TELEGRAPH CONSTRUCTION.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 174, 21 July 1909, Page 8

TELEGRAPH CONSTRUCTION.

REMINISCENCES OF MR J. X

LOGAN

[from our correspondent.]

WELLINGTON, Monday. There is no member of the Civil Service who is better known and mor* generally popular than Mr J. K. Logan, Superintendent, of Electric Telegraphs. He has been connected with telegraphy pretty well all his working life, and has done splendid service for the Dominion, especially in the South Island, since his arrival at Dunedin in 1864. *.Entertained on Saturday night by. his" fellow officers in honour of his having been: created a member of the .-'lmperial,-: Service Order, Mr Logan got■& reception of -which any man might'well be proud. It was tough work," that of telegraph construction in the olden days, and the guest of the evening ..caused great laughter when he got into a reminiscent mood. Ho told the story of his arrival at Dunedin in 1864. He had experience in telegraph works in (Glasgow, and reading in the papers that telegraph wires were being erected between Dunedin and Invercargill, promptly applied for a "job." H« was told there was no vacancy as an operator, and suggested that he be given a job "on the line." The reply was "Well, it's very hard work." Nowadays, the new chum in search of employment is apt to. want to pick and choose his job, and to turn up his nose at the idea of going to rough it up country. But the young Scot of those days was made of different stuff, and he took the rough, not being able to get the smooth, and started "right in" as the Yankees say, in a lineman's camp, which' included, twenty-six exdiggers and sailors. What followed I will let Mr Logan tell in his own words:—

He learned quite a lot. (Laughter). Amongst other things he learned to play poker, euchre, to.smoke "Barrett's twist," and acquired a knowledge, of an energetic and expressive vocabulary, which branch of knowledge, his friends knew, he never used (laughter) unless in an emer- ; gency. (Renewed laughter). He ■ier\ collected the 25th of May, 1865, when telegraphic communication was opened, with Christchurch and Invercargill. He had helped to put up the pole and the wire leading into the office, and | then he was paid off. However, "he applied for a place and found, the only one available was a subordinate j place at 30s per week. He did not haggle, but stepped right in, and j witmn four months he was offered : and accepted a position as telegraph ; inspector to erect a telegraph line for the Provincial Government from Milton to Queenstown. He did the work, and trained his own linemen' and j operators. The telegraphist at Lawrence was Mrs McKean, the first lady operator in New Zealand. ' The progress of telegraphic extension was comparatively slow until 1878, when the telephone era commenced. The first pair of telephones, made from drawings in- the Scientific American, were tried in Wellington and proved a success. The second, pair were brought into use by Cargill and Anderson in February, 1878, from Itoxburgh to their station, six miles away. Probably the first telephone office in the, world used for the transmission of public telegrams was established at the.beginning of 1879 at Portobello. '■ That was the start, and now the proportion of telegraph offices to telephone offices was as 295 to 1468, a total of 1763 offices. The next stage was the opening of telephone exchanges with primitive switch-boards and earth circuits. Time had rolled on, and now the latest development was the establishment at Invercargill and Timaru of •what some telephone engineers con- ; sidered the final word, the "single battery." There was no such luck as finality in telephones- "Automatic" was in the air, and the "Hello girls," as our American cousins called them, | were threatened. However, there was , no immediate danger of that in New j Zealand. From their remote position | on the map of the world New Zealand , must consider prudence and caution in the matter of experiments. One of the best speeches of the evening was that delivered by the Acting-Postmaster-General, Dr Findlay, who made a big point of the fact that so many self-made men occupied ; very high positions in the Civil Ser- i vice. Taking the Supreme Court Bench it included one who was once a , printer, another who was a lowly . "bank clerk, the Chief Justice was once a humble schoolmaster, while another j had heen a clerk in a mercantile office. Thirty years aeo he was left ; without rather or mother, with no ; monetary advantages, bu.t utilising : the educational facilities which exists J ed in New Zealand he was able to rise j to the university, and to such position as he now held.

At a meeting of the Otago Educa- { tion Board this morning (says a Dun- ! edin telegram) the Educational Insti- j tute asked the Board to allow at least : one representative of the Institute to be present at all inquiries held by the Board, which may affect the future status of any teacher in the Board's Service. The request was declined.