TELEGRAM PRINTING

Hokitika Guardian, 24 February 1921, Page 4

TELEGRAM PRINTING

A MODERN ELECTRICAL MARVEL

WELLINGTON, Feb. 19. Telegram printing is not exactly a new disoovery, but the application of J electrical machines which will enable a message to be typewritten at one end and come out printed at the other is new to this country, although in use on every main circuit in England, France, and America. Some machines of this description are due to arrive here by the first direct steamer—prob-

ably next week. Mr E. A. Shrimpton, Chief Telegraph Engineer, stated yesterday that the consignment consisted of two multiplex machines, and one start-stop combination, which woud enable communications by printed telegram to be established almost at once, either between Wellington and Christchurch or Wellington and Auckland. To illustrate the wonders of tins invention, "Mr Shrimpton said that one such machine could he established m The Dominion office and another vn the Christchurch “Press” office, and, using one wire, messages could he sent along and printed at the same time by two reporters typing their “copy” at cit lei end on a keyboard similar to that ot the typewriter. That was to say, a reporter might he sending a Parliamentary report over the wire from Wellington at the same time as the results of a race meeting were coming in from the other end. The act of pressing the letter keys at one end printed the message at the other, somewhat as the tape machines recording the fluctuations on the Stock Exchange worked in New York and Chicago.

Mr Shrlmpton lias gone thoroughly into the technical structure of the machine, and two men have already been deputed by him to specialise in a knowledce of it. The mechanism is really comparatively simple to a telegraph engineer. The machine consists ot fine levers which control a corresponding set at the other end of the wire. Each of those levers acts upon a certain combination when a certain letter control is pressed down on the keyboard. Ilie.se combinations can he likened to those ol a Yale lock, which can only he turned by one key, for until tiic right letter is pressed the combination which exposes it to the tape at the other end will not act. The letter does not do the printing, hut the tape in passing is knocked against the letter or figure that is exposed, and so takes the impression. “As a matter of fact,” said -'ll' Shrimpton, “we are twenty years liehind the times in this matter. Ihe Bordeaux printing machine has been known for twenty years. It was John (Jell, formerly of Wellington, who invented the combinations that were to act by electrical impulse, hut under his system the operator had to learn the combination which formed the lettei. It remained for Murray, another New Zealander, to adapt a simple typewriter keyboard to represent the rations combinations necessary to eovei the alphabet numerals.”