THE TELEGRAPH

Every one knows how very convenient the telegraph is, but there are not many who think how wonderful it is that we can send a message in a few seconds of time to a distant place, even though it were thousands of miles away. And yet, though the present system of telegraphing is a wonderful one, the method of sending a telegram is simple enough. The apparatus that is used in sending a telegram is as follows:

The Battery.
The Wire.
The Telegraph Key.
The Sounder.

The different kinds of electric batteries will be mentioned afterward, so we will not stop now to describe them, but simply state that a battery is used to produce the necessary electricity. As you all know what wire is, there is no necessity of describing it further.

The telegraph key is shown in the sketch below. (Fig. 6.)

This instrument is usually made of brass, except that upon the handle there is the little knob which is of hard rubber. The handle, or lever, moves down when this knob is pressed, and a little spring beneath pushes it up again when let go. You will see a second smaller knob, the use of which we will explain later.

The sounder is shown on the following page. (Fig. 7.)

The part consisting of the two black pillars is an electromagnet, and across the top of these pillars is a piece of iron called the "armature," which is held up by a spring.

Now let us see how the battery and wire are placed in connection with these instruments. You have seen that we usually have two wires for the electricity to travel in, one wire for it to leave the battery, and the other to return on. But you will easily see that if two wires had to be used in telegraphing it would be a very expensive matter, especially when they had to be carried thousands of miles. So, instead of using a second wire, we use the earth to carry back the electricity to the battery, because the earth is a better conductor even than wire. Although a quantity of ground equal in size to the wire would offer thousands of times greater resistance than the wire, yet, owing to the great body of our earth, its total resistance is even less than any telegraph wire used.

When two electric wires are run from a battery and connected together through some instrument, this is called a "circuit," because the electricity has a path in which it can travel back to the battery. This would be a "metallic" circuit; but when one wire only is used, and the other side of the battery is connected with the earth, it is called a "ground" or "earth" circuit, because the electricity returns through the earth.

If you look at this sketch (Fig. 8) you will see how the telegraph instruments are connected and will then be able to understand how a message can be sent.

Here we have two sets of telegraph apparatus, one of which, let us say, is in New York and the other in Philadelphia.

You will see that one wire from the battery is connected with the earth, and the other wire with the sounder. Another wire goes from the sounder to one leg of the key so as to make the brass base of the key part of the circuit. The other leg of the key is "insulated" from the brass base by being separated therefrom with some substance which will not carry electricity, such, for instance, as hard rubber.

We will suppose that there is already a wire strung up on poles between New York and Philadelphia, and that the key, sounder, and battery in the latter city are connected in the same way as those in New York.

Now, to enable us to send a message from one city to the other we must connect the ends of the wires to the instruments in each city; so we connect one end to the insulated leg of the key in New York, and the other end to the insulated leg of the key in Philadelphia.

Everything is now completed, and, as soon as we find out what is the use of that part of the key that has a little round, black handle, we shall be ready to start. This is called the "switch."

If you will look once more at the picture of the key you will see under the long handle (or lever) a little point which the lever will touch when it is pressed down. Now this little point is part of that insulated leg, and, therefore, this point is also insulated from the base. If a current of electricity were sent along the wire it could not get any farther than this point unless we put in some arrangement to complete the path, or circuit, for it to travel in. We therefore put in the switch.

One end of the switch (which is made of brass with a rubber handle) is fastened on the base of the key, so that it may be moved to the right or left. The other end, when the switch is moved to the left (or "closed"), touches a piece of brass fastened to the little point we have mentioned, and so makes a free path for the electricity to go through the base of the key and through the wire to the sounder, and from there to the battery, and so back to the earth. This switch must be opened before the sounder near it will respond to its neighboring key.

Now we are ready to send a message. Suppose we want to send a telegram from New York to Philadelphia. The operator in New York opens his switch and presses down his key several times. The switch on the Philadelphia key being closed, the electricity goes through to the sounder, and, this being made an electromagnet by the current passing through the wire, the iron armature is attracted by the magnetism and drawn down to the magnet with a snap. It will stay there as long as the New York operator keeps his lever pressed down, but, when he allows it to spring up, there is no current passing through the Philadelphia sounder and there is no magnetism, consequently the armature springs up again with a click.

As often as the operator presses down his key lever and lets it spring up again, the same action takes place in the sounder, and it makes that click, click, which you have heard if you have ever seen telegraph instruments in operation.

Let us continue, however, to send our message. The New York operator, having pressed down his key several times to signal the Philadelphia operator, closes his switch to receive the answer from Philadelphia. The operator in the latter city then opens his switch and presses down his key several times, which makes the New York sounder click, in the same way, to let the operator there know that he is ready to receive the message. He then closes his switch and receives the telegram which the New York operator sends after opening his key.

Telegraphic messages are sent and received in this way and are read by the sound of the clicks.

These sounds may be represented on paper by dots, dashes, and spaces. For instance, if you press down the key and let it spring back quickly, that would represent a dot. If you press down the key and hold it a little longer before letting it spring up again, it would represent a dash. A space would be represented by waiting a little while before pressing down the key again.

We show you below the alphabet in these dots, dashes, and spaces, and these are the ones now used in sending all telegraphic messages.