HUNDRED YEARS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 201, 25 August 1937, Page 14

HUNDRED YEARS.

TELEGRAPH CENTENARY. FIRST SIGNALS FROM EUSTON. LONDON. The electric telegraph has celebrated its centenary. It was on the evening of July 25-j 1837, that Professor Wheatstone sat in a small room near the booking office at Easton Square—the terminal station of what was then known as the London and Birmingham Railway an d sent signals over a wire to his partner, Cooke, at Camden Town station, a mile away. The experiment was so successful that wUhin less than a year it was adopted by the Great Western Railway at Paddmgton, and it was on this line that it first gained popular fame when used Slou«h WanlS t0 arrest a mur <lerer at Actually the telegraph grew out of a 0 serle f inventions over a period of wlth%£ »/ t3 - de . vel °P me nt» «de by side with the beginning of railways, was a natural result of the need for a sTraal Sfnr a? f a K atUß ' but ifc noting before it began to be regularly used for Ur ff° t s^ lal and business messages. A For ™ the telegraph was operated by private companies, until it WO ta A t n 35 Y- the in 6 (H)0 oftn m at tlm ° not than srsnw.* as.-™ sr/.ss- 5 t "*■ a ° almost everv vill» M ™ * L Bervlce enormous impetm f"? gav ® an bv IMB j f° the business, and °< Enter the Telephone. That, however, was the neak TJ,„ versations. Ka £ ' 48ta ? Ce con " years took an £ la3t ment, and slowly but swely thTtT go., beg,. t „ Jr b th. *,«. to its ''..I* 8 Jkrmk to little mi. HmTSw'S tie number sent in 1899 evet .JS"? a ° Cs * ential service, howffi offit °, or three years ago the ~ Office made an elaborate census of the uses and uepr« «f +1, i . ~f nsus ot w flfi f„„„j ®of the telegram. It that two messages out of was of *T 6 ° n I ? llsineM ' the third as of a social or private nature. f>,a O D me , CUriOUB resu,ts emerged from The Perishable provS trades—fish, meat and fruit—were th£ Mr™ ° f f te l egranM ' accounting .r cent of the total traffic Bookmakers and betting came next, with about G per cent, . ,

On the Social Side. ' i«™ u h l Bide the telegram ! has long had a bad name as a convener of bad news, but the statistics showed that it. did not live up-or down—to its reputation. Twice as many messages of congratulation are sent in comparison with those carrying bad tidings or condolences— and the Post Office prefers the good to the bad, for the simple but sufficient reason that the congratulatory telegrams run to length, while the condolences are brief to a point of baldness. Meantime, the teleprinter and other developments have revolutionised the original invention of a century ago. Wheatstone, Ronalds, Morse and other pioneers of telegraphy would be astonished at the changes in mechanism and speed of the instruments—in their most imaginative moments they can never have thought it would be possible to telegraph pictures or whole pages of a book or newspaper. These are recent advances, which have opened out a new field in which the telephone cannot compete, and so long as newspapers exist and events happen on the other side of the world there will be a demand for theee services.