The single needle instrument worked by voltaic electricity.
The Morse recording and sounding instrument.
The double needle instrument.
Wheatstone’s magneto dial instrument.
Also day and night signalling with the approved visual apparatus.
Each man is required to read a specified number of words per minute, and to send correctly by each instrument, before he passes on to the next.
The European Morse alphabet is used with all the instruments, except with the double needle instrument, which has a special alphabet.
The men are taught how to make up and repair the voltaic batteries and instruments, and to put up conducting wires over ground, and to lay them underground, and also to test roughly for the position of faults. Their previous education does not generally admit of their acquiring a knowledge of the theory of electricity, or of performing the more delicate tests required in telegraphy.
The men who enter the Telegraph School are also instructed in the practical manipulation of Grove’s voltaic batteries, Wheatstone’s magnetic exploder, and the dynamo-electric machine, in the use of frictional electricity, in making the electrical fuzes, and in connecting and arranging the wires necessary for firing mines by electricity.
(b.) Chemical Laboratory Course.—Fifteen days are allowed for this course.