WRITING BY WIRE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XIII, 28 March 1896, Page 349

WRITING BY WIRE.

remarkable achievements of gray’s telautograph. Seven years have lieen spent in perfecting the telautograph so that it would transmit and receive messages written by the sender and bearing his signature. The method of transmitting telautograms is quite simple. The average speed of a writer is thirty wor Is a minute but many write faster than this. The telautograph can easily send forty-five words a minute. Probably the most difficult test of the efficiency of the telautograph for long distance service was conducted recently by the Chicago Times-Herald between Cleveland and Chicago, a distance of 431 miles. The writer sat down at the transmitter and found a self-feeding pencil case waiting for him. The lead used is like that one finds in an ordinary pencil, ami is preferred to ink because it is cleaner. The transmitter is a neat little machine, but is as full of small delicate wheels as a watch. The pencil is attached to two thin rolls of

steel which meet at an angle of ninety degrees. The contrivance is somewhat like the pantograph. Taking the pencil the statesman wrote on a strip of paper four inches wide, which was drawn up from a feeder below and stretched tight along the writing pad. As he began to write the upward and downward strokes, the curves, the punctuation marks and the flourishes acted on the two steel rods. At the end of each rod a piece of thin cord was attached, giving it the appearance of a violin bow. The cord was fastened around the drum, which regulated the interrupter wheel below. The movements of the pencil were thus chronicled and the electrical impulse was sent along the wires running to Chicago. Even when the pencil was drawn back to dot an ‘ i ’ or cross a ‘ t ’ the movement was transmitted and repeated by the receiving machine at the other end of the wire, the bow making a pleasant murmur as it rubbed against the drum. When the writer got to the end of a line he had simply to turn a crank with his left hand and the paper shot upward and onward about an inch.

At the Chicago end the receiver bore out the pantograph idea more plainly. Two rods similar to those on the transmitter repeated the movements of the pencil in Cleveland, the mechanism being identical. The receiver. however, writes the message in ink, the pen being a hollow glass tube with a fine point. The pen occupies the same position at the angle of the shaft as the pencil, and moves rapidly across the paper. A small rubber tube—attached to the glass pen—carries the ink from a well at the side of the machine. Line sketches were also reproduced, the pen zigzagging from side to side until the pictures were completed. The paper on the receiver was moved automatically when the pen reached the end of a line. The telautograph is the latest invention of Professor Elisha Gray. It was first exhibited experimentally in IS9O, but the instrument did not give satisfaction, and a corps of experts was set to work to perfect and develop the invention.