Recent Improvements in Telegraphy.
The chief patents controlled by the
newly organized Postal Telegraph
Company are those known as the Leggo
rapid automatic system, patented this
spring by W. A. Leggo, an Englishman,
who has been in business in this city for
some years; the Leggo fac-simile
system; the Cray harmonic multiple system
and the patent compound steel copper-coated
wire, such as is now used by the
Rapid Telegraph Company. These four
patents are what the new company
relies upon to make telegraphy so cheap
that it will cost but little more to send
a telegraphic dispatch than to send a
written message through the mails.
A reporter of the Evening Post found
Mr. Leggo at his workshop this morning,
and obtained from him and from
Mr. Matthew Taylor, his partner, a
brief account of all those patents.
Taking the automatic system first,
the reporter was shown a slowly
revolving wheel or drum with a diameter
of perhaps three feet and a face, or
periphery of the wheel, about a foot
and a half wide and covered with
brightly polished zinc. Suspended
above this drum and almost in contact
with its gleaming surface was a
complicated sort of pen, which came in
contact with the zinc face of the wheel
whenever a current of electricity was
passed through the two magnets to
which it was attached. When the big
wheel turned round the so-called pen
moved slowly on a threaded rod across
the face of the wheel from left to right;
one complete turn of the drum was
sufficient to move the pen half an inch
across its surface. When a current was
sent through the pen it struck the zinc
noiselessly and sufficient aniline ink to
make a distinct mark was deposited on
the surface of the wheel or drum. If
the pen was placed at the extreme left
edge of the face of the wheel and the
machine was started with the pen down,
the result would be a continuous spiral
line of aniline ink.
If, to illustrate, the zinc-covered drum
was in a lathe, and a person should,
while the lathe was in motion, place a
pencil against the surface of the drum and
move it slowly from one end of the drum
to the other, the result would be a long
spiral mark. In Leggo's instrument
the pen strikes and leaves the zinc
cylinder in obedience to the workings of
an ordinary Page telegraph key, and
the result on the cylinder is a long
spiral line running around and around it,
composed of the dashes and dots
peculiar to the Morse alphabet, written
out in aniline ink. Now, if the pen is
bearing down upon the zinc surface is
withdrawn and in its place a steel stylus
substituted, it follows that a current
running from this stylus will be
broken just in accordance with the dots
and breaks marked on the cylinder, for
aniline ink is a nonconductor. Any
ordinary receiver will transmit these
dots and dashes to a paper tape. It
will be seen by those persons who are
familiar with the Rapid Telegraph
Company's system of using perforated
paper that there is a similarity between
the systems, with the advantage of
simplicity in favor of the new invention.
In this case no perforated stencil of the
message is required.
The working of the instrument is as
follows: A message of half a column is
brought, say, for Albany. The
operator begins playing upon his
page clicker. Whenever he presses
the key, down goes the pen
upon the revolving zinc. After the
roller has revolved several times and
the pen has advanced an inch or two
from the edge, the ink along the first
line of dots and dashes is dry enough to
allow the dispatching stylus to be
applied. The operator calls for Albany
and applies the stylus. A receiving
machine begins revolving in Albany,
and every time the stylus in New York
is lifted from the zinc by a dash or dot
of aniline ink, down goes the pen in
Albany and makes a corresponding
mark on the Albany tape. Thus long
before the New York man has got
through writing out his message the
first part is in Albany, the stylus following
after the pen within a few lines.
The advantages of such an instrument
are practically innumerable. In the
first place the rapidity of the present
mode of sending messages depends
largely upon the rapidity with which
the receiving clerk can interpret the
clicking of the instrument before him
and write it out. He will miss words
or get them wrong, and in receiving a
message of only a few words he is
liable to ask the sender to begin again at
such a word. The new plan obviates
the difficulty, for the message can be
translated at leisure from the tape.
Another important advantage is in the
sending of relay messages. A message
from here to San Francisco, for instance,
cannot travel over one wire for more
than six or eight hundred miles, especially
if the weather is stormy; it has to
be received at Buffalo, sent on to
Chicago, received there, sent on to Omaha
and so on, until it gets to San Francisco,
having been resent or "relayed" half a
dozen times, with opportunities for
errors at every relay. With the new
invention the work is not touched from
New York to San Francisco, except to
put the different machines at the relay
stations into operation. Say that a long
message is to go from New York to San
Francisco. The New York operator
after getting a few lines of inked dots
and dashes on his cylinder, sets the
stylus in motion; the stylus is connected
with another pen and cylinder in the
Buffalo office, which is in turn followed
by a stylus connected with a third pen
and cylinder in the Omaha office, and
so on to San Francisco; the whole work
is automatic. There are no chances
for error, and nine-tenths of the labor
needed in sending a message in the
ordinary way is rendered unnecessary.
The fac-simile system is an adaptation
of the automatic system. Suppose that
a line of aniline ink was drawn from
end to end of the cylinder and the
stylus put in motion, whenever it came to
this line it would be lifted off the zinc
and the pen of whatever machine it
was connected with would make
a mark. But it would be a line of
dots instead of a continuous line,
one dot being made by the pen
each time the first cylinder turned
round and the airline mark reached the
stylus. In place of making an airline
mark on the zinc, a paper written with
prepared ink is placed upon the cylinder,
and every time the stylus passes
over a written line the current passes
just as well as if the paper was not
there, and the stylus rested upon the
zinc. By this means dispatches will be
sent without any manipulation whatever
except to attach them to the drum
of the machine and allow the styluses
to pass over them; and the dispatch
will appear in fac-simile at the other
end of the line.
In order to make a nearly continuous
line, the spiral lines would have to be
very close together, and if to travel an
inch from side to side along the surface
of the wheel it required one hundred
revolutions of the wheel, the work would
be slow. Gray's invention of the
harmonic system is intended to increase
the speed. Instead of having one stylus
traveling round and round the cylinder
(and the finer and nearer the spiral
lines the more the distance traveled),
Gray places half a dozen styluses, each
one vibrating according to a certain
note like a tuning fork. If the six
styluses are an inch apart and the series
moves one inch across the surface of
the wheel, it follows that a space six
inches wide has been gone over. If the
first stylus at the left of the surface
of the wheel is constructed to vibrate
to C natural, the corresponding C
natural pen at the other end of the line
will act only when the C natural stylus
is moved. The next stylus of the six
may be in D, the next in E, and so on,
and the six pens of the receiving instrument
will act only when the styluses of
the same note are moved, only one wire
being required from instrument to
instrument.
It is claimed by the company that
2,500 words a minute can be sent by the
Leggo system, when the cylinder has
once been covered with writing. - N. Y. Evening Post.
