THE NYCTAGRAPH.

Kumara Times, Issue 1420, 21 April 1881, Page 2

THE NYCTAGRAPH.

Mr Elphinstone Roe, telegraph line inspector in Western Australia, has applied for a patent in South Australia, (the Register states) protecting what promises to be a very useful invention. It is a system of signalling either by day or night, and the instrument or apparatus by which the work is done he calls the nyctagraph. By day the signalling is effected with colored flags, and at night by lights of two distinct colors, so arranged as to form the letters of the Morse code, at present in use in the Telegraph department. The inven* tor states that ships will be enabled to spell out everything they require, and that everything at present transmitted by telegraph can be sent by the nycta* graph. Its superiority over all other semaphore signals is the ease with which it is worked, being simplicity itself, an amateur being able to transmit and send as well as an expert. He considers that it will supersede the telephone, as within ten miles tele* graph communication Can be carried ori at a very small expense—that it will be of service to merchants living out of town and wishing to he posted in news during the night. As a scientific toy abne much amusement will be afforded by the nyctagraph, as persons with ouly a toy instrument will be enabled to chat with their friends a few miles distant at leisure J but the most im* portant of its uses will be in light, houses, which can each write every few seconds the initials of its own name, and thereby prevent the many acci* dents that happen through mistaking one lighthouse for another. By day it will do away, Mr Roe believes, with the whole of the present signal flag code, as only two distinct flags are re* quired to spell everything. A printed code on a card can be supplied with each instrument. The English mail Steamer, with a nyctagraph on board, could send in passing 1000 or 1200 words of news, instead of, as now, being only reported, when passing at night, as a large steamer supposed to be the P. and O. or Orient Co.’s. Patents have been applied for. in the other colonies and in Great Britain and America.