Writing by Wire.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7723, 27 January 1905, Page 4

Writing by Wire.

40,000 WORDS AN HOUR BY TELEGRAPH. MODERN' MAGIC. The average person can write about 30 to 35 words a minute. A good typist wiil turn out about double that amount*. . There was exhibited at the Carlton Hotel 1 , London, the ather day, a telegraph instrument that can transmit messages and write them out ;i: the most legible handwriting at the rate of more than 10,000 words an hour. I This as the latest, and, it would SLem, the greatest marvel of electric telegraphy. i The tastest telegraphic insiriiment at present ill operate on at the Wheatstone Automatic, which transmit* telegrams from city to city at tlis rat© of 200 to 250 words a minute. Bu>» messages when sipt by tlu'.s System still have to be transle.teil from tho Morse telegraphic language, and tH.s can be done only at ordinary writing spL-ed. The now I'o'liakvurag telegraph instrument transmits and delivers them direct from the instrument written in the plainest of ordinary copy-liook haudwriting. I Alow it is dom? is a technical marvel that takes an electrical expert to grasp completely, but roughly simplified the system is a commonplace..: I First the message to bo transmitted is converted into telegraphic dots amd dashes on a perforator that looks like an ordinary typewriter. This perforator punches in a slip of paper a complicated series' of hole.; that correspond in electrical impulses to the form of letters. | By passing the slip over a S'.'lU'S of Cylinders, electric wave.: find their way through the perforated holes, quick as a lightning flash, and are transmitted instantaneous y ito the other end of the wire. how ; - ever far it is, and come out at the other end in the same sequence in ,"which they entered. The manner in which the letters are recorded is the marvel. I PHOTOGRAPHY HELPS. ' ! Photography is called in. The electric waves are conveyed to a little mirror, and they make the mirror mo\e in two directions—'horizontal and vertical. Rlectric li'ght is focussed on the mirror, and then di rected from it to a slip of sensiti: itl paper. I The moves only about thu hundreth part of a millimetre, and the exposure 'of tile sensitised [taper is only about the thousandth part of a second ; but the lightning flash is quicker, and, though the eye cannot follow the writing, yet it ap- ' Pe.irs, plain As api k lit a IT, a withI ut tho possibility of error, at the ■ rate of 15 words a secon'd. | The two motions— vertical and hori- : zontal with the motion of the paper being drawn lx-foro the linger o:' : light, ■supply all the motions of i handwriting. If produced slowly. ■ they would, of coui-se, be angular, but the speed makes them piaetic.U- . ly curved. Developing and lixing the photographed message takes 10 seconds, so that the written, mesfcage is received ten seconds later than " its transmission. . I The system is so fast that it leal- [ ly JS ahead of the age. Y,tv fentowns, let a,lone individuals," want to telegraph 40,000 words an hour ! .Imlral, Austro-Hungary, the home - lot the inventors, white enthusinstii cally endorsing the invention, could . not make use of it. because no two , telegraph offices in the einpii-e have had enough to keep it going. '1 hev ; would have to save up telegrams for a week to keep it going for ten min- ; utes. | It ought to prove of immense val- ; Win transmitting speeches from ■ ' exist Wai places w,lwe f e«' wires