Murray Telegram Printer

Hokitika Guardian, 27 May 1921, Page 3

Murray Telegram Printer

A WONDERFUL MACHINE

The Murray telegram-printing machine, which is about to be established in the four centres of New Zealand, represents one of the most ingenious improvements in time-saving devices as applied to a telegraph service. One machine has already been fitted up in the Wellington telegraph operating room, and as far as the sending of messages is concerned, could be used today, but the printer parts have not yet come to hand, and until they do the new system ot transmitting messages “by Murray” cannot be put into operation. The machine, as it meets the eye, is compact, and occupies little space (says the “Dominion”). There is apparently little to complicate the technical mind. The sender is simply a keyboard arranged on the typewriter plan. As the keys are pressed down, they, accelerated by a magneto, operate on certain combinations of tiny steel punches, which perforate a strip 1 > oiled paper a little over hali'-an-incli in width. In the operation of sending a message a series of tiny holes is stamped evenly down the centre of the paper ribbon. These mean nothing—it is merely a dividing line. It is the punch holes on either side of that centre line which form the letters. These holes in the tape are the factors which govern the impulses sent over the wire, and which prints the letters (in ordinary print) on a tape at the receiving office. To send a message to Christchurch, for example, all the operator has to do is i to sit at an adapted typewriter, type off the message, and it comes out printed in the Christchurch office. The only thing to be done at the receiving end is to clip off the message at its conclusion, and slip the tape into an envelope, address it, and dispatch n:; t i the addressee, or, if necessary, gum the strips in sections on to a form, and send it out. A demonstration of sending was given on Friday afternoon in the presence of Mr E. A. Shrimpton, Chief 1 Telegraph Engineer. A. typist wfta ftsked to type off a message, and without | any fuss or particular hurry was able to send 63 words per minute, as against