If a needle turning upon a pivot were fixed at York, and if, by a wire placed in close proximity to it, the needle could be made to move to the right or to the left through the agency of a power applied at the other end of the wire in London, and if it were agreed that one motion of the needle to the left should signify a, and one to the right b, &c.,[33] we should have just such a contrivance as the common needle telegraph now in use.

Such is the dry statement of a problem the more detailed working of which we are about to explain to the reader.

When a schoolboy places a sixpence and a piece of zinc in juxta-position with each other in his mouth, he immediately perceives a singular taste, which as instantly disappears upon their separation; it is an experiment which most of us have performed, wondered at for a moment, and then forgotten. How little did we ever dream that in so doing we were calling into life one of the most subtle, active, and universal agents in nature—a spirit like Ariel to carry our thoughts with the speed of thought to the uttermost ends of the earth—a workman more delicate of hand than the Florentine Cellini, and more resistless in force than the Titans of old!

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

If now we place a piece of zinc, Z, and of copper, C, in a glass of acidulated water, instead of in the saliva of the mouth, and if we then attach to the piece of zinc the wire D K, and to the piece of copper the wire B A, and approximate the two ends, A K, until they touch, we shall have the philosophic expression of the contrivance of the boy—a decomposition of the water will immediately take place, and either as its cause or consequence—for scientific men have not yet decided which—an electric current will flow in a continued stream from the zinc plate or positive pole to the copper plate or negative pole of the battery, and this action, provided the plates are kept clean and the acidulated water is supplied, will go on as long as the materials last. If this little instrument, which generates a very small amount of electric force, is combined with others, as in figure 2,—the zinc plate of one cell being connected with the copper plate of the next by a piece of wire—we shall have the celebrated battery invented by Volta in 1800, in which the accumulated current, after flowing from one cell into another, by means of the little hoops of wire, is transmitted along the large hoop, D K A B, from the one pole of the battery to the other. Within the narrow chambers of some such battery (which may be made of any number of cells, according to the force required), the motive power is generated by which the electric telegraph is worked, and the large hoop by which its two poles are connected represents the telegraphic wire we see running beside the railroad, whose office is to form a conducting pipe for the conveyance of the electricity. Different substances possess this property in various degrees; some, such as dry paper, not permitting the passage of the electric fluid to any sensible extent; and others transmitting it with great freedom. Of all known bodies, the metals are the most perfect conductors, and copper is in this respect superior to iron; but the latter, being cheaper and more durable, is commonly employed in the construction of the telegraph. Thus we have two of the indispensable requisites—a constant force and a channel which conveys it from place to place.

Fig. 3

There was yet a third thing necessary—some contrivance by which the force could be made instrumental in forming signs or characters at its destined goal; and this final condition was supplied by Oersted’s discovery in 1819, that a magnetic needle is deflected by the passage of a circuit of electricity through a wire parallel and in close neighbourhood to it. The following cut will explain our meaning:—When the fluid passes from the U pole of the battery in the direction of B A K L M Z, and enters V, its opposite pole, “a current,” as it is called, is completed, running from left to right, the effect of which upon the needle, N, is to deflect it in the direction of the dotted line (seen in perspective) 2, 3, or to an angle of 90 degrees, with the wire, if the current is sufficiently strong. If, however, the current be reversed, and the electric fluid made to traverse the wire from right to left, in the direction of the letters V Z M L K A B to the U end of the battery, the needle will immediately reverse its position and place itself at 90 degrees in the opposite direction. This then is the whole principle and mystery of the needle telegraph, the one still most extensively used in this country. The break that occurs between the letters B U and Z V is intended to show the method in which the needle is made to work. “Whilst the wires are thus apart the circuit is broken,” or the fluid no longer passes along the wire, but immediately they are approximated the circulation again commences, and the needle “answers the helm.” By the opening and closing, then, of this small space, which is effected by a lever, the needle is made to oscillate at will.

Fig. 4

The mere fact, however, of an electric current passing along a wire in proximity to a magnetic needle was not sufficient to enable any person to construct a telegraph. Would the needle be deflected by a wire, the battery of which was placed at any considerable distance? it would not; therefore, for all telegraphic purposes Oersted’s discovery was worthless. Schweigger, however, soon after ascertained that by passing a great number of times round the needle a wire, thoroughly insulated by a “serving” of silk thread, as shown in figure 4, the deflecting powers of the currant were multiplied, and the sensibility of the instrument marvellously increased.

Fig. 5

In the same year that Oersted made his brilliant discovery, M. Arago detected another law, which furnished a second method by which the electric current could be made to tell its tale. He announced to the French Academy the fact so pregnant in its consequences, that the fluid possessed the power of imparting magnetism to steel or iron; and shortly afterwards our own countryman, Sturgeon, invented the first electro-magnet, by coiling around a piece of soft iron a great length of fine insulated copper wire, the ends of which communicated with a battery. Figure 5 will give a rough idea of this instrument. The wire U B A, when it reaches the cylinder K L, is wound many times round it, and returns to the battery at V. As long as the current is passing, the soft iron becomes a magnet and attracts the iron armature P; but directly the circuit is broken its magnetic power ceases, and P, by the action of a spring, flies back. It will at once be seen that by alternately making and breaking the circuit, which can be done as fast as the hand can move the handle of a lever, an up and down movement of the armature P will take place, and this is the principle of action in Wheatstone’s electro-magnetic dial instrument and Morse’s recording telegraph, so extensively used in America. The general modus operandi of the latter, which is a contrivance of singular merit and efficiency, can be easily understood. At the station at which the message is received, a poised iron lever has a metal pin on its upper surface at one end, and an armature on its under surface at the other end. When the magnet, which is placed beneath the armature, attracts and draws it down, the pin at the opposite extremity is raised, and presses against a strip of paper, which is moved between the metal point, and a roller supported above it, at a uniform rate by means of clock-work. The pin or style will then make a simple dot, or trace lines of variable length upon the paper, according as the electric current is kept up only for a single instant, or for a longer period. “The impressions on the paper,” says Dr. Turnbull, “resemble the raised printing for the blind.” Out of these dots and lines an alphabet is formed similar to that which we have given in a subsequent page, when speaking of the chemical telegraph at Bain. The instrument of Morse requires only a single wire to work it, and is, says the AbbÉ Moigno, “an excellent telegraph, very simple, very efficacious, and very rapid in its transmissions. A practised clerk can indent on an average seventeen words a minute, which is consequently as many as a skilful writer could transcribe with a pen. It is, moreover, a great advantage to have fixed on a band of paper the messages which the needle telegraphs merely figure in the air.”

Since the year 1821 the principles of action of two of the working telegraphs of the present day were known to scientific men, and the question naturally arises, how was it that it still took so many years to make the telegraph a working fact? The answer is, that the combination of circumstances necessary to bring it to perfection had not arisen. What interest had practical men in carrying out the dreams of philosophers? No one imagined that it would ever become a necessary social engine, or that it would pay “seven per cent.” to a public Company. The patronage of the Government could alone have been looked to by any of the proposers of the new method of telegraphy, and the sort of encouragement received from this quarter may be judged from the fact that when Mr. Ronalds attempted to draw the attention of some of the officials to the working of his instrument, they did not even deign to pay it a visit, but returned for answer, “That the telegraph was of no use in time of peace, and that the semaphore in time of war answered all the required purposes.” The occasion that suddenly ripened the invention and brought it into practical operation was the introduction of railroads. Were it not for the universal spread of this new means of locomotion, the telegraph might still have remained in that limbo from which so many discoveries have never emerged. The vast advantage to a railroad of a method of conveying signals instantaneously throughout its entire length was at once seen, and the continuity of its property, together with the protection afforded by its servants, presented facilities for its introduction and maintenance which had never before occurred.

A problem of great scientific interest as well as of practical importance in connection with the electric telegraph had still to be solved. The experiments of Dr. Watson on Shooter’s Hill, in the middle of the last century, proved, it is true, that a shock of electricity passed along a four mile circuit without any appreciable loss of time, but nothing was definitely known about the speed at which it really travelled. This difficult question was answered by Professor Wheatstone. His beautiful investigations on the subject were made by means of a very rapidly revolving mirror, upon which the passage of the electric fluid, at different and distant parts of a severed wire, was indicated by sparks, which appeared as lines of light on the rapidly turning glass, on the same principle that a bit of lighted charcoal whirled round and round in the air appears as a circle of fire. By this instrument, which we cannot render intelligible to the general reader, but for a fuller account of which we refer him to the Philosophical Transactions of 1834, he made it evident to the eye that one spark or leap of the electric fluid did occur before the other—thus proving that its transit along the wire was a matter of time. The manner in which he took measure of this infinitesimal period was extremely ingenious. By attaching a hollow piece of metal—a metallic humming-top as it were—to the spindle of his revolving mirror, and at the same time directing a current of air against it, he was enabled to test its speed by the pitch of the sound produced: this once known, the measuring of time that elapsed between the different sparks was easy. Thus he forced the lightning to tell how fast it was going. His admirably-contrived apparatus has since proved of considerable use to philosophers in measuring very minute parts of time, and scientific men can now with the greatest ease ascertain the period a flash of light takes to traverse a distance of 50 feet—and light, be it remembered, travels at the speed of 200,000 miles a second!

By this experiment it appeared that electricity travels through a copper-wire with at least the velocity of light through the celestial space, though the recent experiments made for Professor Bache, director of the national survey of America, have proved that the velocity of the current through suspended iron wires is not more than 15,400 miles per second. The philosophic proof of the marvellous rate at which the electric current moved, doubtless turned many minds once more in the direction of the long sought for telegraph, and it is not surprising that the eminent elucidator of the fact was among the number. A short time after this he insulated four miles of wire in the vaults of King’s College, on which he performed most of his subsequent experiments.[34] Thus in the silence of these gloomy vaults, as early as 1836, the lightning that was to flash with intelligence round the world—the nervous system so shortly destined to spread itself through two hemispheres, string together continents and islands, and carry human thought under the wide-spreading seas, was slowly being trained to the service of man by one of the most distinguished of the many philosophers who have contributed to the development of this branch of science.

Following up his experiment, Professor Wheatstone worked out the arrangements of his telegraph, and having associated himself in 1837 with Mr. Cooke, who had previously devoted much time to the same subject, a patent was taken out in the June of that year in their joint names. Their telegraph had five wires and five needles; the latter being worked upon the face of a lozenge-shaped dial inscribed with the letters of the alphabet, any one of which could be indicated by the convergence of two of the needles. This very ingenious instrument could be manipulated by any person who knew how to read, and did not labour under the disadvantage of working by a code which required time to be understood. Immediately upon the taking out of the patent, the directors of the North Western Railway sanctioned the laying down of wires between the Euston Square and Camden Town stations, and towards the end of July the telegraph was ready to work.Late in the evening of the 25th of that month, in a dingy little room near the booking-office at Euston square, by the light of a flaring dip-candle, which only illuminated the surrounding darkness, sat the inventor, with a beating pulse and a heart full of hope. In an equally small room at the Camden Town station, where the wires terminated, sat Mr. Cooke, his co-patentee, and among others, two witnesses well known to fame, Mr. Charles Fox and Mr. Stephenson. These gentlemen listened to the first word spelt by that trembling tongue of steel which will only cease to discourse with the extinction of man himself. Mr. Cooke in his turn touched the keys and returned the answer. “Never did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before,” said the Professor, “as when all alone in the still room I heard the needles click, and as I spelled the words I felt all the magnitude of the invention, now proved to be practical beyond cavil or dispute.” The telegraph thenceforward, as far as its mechanism was concerned, went on without a check, and the modifications of this instrument, which is still in use, have been made for the purpose of rendering it more economical in its construction and working, two wires at present being employed, and in some cases only one.

A frequently renewed and still unsettled controversy has arisen upon the point of who is to be considered the first contriver of the telegraph in the form which made it available for popular use. Two names alone are now put forward to dispute the claim with Wheatstone—Steinheil of Munich and Morse of New York.

From a communication of M. Arago to the French Academy of Sciences, it appears that the telegraph of Steinheil was in operation, for a distance of seven miles, on the 19th of July, 1837, the same month in which Wheatstone put his own contrivance to the test upon the North Western Railway. But besides that the patent of Wheatstone was taken out in the preceding June, and was itself founded upon previous and thoroughly successful experiments, there is another material circumstance which gives him a claim to priority over Steinheil, viz., that the latter published no description of his instrument until August, 1838, that he altered and improved it in the interval, and that the only accounts we have of his contrivance describe its amended and not its original form. It was, however, a very meritorious performance, and, in addition to its other excellences, Steinheil was the first who employed the earth to complete the circuit—a most important fact, which we shall explain hereafter. Still his telegraph was inferior in its mechanical arrangements to that of Wheatstone, and the inventor himself soon abandoned it in favour of a modification of the instrument of Morse.

Morse dates his claim to the invention of the telegraph from the year 1832, when the first idea of such an instrument, he tells us, struck him as he was returning home from Havre in the ship Sully. A fellow-passenger, Professor Jackson, it appears, was in the habit of amusing himself, in common with the rest of the passengers, with some accounts of the wonders of electricity; and when Morse later developed his contrivance, Professor Jackson not only claimed it as a plagiarism from his own conversation, but added that Morse was so ignorant as to ask, upon hearing the term Electro-Magnetism, “In what does that differ from ordinary Magnetism?” The telegraph was at best, on the part of both of them, a crude idea; and it was not till September, 1837, that Professor Morse was able to exhibit his still imperfect machinery in action. He ultimately succeeded, as we have before stated, in producing a telegraph of first-rate excellence; and, out of 15,000 miles of wire which had been erected by 1852 in the United States, 12,124 were worked on the system of Morse.

The question of priority is, in our opinion, after all, of no sort of importance, at least as regards the rival claims of Wheatstone and Steinheil. When the progress of science has prepared the way for a great discovery, two geniuses will occasionally take the step together, because each is able to take the step of a giant. It was thus that the Calculus was found out by both Newton and Leibnitz, and the place of Neptune in the heavens by both Adams and Leverrier. It was the same with the telegraph. The investigations of Wheatstone and Steinheil were entirely independent of each other, and it cannot lessen the merit of either that there was a second man in Europe who was equal to the task.

There are some who dispute Professor Wheatstone’s claim, by urging that, inasmuch as all the main features of the telegraph existed before he took out his patent, there was nothing left to invent. It is true that much had been done, but it is equally certain that there was much to do. When Wheatstone first directed his attention to electricity as a means of communicating thoughts to a distance, the telegraph was a useless and inoperative machine. He and his partner established as a working, paying fact, what had hitherto been little better than a philosophic toy. To those who now disparage the Professor’s labours we think it sufficient to reply by the admirable saying of the French savant, M. Biot, “Nothing is so easy as the discovery of yesterday; nothing so difficult as the discovery of to-day.”

Let us return, however, to the history of the telegraph in England, from which we have digressed. After the successful working of the mile-and-a-quarter line, the Directors of the London and Birmingham Railway proposed to lay it down to the latter town if the Birmingham and Liverpool Directors would continue it on their line; but they objected, and the telegraph received notice to quit the ground it already occupied. Of course, its sudden disappearance would have branded it as a failure in most men’s minds, and, in all probability, the telegraph would have been put back many years, had not Mr. Brunel, to his honour, in 1839, determined to adopt it on the Great Western line. It was accordingly carried at first as far as West Drayton, thirteen miles, and afterwards to Slough, a distance of eighteen miles. The wires were not at this early date suspended upon posts, but insulated and encased in an iron tube, which was placed beneath the ground.

The telegraph hitherto had been strictly confined to railway business, and in furtherance of this object Brunel proposed to continue it to Bristol as soon as the line was opened. Here, again, the folly and blindness of railway proprietors threw obstacles in the way, which led, however, to an unlooked-for application of its powers to public purposes. At a general meeting of the proprietors of the Great Western Railway in Bristol, a Mr. Hayward, of Manchester, got up and denounced the invention as a “new-fangled scheme,” and managed to pass a resolution repudiating the agreement entered into with the patentees. Thus within a few years we find the telegraph rejected by two of the most powerful railway companies, the persons above all others who ought to have welcomed it with acclamation.

To keep the wires on the ground, Mr. Cooke proposed to maintain it at his 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:—

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:—

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:—

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:—

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.

“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, 80,000l. 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 8,000l., 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]In all ordinary transactions, however, the needle instrument is preferable, because it transmits its messages much more quickly. The speed with which the attendants upon these instruments read off the signals made by the needles is really marvellous: they do not in some cases even wait to spell the words letter by letter, but jump at the sentence before it is concluded; and they have learned by practice, as Sir Francis Head says in “Stokers and Pokers,” to recognize immediately who is telegraphing to them, say at York, by the peculiar expression of the needles, the long drawn wires thus forming a kind of human antennÆ by which individual peculiarities of touch are projected to an infinite distance. To catalogue the kind of messages which pass through the room, either on their way from London or in course of distribution to it, would be to give a history of human affairs. Here, from the shores of this tight island, comes the morning news gathered by watchers, telescopes in hand, on remote headlands, of what ships have just hove in sight, or what craft have foundered or come ashore—to this room, swifter beyond comparison than the carrier-dove of old, the wire speeds the name of the winner of the Derby or the Oaks. How the four winds are blowing throughout the island; how stocks rise or fall every hour of the day in all the great towns and in the continental capitals; what corn is at Mark Lane, and what farmer Giles got a quarter of an hour since in a country town in Yorkshire, are equally known in the telegraph room. Intermixed with quotations of tallow and the price of Wall’s End coals, now and then comes a love-billet, which excites no more sympathy in the clerk than in the iron that conveys it; or a notice that the sudden dart of death has struck some distant friend, is transmitted and received as unconcernedly as an account of the fall in Russian stock. When business is slack the telegraphists sometimes amuse themselves by an interchange of badinage with their distant friends. Sir Francis Head informs us that an absolute quarrel once took place by telegraph, and the two irritated manipulators were obliged to be separated in consequence.In addition to this private message department there is, below stairs, an intelligence office, in which news published in the London morning papers is condensed and forwarded to the Exchanges of Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, &c.[37] A few years since the company opened subscription rooms in all the large towns of the north, in which intelligence of every kind was posted immediately after its arrival in London; but the craving for early intelligence was not sufficient to induce the people to incur the expense, and, with the exception of the room at Hull, the establishments have all been shut up.

On Friday evening especially this department is very busy condensing for the country papers the news which appears in that exciting column headed “By Electric Telegraph, London, 2 A.M.” Thus the telegraph rides express through the night for the broadsheets of the entire kingdom, and even steps across from Portpatrick to Donaghadee into the sister country, with its budget of latest intelligence, by which means the extremities of the two islands are kept as well up in the progress of important events as London itself. Upwards of 120 provincial papers each receive in this manner their column of parliamentary news of the night; and the Daily Mail, published in Glasgow, gets sometimes as much as three columns of the debates forwarded whilst the House is sitting. A superintendent and four clerks are expressly employed in this department; and early in the day, towards the end of the week, the office presents all the appearance of an editor’s room. At seven in the morning the clerks are to be seen deep in the Times and other daily papers, just hot from the press, making extracts, and condensing into short paragraphs all the most important events, which are immediately sent off to the country papers to form “second editions.” Neither does the work cease here; for no sooner is a second edition published in town, than its news, if of more than ordinary interest, is transmitted to the provinces. For instance: whilst we were in the company’s telegraph room a short time since, the following intelligence was being served out to Liverpool, York, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, and Hull:—

“Eastern War—Battle on the Danube—From Evening Edition of the ‘Morning Chronicle.’

“Vienna, Saturday, April 8th.

“The journal Fremden Blatt announces, under date of Bucharest, 4th April, that a great battle was being fought at Rassova, about midway between Hirsova and Silistria, in the Dobrudscha. The result was not known. Mustapha Pasha is at the head of 50,000 men.”