THE TELEPHONE BETWEEN YORK AND DARLINGTON.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2294, 24 July 1880, Page 3

THE TELEPHONE BETWEEN YORK AND DARLINGTON.

■ Recently the courtesy of Mr A. Graves, telegraph engineer of the North Eastern Railway, a practical trial of

'Hannings’ micro-telephoneywas tween the telegraph offices in the York and the Darlington railway stations (a distance of 45 miles) with very successful results. The instruments at the York end were in charge of Mr Hunuings, the patentee, with whom were Mr Graves and other officials ; the Darlington end was in charge of Mr Cox Walker, from Messrs T. Cooke and Sons, of that city, assisted by the telegraph officials.. The trials were of a practical and crucial character ; conversation was carried on for nearly an hour between the two stations. Songs were sung at York, which were distinctly heard all over the office at Darlington ; and songs sung at Darlington were heard distinctly by the several officials at the York office. The numerals fyom 1 to 30 and the letters of the alphabet were distinctly transmitted from one office to the other, and an ordinary railway message in cypher, announcing the despatch of several goods trains, was spoken by the clerk in charge at Darlington to the clerk in charge at York and corectly received, and recorded as the first telephone message of the kind ever transmitted between these towns. The'wire used was one of the ordinary ones on the poles alongside the railway, and the induction from neighboring wires was at times very powerful, but the micro-telephone succeeded in transmitting the recognisable tones of different voices through it all. Mr Cox Walker’s quadruplex and octoplex telephones were all successfully tried at the same time between the two places, and conversation was carried on by their means.