently is wrong, for he looks perplexed--it is some hitch
about the charge, for his attention is directed to the scale of prices
printed at the head of the paper.
"Messages (not exceeding twenty words) can be sent between all the
principal towns in Great Britain at a charge of 1_s._ within a circuit
of 50 miles, of 2_s._ 6_d._ within a circuit of 100 miles
(geographical distance), and of 5_s._ beyond a circuit of 100 miles,
with an additional sum of 6_d._ porterage within half a mile of the
station."
"Economy," says a French writer, M. de Courcy, "teaches conciseness. The
telegraphic style banishes all the forms of politeness. 'May I ask you to
do me the favour,' is 6d. for a distance of fifty miles." How many of
those fond adjectives, therefore, must our poor fellow relentlessly strike
out to bring his billet down to a reasonable charge! What food for
speculation each person affords, as he writes his hurried epistle,
dictated either by fear, or greed, or more powerful love!--for we have not
yet got into the habit of employing the telegraph, like the Americans, on
the mere every-day business of life. Every message--and of these there are
350,000 transmitted by this Company yearly for the public, and upwards of
3,500,000 for the Railways--is faithfully copied, and put by in fire-proof
safes, those sent by the recording telegraph being wound in tape-like
lengths upon a roller, and appearing exactly like discs of sarcenet
ribbon. Fancy some future Macaulay rummaging among such a store, and
painting therefrom the salient features of the social and commercial life
of England in the nineteenth century. If from the Household Book of the
Duke of Northumberland, or still later, from the Paston Letters, we can
catch such glimpses of the manners of an early age, what might not be
gathered some day in the twenty-first century from a record of the
correspondence of an entire people?
"Softly, softly," interposes the Secretary of the Company, "we have no
such intention of gratifying posterity; for, after a certain brief period
all copies of communications are destroyed. No person unconnected with
the office is, under any consideration, allowed to have access to them,
and the servants of the Company are under a bond not to divulge 'the
secrets of the prison-house.'" Very good, as far as the present generation
is concerned; nevertheless, it is devoutly to be wished that an odd box or
two of these sarcenet ribbons, with their linear language, may escape, for
future Rawlinsons to puzzle over and decipher for the instruction of
mankind.
Whilst we have been thus speculating, however, a dozen messages for all
parts of the kingdom have successively ascended, through the long lift
before us, to the instrument-rooms, of which there are two, situated in
the attics of the establishment, on either side of the top gallery of the
central hall; these, to carry out our anatomical simile, might be called
the two hemispheres of the establishment's cerebrum. The instruments of
one of these rooms are worked by youths, while those of the other are
manipulated by young ladies; and it seems to us as though the directors
were pitting them against each other--establishing a kind of industrial
tournament--to see which description of labourer is worthiest. As yet,
little or no difference can be detected: this, however, is in itself a
triumph for the fair sex, as it proves their capacity for a species of
employment well calculated for their habits and physical powers, and opens
another door for that superabundance of female labour of a superior kind
which has hitherto sought employment in vain.
Click, click, go the needles on every hand as we enter. Here we see the
iron tongues of the telegraph wagging, and talking as fast as a tea-table
full of old maids. London is holding communication with Manchester.
Plymouth is listening attentively to a long story, and every now and then
intimates by a slight movement that he perfectly comprehends. But there is
one speaker whose nimble tongue seems to be saying important things by the
stir around him,--that is _the Hague_ whispering under the North Sea the
news he has heard, an hour or so ago, from Vienna of a great victory just
gained by the Turks. We are witness to a series of conversations carried
on with all corners of the island, and between the metropolis of the
world and every capital of northern and central Europe, as intimately as
though the speakers were bending their heads over the dinner-table, and
talking confidentially to the host. And by what agency is this
extraordinary conversation carried on? All that the visitor sees is a
number of little mahogany cases, very similar to those of American clocks,
each having a dial, with two lozenge-shaped needles working by pivots,
which hang, when at rest, perpendicularly upon it. Two dependant handles,
situated at the base of this instrument, which the operator grasps and
moves from side to side at his will, suffice to make and break the
currents or reverse them, and consequently to deflect the needles either
to the right or left. Two little stops of ivory are placed about half an
inch apart, on either side of the needle, to prevent its deflecting too
much, and to check all vibration. It is the sound of the iron tongue
striking against these stops that makes the clicking, and to which the
telegraphists are sensitively alive. In the early days of telegraphy, the
operator's attention, at all the stations, was drawn to the instrument by
the sudden ringing of an alarum, which was effected by the agency of an
electro-magnet; but the horrid din it occasioned became insupportable to
persons in constant attendance, and this part of the instrument was
speedily given up, the clicking of the needle being found quite sufficient
to draw his attention to the arrival or passing of a message. We say _or
passing_ of a message, because, when a communication is made, as for
instance, between London and Edinburgh, the needles of all the
telegraph-stations on the line are simultaneously deflected, but the
attendant has only to take notice of what is going on when a special
signal is made to his particular locality, informing him that _he_ is
spoken with. A story is told of a certain somnolent station clerk, who, in
order to enjoy his nap, trained his terrier to scratch and awaken him at
the first sound of the clicking needles.
There are but two kinds of telegraph used by the company, the needle
telegraph and a few of the chemical recording telegraph of Bain. The
latter instrument strikes the spectator more, perhaps, than the
nimble-working needle apparatus, but its action is equally simple. Slits
of variable length representing letters, according to the alphabet in the
note,[35] are punched out from a long strip of paper called the
message-strip, which is placed between a revolving cylinder and a toothed
spring. The battery is connected with the cylinder; the wire, which goes
from station to station, is joined to the spring. As dry paper is a
non-conductor, no electricity passes while the unpierced portion of the
message-slip interposes between the cylinder and the tooth; but when the
tooth drops into a space, and comes in contact with the cylinder, the
current flows. If we now transfer our attention to the station at which
the message is received, we find a similar cylinder revolving at a regular
rate, and a metal pin, depending from the end of the telegraph wire,
pressing upon it; but in this case the paper between the cylinder and the
pin has been washed with a solution of prussiate of potash, which
electricity has the effect of changing to Prussian blue at the point where
the pin touches it. Therefore, as the chemically prepared paper moves
under the pin, a blue line is formed of the same length as the slits at
the other end, which regulate the duration of the electric current; and
thus every letter punched upon the message-strip is faithfully transferred
to its distant fellow. Such is the celerity with which the notation is
transmitted by this method, that "in an experiment performed by M. Le
Verrier and Dr. Lardner, before committees of the Institute and the
Legislative Assembly at Paris, despatches were sent 1,000 miles at the
rate of nearly 20,000 words an hour." In ordinary practice, however, the
speed is limited to the rate at which an expert clerk can punch out the
holes, which is not much above a hundred per minute. Where the object was
to forward long documents, such as a speech, a number of persons could be
employed simultaneously in punching out different portions of the message,
and the message-strips would then be supplied as fast as the machine could
work.
This system is used extensively in America. A weaker current of
electricity than what is required for deflecting needles or magnetising
iron, suffices to effect the requisite chemical decomposition. The
conducting power of vapour or rain carries much of the electricity from
the wires in certain states of the atmosphere; "and in such cases, where
both Morse's and Bain's telegraphs are used by an amalgamated company in
the same office, it is found convenient to remove the wires from Morse's
instruments, and connect them with Bain's, on which it is practicable to
operate when communication by Morse's system is
interrupted."--(_Whitworth's Report_, p. 51.)
This chemical telegraph has also the advantage, in common with all
recording instruments, that it leaves an indelible record of every message
transmitted, and therefore is very useful when the mistake of a single
figure or letter might be of consequence, which we will illustrate by a
case which happened very lately. A stockbroker in the City received,
during a very agitated state of the funds, an order to buy for a client in
a distant part of the country, by a certain time of the day, 80,000_l._ of
consols. This order being unusually large for the individual, the broker
doubted its accuracy, and immediately made inquiries at the office. The
message had luckily been sent by the recording instrument, and upon
looking at the record it was immediately seen that the order was for
8,000_l._, the transcriber having put in an 0 too much, for which,
according to the rules of the company, he was incontinently fined. Now,
here the error was immediately traced to the person who made it, and there
was no need of telegraphing back to inquire if all were right, two matters
of vital importance in such a transaction as this, involving so much
personal responsibility; for if the purchase had been made and turned out
unfortunate, the loss would indubitably have fallen upon the unhappy
sharebroker.[36]