The chief value of Mr. Varley’s report, indeed was in giving a practical illustration of the immense value of a scientific electrical training.
The electrician now came to be an important factor in American telegraphic work.
To this report also may be fairly traced the beginning of a series of improvements and inventions which have made famous the American name.
By removing the obstructions to the electric current and reducing resistances in wires, magnets and batteries to a minimum, the great possibilities of the wires were discovered in accomplishments which were never dreamed of.
The duplex and quadruplex are great advances on the old condition, and would have been inoperative had they continued.
The visit of Mr. Varley had another result—the consolidation of so many important organizations under a single administration had unavoidably brought together more or less discordant elements; each company had its own peculiar methods, ideas of management, limitations of authority, rules of order, etc., as well as of tariffs and compensation. It was of the utmost importance that, in order to unity of management, distinct and clearly defined ideas of duty should be made to permeate the entire working force so as to make conflict impossible, and work quick, certain, harmonious.
It was scarcely less desirable also, now that the value of electric knowledge had been demonstrated, that by some means its attainment might be rendered easy and general, and a stimulus given to its acquisition. Under these circumstances Mr. Orton established the journal of the telegraph, and its usefulness soon became apparent; its clippings from the scientific journals of European and Home papers on electric art soon came to be the theme of almost universal interest.
A copy of this paper was mailed to every office of the Company as soon as issued. It became not only the vehicle for executive orders for the announcement of new offices and of changes in the tariff, but imperceptibly, yet markedly, the means of infusing an “esprit de corps” and sense of brotherhood throughout the telegraph service.
At the solicitation of Mr. Orton, Mr. James D. Reid accepted the management of the journal of the telegraph, by whom it was admirably conducted for a number of years, with the praiseworthy results previously noted.
In view of the recent boundary arbitration between the United States and Great Britain, it may be interesting to recall the circumstances which led the American Government to become interested in Alaska as a connecting link in a telegraph project, to connect Europe and America by land wires.