Curiosities of Civilization

by Andrew Wynter

The telegraph, even up to this period, was very little known to the great mass of the public, and might have continued for some time longer in obscurity but for its remarkable agency in causing the arrest of the quaker Tawell. This event, which took place on the afternoon of Friday, January 3rd, 1845, placed it before the world as a prominent instrument in a terrible drama, and at once drew universal attention to its capabilities.

It must not be imagined, however, that Mr. Wheatstone’s was the only patent taken out for a telegraph in the year 1837. A number of inquiring minds were simultaneously with the Professor wandering in the tangled wood of doubt, and when he burst his way through, others speedily emerged at different points, one after another. Consequently, the year 1837 was distinguished by a complete crop of telegraphs, any one of which would perhaps have held its ground had it stood alone, but not one of them was practically equal to the first, and they have all long since departed to the tomb, already stored with the abortive results of so many merely ingenious minds.

The rapidity with which the needle instrument transmits messages, the small amount of electricity required to work it, and the simplicity of its construction, are its chief recommendations. Upwards of 200 letters can be forwarded by it within the minute. Its great drawback—a drawback that will appear greater every year—is that it can only be worked by a system of signs, which requires some practice to understand. As long as the public is content to send its messages open to the light of day, this plan will hold its ground, as a practised manipulator can indicate the letters as fast as it is possible to read, much less transcribe them, at the other end of the wire; but immediately that the public come to demand secrecy—to put a seal as of old on its letters—this telegraph will, we predict, fall into public disuse; and the revolving dial telegraph, invented by Mr. Wheatstone, in 1840, or the recording telegraph of Bain or Morse, or, more likely still, the American printing telegraph of House, will come into play.

This latter instrument appears to contain within itself capabilities of very high excellence; for instance, it requires no one to interpret, and then to re-write its messages—this it does itself. In fact it extends the compositor’s fingers as far as the wire can be stretched. Messages are thus printed at the rate of fifty letters a minute, say at five hundred miles distance, in common Roman characters, on long slips of paper similar to those used on the recording instrument. Any description of its complicated mechanism would be utterly unintelligible to general readers. “While the arrangements of the telegraph of Morse,” said Mr. Justice Woodbury, of America, in giving judgment in a patent case, “can be readily understood by most mechanics and men of science, it requires days, if not weeks with some, thoroughly to comprehend all the parts and movements of the telegraph of House.” His system is in use for thousands of miles of the American lines. Bakewell’s copying telegraph is naturally suggested by the telegraph of House, from the fact that it reproduces its messages, although in a different manner. The sender of the message may be said to write with a pen long enough to stretch to the most distant correspondent; that is, he not only forwards instantaneously the substance of a message, but it is conveyed in his own handwriting. The principle is similar to that of Davy’s chemical recording telegraph. The person sending the message writes it on a piece of tin foil with a pen dipped in varnish or any other non-conducting substance; this message is then placed round a metal cylinder, which is made to revolve at a certain regulated pace. In contact with this cylinder is a blunt steel point, which, by the action of a screw, makes a spiral line from the top to the bottom of the cylinder, thus touching every portion of the written message enveloping it. In connection with the steel point is the conducting wire, and at the end of the wire is a similar steel point working spirally upon a like cylinder. It will be at once seen that the current will always be transmitted, except at those portions of the tin foil which are covered with the non-conducting varnish, and which, therefore, cut off the flow of electricity, and the handwriting will appear at the other end of the telegraphic wire upon a piece of chemically-prepared paper rolled upon its cylinder, and moving synchronously with it. The transmitted letter appears to be written in white upon a dark ground, the white parts, of course, indicating where the current has been broken, and where, consequently, no decomposition of the chemical paper has taken place.

To return, however, to our subject after this little digression. At the same time that the first working telegraph was being simplified and improved, the system was gradually spreading, and, by the end of the year 1845, lines exceeding 500 miles in extent were in operation in England, working Messrs. Wheatstone and Cook’s patents. In the following year, capital, as represented by the powerful Electric Telegraph Company, commenced its operations, and an immediate and rapid development of the new method of carrying intelligence was the result.

“A period of eight years has elapsed,” as they say in a certain class of drama, and let us now look upon the condition of electric-telegraphy in England. We left it exerting its influence in a disjointed manner over a few railways, and striking out its wires here and there at random, without governing head or organization; and how do we find it?

Jammed in between lofty houses, at the bottom of a narrow court in Lothbury, we see before us a stuccoed wall, ornamented with an electric illuminated clock. Who would think that behind this narrow forehead lay the great brain,—if we may so term it,—of the nervous system of Britain, or that beneath the narrow pavement of the alley lies its spinal chord, composed of hundreds of fibres, which transmit intelligence as unperceived as does the medulla oblongata beneath the skin? Emerging from this narrow channel, the “efferent” wires branch off beneath the different footways, ramify in certain plexuses within the great centre of intelligence itself, and then shoot out along the different lines of railway until the shores of the island would seem to interpose a limit to their further progress. Not so, however:—beneath the seas, under the heaving waves covered with stately navies, they take their darksome way, until, with the burden of their moving fire, they emerge once more upon the foreign strand, and commence afresh their career over the wide expanse of the Continent.

And now, like a curious physiologist, let us examine the various parts of this ingeniously-constructed sensorium, and endeavour to show our readers how in this high chamber, fashioned by human hands, thoughts circulate, and ideas come and go. The door of the “Central Telegraph Station” leads immediately into the Central Hall, an oblong space, open quite up to the roof, which presents an appearance something like the Coal Exchange or the Geological Museum, two tiers of galleries being suspended from the bare walls, and affording communication to the different parts of the building. If we ascend the first gallery, and lean over the balustrade, we shall get a very clear bird’s-eye view of the method in which messages are received and transmitted. Here, man, like the watchful spider, sits centered within his radiating web, and “lives along the line.” Beneath us runs a sweep of counter forming three sides of a quadrangle, divided into compartments of about a square yard by green curtains. A desk and printed forms, to be filled up, are placed in each of these isolated cells, towards which we see individuals immediately make, and then bury themselves, being for the time profoundly intent upon the printed form.

We all know the jocose excuse of the correspondent for having written a long letter—that he had not time to make it shorter. And truly it requires some art to be laconic enough to satisfy the pocket in this establishment. Let us watch, for instance, yonder youth: he seems to have filled his sheet very close—now he gives it in to the receiving-clerk, and something evidently is wrong, for he looks perplexed—it is some hitch about the charge, for his attention is directed to the scale of prices printed at the head of the paper.

“Messages (not exceeding twenty words) can be sent between all the principal towns in Great Britain at a charge of 1s. within a circuit of 50 miles, of 2s. 6d. within a circuit of 100 miles (geographical distance), and of 5s. beyond a circuit of 100 miles, with an additional sum of 6d. porterage within half a mile of the station.”