IMPROVED TELEGRAPHY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LII, Issue 5807, 6 October 1879, Page 3

IMPROVED TELEGRAPHY.

It would, says the Exhibition correspondent of the Melbourne Argus, and there are many in New Zealand who must heartily coincide with him, be a great boon to the newspaper pres*, and a saying of much valuable time, if automatic transmitters were employed here in the same way as they are now constantly used in the United Kingdom. According to the statement of an officer of high standing in the London office, it would be quite impossible to forward all the daily press despatches for Ireland without the automatic system. Messages can be tele* graphed in England at the rate of 200 words a minute, or somewhat faster than ordinsry Parliamentary debaters speak; and the average rate of transmission between London and Dublin, Cork, and Belfast is 130 words a minute. No practical ■ difficulty, I am informed, stands in the way of the adoption of the automatic system in Australia. In the reporting of public speeches delivered at country towns it would be of immense value, and enable the newspapers to get their despatches through in at least one-third of the time they now take. It is very reasonably calculated that a rate of 90 words coild bo attained at the commencement. In automatic telegraphy the operator, instead of handling the key, punches the dots and strokes of the Morse code on a prepared slip of paper. The slip is then fed into a selfacting transmitting machine, which reproduces at the other end of the circuit all the marks made on the paper. By the division of a report between three or four operators the manuscript could be very rapidly copied on slips, and at the other end the tape could be similarly divided between three or four operators, and translated into long-hand writing- In using the automatic instrument, for which a double current is required, there is a tendency on the part of the wire in use to set up what is called “ static induction ” on the other wires on the same series of poles, the effect of which is to cause confusion 5 but the evil can bo easily Srevented by the employment of the conenser and the rheostat. Had the automatic system been in use last Wednesday the long press reports would have passed through in one-third of the time they actually took, and the advantage of modernising our methods of telegraphing, and giving our operators the same favourable opportunities as are to be obtained at Home, must be evident when we consider how often the same thing occurs as occurred ou the opening day at the Exhibition, namely, the breaking down of one wire but of two, which throws the whole of the heavy work upon a single line. From some cause or other there has been a great want of enterprise on the part of colonial telegraph authorities, ' For the higher kinds of work now in vogue in England and the United States, first-class operators would be required. Perhaps the dread of introducing instruments which inferior operators would find beyond them has, to some extent induced our rather languid departments to be content with the easy Simplicity of the common transmitter.