WHAT NEXT?

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 28 November 1927, Page 9

WHAT NEXT?

INSTANTANEOUS TELEGRAPHY. PAGE AT A TIME. New York. A system of ’’instantaneous telegraphy, by which an entire message could be sent across the continent with greater ease than the present transmission of a single word, is envisaged by Newcomb Carlton, president of the 'Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr Carlton fresees not only additional conquests oi both time and space through the “tremendous strides” of mechanical invention, but looks rorward to the improvement of the status of labour through these same developments. The old theory that increased efficiency of machines would dererjse onl>ortunities for labour is completely reversed by the best industrial experience of the present day. Mr Carlton lielieves. He finds the workman capable of more valuable production receiving a higher wage anil standing on the verge of greater possibilities than ever before as the result of the contributions of research and experimentation to the commercial and business world. HANDLED MECHANICALLY. “The history of telegraphy,” he said, “was one of Morse operation until 1910. when we began vigorous efforts to place it on a mechanical basis. To-day more than 70 ner cent of our traffic is handled mechanically, with machine transmission and reception, to the end that business has increased fourfold in tbe last 12 years. “Further developments are being made all the time. It is no<t nossible t 6 say just what form they will take. But lam sure that the time will come when a telegram may to placed in a machine here and 1 almost immediately be received in San Francisco. “The process may be one of photograpic transmission; it may take some other form. But we ore doubtless approaching the time when, instead of sending telegrams by the letter and by the word we will send a page in a single operation. TOWARDS ACCOMPLISHMENT. “I don’t mean that this will come about next Monday; There must be gradual steps, orderly and logical progression. Yet, when you compare the difference between tne early Morse system of telegraphy with our present mechanical systems, 1 am sure we are half-way toward the accomplishment of this ideal, and I am not sure but our progress has taken us more than half-way.” The effect of this development on labour lies in that it enhances the production of the individual, Mr Carlton explained. He cited the fact that the present wage scale of the company would necessarily be lower if the average efficiency and production of its employees had not been more than normally increased through the application of new inventions. “Each labourer in the United States to-day has the production of his two hands augmented! by mechanical and electrical equipment, capable of making his production equal to the output of 37 labourers in action eight hours a dav for 300 days a year,” he said. “This, of course, is an average figure expressing the potential increase in production possible through the duplication of powered machinery.”