STARTLING INVENTION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 1, Issue 64, 21 February 1880, Page 2

STARTLING INVENTION.

$ Will wonders ever cease. Certain it is that marvels in scientific discovery are following one another in rapid succession. The most recent and the most wonderful appears simply incredible. A New York Cable Company has secured the exclusive right to the use of an electrical discovery wherewith at least 200, and as many as 2000 words a minute can be signalled through a submarine wire ! It is said that what could at the maximum speed to be sent through the conducting wire between London or Paris and New York would be equal to the number of words contained in one number of the “ Times ” or “New York Herald,” and it is also asserted that, by this process, an entire number of either of the abovenamed journals could be despatched through the cable from New York to London to Paris, or from London to New York, and be produced at those points in fac simile on a stereotyped block or plate, complete and ready to be printed from in thirty minutes and' at a trifling expense. Not only it is possible to do all this, we are assured, but furthermore secrecy and despatch may be obtained in this wise : The sender writes on a piece of prepared paper, places it in a box, a handle is turned, the message returns to the sender, and at the end of the wire a blank sheet is sent to the person addressed. When the paper is heated, the message appears on the blank sheet. To a Dublin gentleman, whose name is well-known in the scientific world—Mr. Thomas A. Dillon —belongs the credit of the invention, certain improved electric batteries controlled by the American Cable Company serving as the basis of the new discovery. AVith the combined use of these two inventions it is believed that the company will be enabled to reduce the tariff for cable messages between New York and the five 'different countries to he directly connected with its cables, to the extent of from three to five cents per word. AVe have the further statement, that the Anglo American Company offered to buy the invention for L 400,000, and that as that company lacked the proper electric instruments for giving effect to the new process, it would have been lost to the public world.—“ British and Colonial Register. ”