A WONDERFUL INVENTION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 44, 21 February 1881, Page 4

A WONDERFUL INVENTION.

Mb B. E. House, one of the original telegraphers of the Morse time thirty years ago, has, it is said, perfected a telegraph machine by means of which from 250 to 300 words a minute can be transmitted, received, and permanently recorded, and which is automatic in its action. The apparatus really consists of four [carts, or rather four machines. The first resembles in principle the typewriting machine, but instead of printing characters it cuts slits of greater or lesß length in a strip of hard and stiff Manilla paper with pointed kniveß, -which are raised alternately through the lower and upper edges of the paper by a system of levers worked by a series of braes keys, the strip of paper passing from a wheel^tbrough a narrow brass galley, and under constant preßßure over the little slits through wnich the knives work. The length of the slit indicates the letter to the small fraction of an inch. This etrip^of paper, whoso marks are not those of a punch, but cut out jn a rapidly-moving *;strip, is then

placed in a machine connected with a battery, and moves quickly through it. Two constantly revolving wheels with sharp but keen edges fall readily into the slits — upper and lower alter nately— of the paper, and thereby make an electric current viith a receiving instrument at another office with a set of kuives similar to those in which the original slip ia placed. The knives in the second machine cut slips of a length corresponding to those in the original, and can be read by an expert, although they can be printed in the fourth machine with a rapidity that makes handwriting comparatively tedious and useless. This last instrument; prints somewhat on the s%aie principle as the automatic telegraph, but the letters are printed from the cut slit without any interference other than that of the power which drives the machine. These messages record themselves, and the presence or absence of an operator at the receiving end is of no consequence. They can be feenfc with all the rapidity of which pterfect mechanism is capable, and will, it is claimed, average 200 to 250 words per minute, or approximate 15,000 words per hour of constant work. All delay will be in preparing the instruments, and this can be accomplished by operators at such times as the frires are occupied from other stations. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the system, and the one which will strike operators and electricians as the most improbable, is the simplest. It is that all messages can be sent to any particular station, and no other. Tbe " call " ia so arranged in its automatic way that while the machinery is in movement in every office, the knife-like wheel only fills the call-slits on the tape in the office for which it is intended, giving an automatic reply, and the similarly moving wheels in every oifice failing to fib the slips have no impression. — London correspondent " South Australian Register." mhasssssssassissssisKSSiassmaaaa