In Professor Bonelli's system the dispatch is set up in printing-type, and placed on a little carriage, which is made to pass beneath a comb with five teeth, which are in communication with five aërial wires of the line, at the extremity of which these same wires are joined to the five teeth of a second comb, under which passes a chemically prepared paper, carried along on a little carriage similar to the one at the other end on which the printing-type is placed. If under this arrangement the electric circuit of a battery composed of a sufficient number of elements, and distributed in a certain order, be completed, then, at the same time that the first comb is passing over the printing-type at the one end, the second comb at the other end will trace the dispatch on the prepared paper in beautiful Roman letters, and with so great a rapidity that it may be expected that five hundred messages of twenty words each will be transmitted hourly.
On Wednesday, April 19th, the day of Mr. Lincoln's funeral, eighty-five thousand words of reports were transmitted between Washington and New York, between the hours of 7, p. m., and 1, a. m., being at the rate of over fourteen thousand words per hour. Nine wires were employed for the purpose. Thirteen thousand six hundred words were transmitted by the House printing instruments on a single wire after half past seven o'clock.
A telegraphic message was recently received in London from India in eight hours and a half. This message was forwarded by the Indo-European Telegraph Company, viâ Kurrachee and the Persian Gulf, crossing one half of Asia and the whole of Europe.
During the late Rebellion in this country the telegraph was extensively employed both by the Government and the Insurgents. In the course of the past year, there have been in the service of the Government thirty field-trains, distributed as follows:—In the Army of the Potomac, five; in the Department of the Cumberland, five; in the Department of the Gulf, three; in the Department of North Carolina and Virginia, three; in the Department of the South, two; in the Department of the Tennessee, six; in the Department of the Ohio, two; at the Signal Camp of Instruction, Georgetown, D. C., three; at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, one. Of these trains, some were equipped with five, and others with ten miles of insulated wire. There were carried in the trains lances for setting up the wire, when necessary,—reels, portable by hand, carrying wire made purposely flexible for this particular use,—and various minor appliances, which experience has proved useful. A military organization was directed for each train.
In duty of this kind, the construction of the trains, the equipment to be carried by them, and the military organization to be provided for their use, to enable them to be most rapidly and anywhere brought into action, are the subjects for study: the particular instrument to be equipped is a secondary consideration. The soldiers drilled to the duty of construction acquire in a short time a remarkable skill in the rapid extension of these lines. As was anticipated, they have proved valuable auxiliaries to the services of the corps, and have sometimes rendered them available when they would have been otherwise useless. The greatest distance at which the instruments are reported to have worked is twenty miles. The average distances at which they are used are from five to eight miles. The average speed of the most rapid construction is reported to be at the rate of a slow walk.
At the first Battle of Fredericksburg field-trains were for the first time in the history of the war used on the battle-field, under the fire of the enemy's batteries. The movements to be made on the day of that battle were of the first magnitude. The movements of the retreat were perilous to the whole army. The trains in use contributed something to the success of those movements.
Many incidents are recorded of operators accompanying raiding parties into the enemy's territory and tapping the telegraph-lines, sometimes obtaining valuable information. One is related by the "Selma Rebel." The operator at that place was called to his instrument by some one up the Tennessee and Alabama Road, who desired information as to the number of the forces and supplies at Coosa Bridge. After getting all the information he could, regarding the location and strength of the Rebel forces, he informed the Selma operator that he was attached to the expedition under General Wilson, and that, at that particular time, he was stationed with his instruments up a tree near Monticello, in the hardest rain he ever saw! Permission being given, he sent a dispatch to a young lady in Mobile, and another to a telegraph-operator in the Rebel lines, telling him he loved him as much as before the war. After some other conversation, the Yankee operator clambered down from the tree, mounted his horse, and rode away.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] The Chinese Government has been informed by the Russian Ambassador that the Russian portion of this line to Pekin will be completed by the first of January, 1868.