MESSENGER BOY VERSUS ELECTRICITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXIII, Issue 8689, 15 October 1913, Page 6

MESSENGER BOY VERSUS ELECTRICITY.

So swiftly does a message ,now run round the earth that, if the lines were kept'clear, it would'be almost quicker, in some business parts of London arid New York, to telegraph to a friend' a few streets away by means of the "two operators sitting in the cable room in the Philippine Islands than to senoV-a hoy in a cab with the message. For example, there is a cable station belonging'to the American Company \at the Rayal Exchange, London, opposite to the Bank..of. England, while . the English .Company has a branch station a little distance away at Mincing Lane. ,Let us send two messages from qna office to the other; one shall be a cable message round the world, from the Koyai Exchange to Mincing Lane; the other shall be a written message sent by a messenger boy in a taxi-cab. We call a$ 12 o'clock, mid-day, and hand the cable message to the operator in the dim little room in the Royal Exchange. We are fortunate in finding that the line is clear, so that the cable can be' Sent straight away. This gives us an advantage over the messenger boy, for, after he has managed to hail'a-taxi at last, the cab has become blocked on its way to him by the thick, slow traffic between the Exchange and the Bank. The operator gives a few quick taps—some short and some long—with the sending key of his telegraph instrument. These taps represent the various letters of . our message in what is known as the Morse system of telegraph signals. At each *ap the electric current flowing- along a copper, wire is affected. : These short and long impulses of electricity set out on their voyage round the earth in less than a second after the operator strikes the key. They flow along the wire from the instrument into another wire that runs through the streets of London out into the open country to the west of the great ,city. The wire is carried on telegraph, poles over the fields, woods, towns, and cities of the south of England, to the pleasant watering-place of Weston-super-Mare. It has taken lees than a second to cover the 140 miles from London, and our rival, the messenger boy, is still waiting on the I kerb by the Royal _ Exchange for the taxi to come to him.