TELEGRAPHING TWELVE HUNDRED WORDS PER MINUTE
Some remarkable advances were made in telegraphy also. During the war and since, messages have been sent direct from Washington to all parts of the world. In the telegraph room operators are connected by wire with the different radio stations along the coast and they can control the radio transmitters, sending their messages without any repeating at the radio stations. Long messages are copied off on a machine something like a type-writer, which, however, does not make type impressions, but cuts perforations in a long sheet of paper. The paper is then run through a transmitter at a high speed and the message is sent out at a rate of as much as twelve hundred words a minute. At the receiving-station, the message is received photographically on a strip of paper. The receiving-instrument has a fine quartz thread in it, which carries a tiny mirror. A beam of light is reflected from the mirror upon the strip of sensitized paper. The radio waves twist the quartz thread ever so slightly, which makes the beam of light play back and forth, but of course the motion is greatly magnified. In this way a perfect record is made of the message in dots and dashes, which are translated into the corresponding letters of the alphabet.