Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 5 March 1896, Page 3

Notes and Events.

. 4^ As a rule the delivery of telegram. and cablegrams are much delayed owing to the many changes in offices when they are sent long distances. Instances are on record however, showing the wonderful apeed at whioh electricity travek ..hen the line is olear. Thus one evening at the Albert Hall, London, the Prince of Wales waa invited to eend a telegraphic message to Teheran, in Persia. The road had been cleared, and at a given signa 1 the key of the sender was pressed by the Prince of Wales, and the instant the button of the instrument was touched, click went the receiver. The onrrent had been to Persia and

It is only in the case of especially important news that everything is arranged in advance. In the case of the Derby and the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race the line is kept open between London and New York and the news reaches the latter city within fifteen seconds.

The small boy who aims a stone at the earthen insulators on telegraph posts has many imitators. Engineers in putting new lines through new countries dreading the awful temptation these insulators are to those who love to break things generally, put up old insulators, so that after these are duly smashed the fun will have been worked out, and the new insulators will be lef alone.

Such method, do not always answer. In Persia the cameldrivers find they are, on their camels, just the height to conveniently break those insulators with sticks as they ride along, so of oourse they do it. Tbe company learning a lesson from war-ships clad their crockery with iron. This answers the purpose.

New Zealand is the only country in the worid that has retrograded in telegraphic charges. This is evident in the abandonment of the custom as to delayed telegrams which had been in use for the last ten years. But then we have now a truly Liberal Ministry. The Atlantic cable charged in 1866, £20 for a message of 20 words. It soon dropped to £10 for the same length of message. When competition with a rival cable began prioes dropped to 80s for ten words, and now the rate is only one shilling a word.