TELEGRAM PRINTING

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 125, 19 February 1921, Page 6

TELEGRAM PRINTING

A MODERN ELECTRICAL MARVEL NEW MACHINES FOR DOMINION Telegram printing is not exactly a new discovery, but the application of electrical machines which will enable a message to be typewritten at one end and come cut printed at the other is new to this country, although in use on every main circuit in England, France, and America. Some machines of this description are due to arrive here by the first direct steamer—probably next week. Air. E. A. Shrimpton, Chief Telegraph Engineer, stated yesterday that the consignment consisted of two multiplex machines, and one start-stop combination, which would enable communications by printed telegram to 100 established almost at once, either between AVellington and Christchurch or AVellington and Auckland. To illustrate the wonders of this invention, Air. Shrimpton said that one such machine could be established in Tun Dominion office and another in the Christchurch "Press” office, and, using one wire, messages could be sent along and printed n(. the same time by two reporters typing their “copy” at either end on a keyboard similar to that of the typewriter. That was to say, a reporter might be sending a Parliamentaryreport over the wire from AVellington at the same time as the results of a race meeting were coming in from the other end. The act of pressing the letter keys at one. end printed the message at the other, somewhat as the tape machines recording the fluctuations on the Stock Exchange worked in New York and Chicago.

Air. Slirirapton. has gone thoroughly into the technical structure of the machine, and two men have already- been deputed by him to specialise in a knowledge of it. The mechanism is really comparatively simple to a telegraph engineer. The machine consists of fine levers which control a corresponding set at the other end of the wire. Each of these levers acts upon a certain combination when a certain letter control is pressed down on the keyboard. These combinations can be likened to those of a. Yale lock, which can only be turned by one. key, for until the light letter is pressed the combination which exposes it to the tape at the other end will not act. The letter does not do the printing, hut the tope in passing is knocked against the letter or figure that is exposed, and so takes tho impression. "As a matter of fact,” said Air. Shrimpton, "we are twenty years behind the times in this matter. The Bordeaux printing mt'.chine has been known for twenty’ years. It was. John Gell, formerly of'AVellington, who invented the combinations that were to act by electrical impulse, but under his system the operator had to learn the combination which form’d the letter. It remained for Afurray, another Near Zealander, to adapt a simple typewriter keyboard to represent the various combinations necessary to cover the alphabet and numerals.”