IMPROVEMENTS IN TELEGRAPHY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 34

IMPROVEMENTS IN TELEGRAPHY.

F. Hachmann, the Milwaukee inventor, has exhibited at the office of the Western Electrical Company on South Jefferson street, Chicago, an electrical typewriter, which he claims will revolutionise telegraphy. In appearance it suggests an ordinary typewriting machine, except being simpler in construction. The essential parts of the machine are a cylinder, speed regulator, six gear wheels, and a sounder similar to the sounder of the Morse instrument. By pressing any letter on tho keyboard a letter is written not only iinon th( paper in tho machine, but upon a sheet of paper under a similar machine at the other end of the wire, at any distance, as, for instance, Chicago to San Francisco. The inventor claims that a much greater speed in writing can be obtained on this machine than on an ordinary typewriter, for the reason that on the new machine the depression of the keys can be made practically simi^taneously, and there will not be, as in the operation of an ordinary typewriter, that constantly aggregating loss of time rendered imavoidable by ths necessity of allowing time for the keys to I spring upward to the normal level. It 19 claimed the result of this saving of time gives a good operator power to write 180 words a j minute. "By the present telegraph system i tho electric- circuit has to be broken three I times, on average, during the sending of every ' letter," said Hachmann. "In using the now , machine the circuit has to be broken only once • in .writing each letter. By the tape machine j now used in stock quotations only 20 to 30 words can be sent a minute, and by the ordinary telegraph system not more than 4-0 to 60 words a minute. The machine will not only . send over the wire three times 60 words a I minute, but it will print them at both ends of the wire in good, round, readable type." Hachmann is at work on a scheme to attach his new typewriter to linotype machines, so correspondents may not only send, but put in type, their matter.

— Birdß learn their songs when very young, and it is thought that " bird melodies " are j handed down from generation to generation and perpetuated through the faculty of imitation. ( .— The finest furs in all Rusaja are laid aside as tribute, and become the property of the crown. So highly are these furß es- . teemed that no person below a certain rank is allowed to wear them. — Berlin is to have, an asylum for children, who are to be reared according to a modified system of vegetarianism. Their diet will ex- < elude all food derived from dead animals, ; but they will be permitted to eat the proj ducts of living creature 3, such as butter, milk, I cheese, eggs, honey, etc.