Mr Woodbarrow, only just beginning to realise fully the magnitude of the occasion and tingling with anticipation, promised to act with all possible speed, and going to his own room Sir John took up an agate pen and proceeded to write with special ink on prepared paper this encyclical despatch.
A library of books had been written on the subject of the telescribe within two years of its advent, but a general description may be outlined untechnically in a page or two. It was, for the moment, the last word of wireless telegraphy. It was efficient, it was speedy, it was cheap, and it transmitted in facsimile. It had passed the stage of being wondered at and had reached that of being used. It was universal. It was universal, that is, not in the sense that tongues are universally in heads, for instance, but, to search for a parallel, as universal as letter-boxes are now on doors, book-cases in houses, or cuffs around men's wrists. There were, in point of number, about three millions on the index book.
It was speedy because there was no call required, no intervention of a connecting office to wait for. That was purely automatic. Above the telescribe box in one's hall, study, or sitting-room, was a wooden panel studded with eight rows of small brass knobs, sixteen knobs in each row. These could be depressed or raised after the manner of an electric light stud, and a similar effect was produced: a connection was thereby made.
All the country—England and Wales—was mapped out into sixteen primary divisions, oblong districts of equal size. The top row of brass knobs corresponded with these divisions, and by pulling down any knob the operator was automatically put into communication with that part of the system, through the medium of the huge central station that reared its trellised form, like an Eiffel Tower, above the hill at Harrow, and the subsidiary stations which stood each in the middle of its division.
The second stage was reached by subdividing each primary division into sixteen oblong districts, and with these the second row of knobs corresponded. Six more times the subdividing process was repeated, and each subdivision had its corresponding row. The final division represented plots of ground so small that no house or cottage could escape location.
Pulling down the corresponding studs on the eight rows instantly and automatically established the connection. The written communication could then be transmitted, and in the twinkling of an eye it was traced on a sheet of paper in the receiving box. There was no probability of the spaces all being occupied with telescribes for some years to come. A calculation will show that there was provision for a good many thousand million boxes, but only three million were fixed and attuned at this period.
That, briefly, was the essential of the telescribe system. It was invaluable for most purposes, but not for all. Though speedier than the letter, it lacked its privacy when it reached its destination, and it also, in the eyes of many, lacked the sentimental touch, as from hand to hand, which a letter may convey. It carried no enclosures, of course, and, owing to the difficulties of ink and paper, printed matter could not be telescribed at all. It cost twice as much as a letter, but as this was spread in the proportion of three-quarters to the sender and one quarter to the receiver the additional cost was scarcely felt by either. Thus it came about that although the telescribe had diminished the volume of telegrams by ninety per cent., and had made it possible still to cope with a volume of ordinary postal correspondences which up to that time had threatened to swamp the department, it had actually superseded nothing.
At four o'clock Mr Woodbarrow called up Sir John and reported that the two great engines were running smoothly, and that for three minutes the entire system would be closed against any message except his. In other words, while the "in" circuit was open to three million boxes, the "out" circuit was closed against all except one. It was not an absolutely necessary precaution, for overlapping telescripts "stored latent" until the way was clear, but it was not an occasion on which to hesitate about taking every safeguard.
The momentous order was already written. Hampden opened the lid of a small flat box supported on the telescribe shelf by four vulcanite feet, put the paper carefully in, and closed the lid again. He had pulled down the eight rows of metal studs in anticipation of Woodbarrow's message, and there was only one more thing to do. A practical, unemotional man, and not unused, in an earlier decade, to controlling matters of national importance with energy and decision, he now stood with his hand above the fatal switch, not in any real doubt about his action, but with a kind of fascinated time-languor. A minute had already passed. To pull down the tiny lever and release it would not occupy a second. At what period of those three minutes should he do it? How long dare he leave it? He caught himself wondering whether on the last second—and with an angry exclamation at the folly he pressed the lever home.
There was no convulsion of nature; a little bell a foot away gave a single stroke, and that was all the indication that the President of the Unity League had passed the Rubicon and unmasked his battery.