The post office and its story

by Edward Bennett

There would be no satisfaction in writing such letters from your club to the secretary of a company. To have the opportunity to be saucy to a member of his Majesty's Government is only given to some people when they make use of the Post Office.

Men point to the loss to the Post Office in working the telegraphs. “Is this not a proof of the inefficiency of the permanent official?” But certain things should be remembered before making such accusations. What are the chief causes of the loss? Parliament insisted upon sixpenny telegrams, and they are certainly not remunerative; no private company would touch them at that price, except perhaps to certain towns and districts where the business would pay its way. The Post Office telegraphs everywhere at that price. Parliament also insisted upon cheap Press telegrams, which are a loss to the Post Office, though a great gain to the public. And as a contributory cause to the loss must be mentioned the telephone itself, which has to a certain extent destroyed the most remunerative portion of telegraph work, the transmission of short messages. Nearly every village has its telegraph. Numbers of offices are kept open all night. The railway companies have an immense free service over the whole Post Office system. But the man whose telephone service has for the moment gone wrong forgets all this, and in his indignation he attacks the whole system.

The United States is practically the only country of any importance in which the telephone system is not owned and worked by the State. The General Manager of the Post Office Telephone Service, who paid an official visit to the United States in 1910, in answer to an inquiry as to whether the service in New York is as good as it is usually represented to be, stated frankly that “the service given in New York City, where the telephone problems are similar to those that confront us in London, is unquestionably superior to ours. But,” he added, “I believe that we are rapidly catching up, and I feel sure that at no distant date it will be commonly acknowledged that the service in London is equivalent to that of New York.”

As regards the trunk lines and long-distance business in the United States, there are often complaints of high charges and other inconveniences, but the telephone service is developed there much more extensively than in Great Britain. The Americans suffer more than we do from cyclones and storms and interruptions to their telephone system. Everything is on a magnificent scale, even the weather. My readers may remember the story of the Scot who was explaining to an American what severe winters they experienced in his native country. “Why, it is nothing at all to the cold we have in the States,” said the American. “I recollect one winter when a sheep jumping from a hillock to a field; became suddenly frozen on the way, and stuck in the air like a mass of ice.” “But,” said the solemn Scot, whose first consideration is always love of the naked fact, “the law of gravity would not allow that.” “I know that,” was the ready answer, “but the law of gravity was frozen too.” No wonder, with such possibilities, the American long-distance telephone service occasionally breaks down.

Technical terms are difficult to understand in this country, but America often helps us out of difficulties by her picturesque language. For instance, a “snooper in” is a person who listens to other people's conversations on the telephone. And “the trouble man” is an excellent name for the individual who investigates faults on a wire.

It is the long-distance calls which appeal most strongly to our sense of the marvellous. Owing to our insular position the extension of the range of telephonic speech has always been a difficult engineering problem, as the insertion of a length of submarine or underground cable in a telephone circuit has a “choking” effect, and materially limits the distance over which speech is possible. In order to minimise this difficulty, which affects Great Britain so adversely, a cable treated with loading coils was laid in 1909 between Abbot's Cliff, Dover, and Cape Grisnez on the French coast. It is the resistance capacity and induction of a circuit which decides whether a long-distance conversation will be satisfactory or not, and the insertion of “loading coils” in a cable artificially increases the induction, thus increasing the volume and improving the quality of speech received at the end of a circuit in such a cable.

There are sometimes difficulties in the maintenance of a cable in a busy waterway like the English Channel, as it is no uncommon occurrence for vessels to foul cables with their anchors, and sometimes even in lifting the anchor the cable is heaved to the surface.

Everybody asks the question, “How far can I speak on the telephone?” In this country at least that will ultimately depend on the way the difficulties of the submarine cable are surmounted. You can talk in England to Paris and Brussels and many provincial towns in France and Belgium. The new cable has enabled telephonic communication to be made between Paris and Glasgow: Manchester can speak to Paris, Nottingham to Lyons, and Ipswich to Bordeaux. The engineers of the Post Office talk of the possibility of a conversation between London and Astrachan.

The scene at a large telephone exchange is very curious and striking. The Daily Chronicle some time ago gave a very vivid description of what meets the eye and ear when you enter the room. “A low, confused murmur falls pleasantly on the ear, with a dim suggestiveness of activity in being. It is like the hubbub of a far-off multitude or an echo of Babel heard through the electrophone. It is the negation of noise, and yet it bespeaks energy and meaning. Around the room many girls are seated with their faces to the wall. On their heads a bright metal band is fastened, and against the hair of the brunettes it gleams like a barbaric ornament. With the intuition of womanhood these young ladies must be aware that this implement of their toil becomes them, for they carry it with a certain grace and coquetry. But they have no eyes for the intruder. All the time they are intent on something else, listening constantly to the voices of the unseen. All London is speaking to them—nay, all England. Though the voices are those of strangers, they respond readily and reply promptly to the words they hear. They are the intermediaries of communication, and they bring together millions who are miles apart. Heaven knows how much purposeless chatter they encourage, yet they also make possible the most momentous conversations, fraught with grave consequences to individuals and communities. Yet all the while they are calm and unmoved, speaking in a voice that is ever soft, gentle, and low—'an excellent thing in woman'—and they deftly handle coloured cards and push plugs into thousands of small holes in the framework before them. A few soft-footed superintendents walk up and down the room, but there is no sound to conflict with the murmurous harmony of subdued speech.”

There are as many jokes about the use of strong words on the telephone as there are about golf and bad language. The telephone is always a trial to the impatient person. “Is there a doddering idiot on this telephone?” shouted an irascible old gentleman down the transmitter. “Not at this end,” came the ready reply of the young lady at the exchange.