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Evening Star, Issue 3520, 5 June 1874, Page 2

In the matter of telegraphy, the Americans set us an example. On the occasion of the delivery of the last Presidential message, an experiment was made at the Washington telegraph office, the practical results of which will be of immense importance as regards the future of telegraphy throughout the world. The message, containing 11,500 words, was transmitted from Washington to New Yora, a distance of 290 miles, over a single wire, in 22£ minutes, the speed obtained being over 2,500 letters per minute. At New York, the message was delivered from the automatic instrument, printed in bold type, 11 . 1 ie P^ esen °e of the Postmaster of that city. This achievement in telegraphy is the more remarkable as the principle involved is not new, but was well known in 184S, By the new American combination of chemistry and mechanism, the*speed is apparently^unlumted, The system which was inaugurated

in December last has now been several months in operation, and messages at the rate of 1.200 words, or 6,000 letters a minute, have been transmitted with the same satisfactory reHitherto, the speed attainable over circuits of similar length in England by the Wheatstone automatic system at present in use for the “high speed” service by the postal telegraph department, does not exceed 200 letters a miuuto. In New Zealand we have rot son to believe the highest speed obtained has been at the rate of forty words a minute, which, however, could not be kept up very long. We know that the most skilful operators in the employ of the department—their number is not very large, because little inducement is held-out to good men to remain in the service—have, in a couple of instances, attained as high a rate of speed as forty-five per minute on very short messages. The longest message ever received at the Dunedin station contained about 8 000 words, and was transmitted in four hours. We do not require to cite instances of the slowness of our system. Perhaps if Mr Lemon cannot be induced to take a lesson from America, he will see his way to introducing the English plan, by which the one rate of speed attained on our wires may be increased fourfold.