TELEGRAPHING EXTRAORDINARY.
A contemporary supplies some interesting particulars as to the number of words transmitted by telegraph to all parts of the kingdom on the occasion of the Prime Minister’s recent visit to Edinburgh. On the evening of Mr Gladstone’s arrival, press messages containing over seventeen thousand words were handed in at the telegraph department of the General Post-office; but the actual number of words transmitted was over sixty-seven thousand, owing to the fact of the same report being sent to more than one newspaper. Mr Gladstone’s visit to the Forth Bridge works led to the transmission of twelve thousand words, and his movements on the following day to nineteen thousand. On the occasion of his first speech on Saturday evening (August 30) in the Corn Exchange, sixty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-one words were handed in, and one hundred and thirty-eight thousand four hundred and forty-five transmitted. The number would have been greater had not Sunday intervened, allowing of the transmission of many messages by train. On Monday evening (September 1) the press messages reached the enormous number of one hundred and seventeen thousand words, causing the transmission of about four hundred and twenty-seven thousand words, the largest number ever transmitted on any one night from Edinburgh. After the Waverley Market speech of Tuesday night (September 2), one hundred and seventy-two thousand eight hundred and twenty-one words were transmitted.
On Monday evening, when the strain was heaviest, one hundred and thirty operators were at work, and in spite of the constant stream of messages the department kept abreast of the reporters. As many as four towns in the same telegraphic circuit were enabled to read almost the same message at the same time. The message having been ‘punched’ on long slips of prepared paper, the plan was adopted, instead of running it entirely through one machine, of taking the slip out of the first machine after it was three yards clear, and running it into a second and a third.