Beating Time by Cable.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1037, 15 January 1892, Page 11

Beating Time by Cable.

How he once ‘ beat time,’ or-, rather, apparent time, in a remarkable fashion, is told by Mr Ai’chibald Forbes in an article on his reminiscences of war corx-espondent life, in the Nineteenth Century. It is a story of a telegx-aph dispatch from the battle field. In the eax’ly morning of the 22nd of November, 1878, a Bx'itish division under General Sir Samuel Browne occupied the Afghan fortress of Ali Musjid, up in the ELhyber Pass. Mr Forbes rode back ten miles to Jumrood, where the field telegraph was, and sent the news to England in a short message beax-ing date 10 a.m. There is five hours difference in time between India and England, in favour of the latter ; afcdthe Daily News, containing this telegram dated 10 a.m., was selling in the streets of London at 9 a.m., one hour of apparent time before it was dispatched. Its anticipation of time, howevei’, did not end here.

Owing to the five hours difference between the clocks of London and New York, the message was in time for the regular editions of the New York papers that same morning. It was thence immediately wired across the American Continent, and, owing again to the difference in time between the Atlantic Coast and the Pacific Slope, the early rising citizen of San Francisco, purchasing his paper at 6 a.m., was able to read the announcement of an event which actually occurred over two. hours later, in apparent time, some thirteen thousand miles away on the other side of the globe. Puck, as Mr Forbes says, professed Himself able to put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, bub this telegram sped half round the globe in two hours less than no time at all.’