LONG-DISTANCE TELEGRAPHY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3149, 29 March 1909, Page 4

LONG-DISTANCE TELEGRAPHY.

While wireless telegraphy has bean monopolising most of the limelight of late years, the older method of telegraphic signalling has been making steady progress. Direct overland communication was recently established between London and India. This, perhaps, seems rather tame, but it is really one of the most astonishing feats in the history of telegraphy. Until quite recently t.herejwas no land communication between Teheran and India. Overland messages were sent from Teheran to Bushire and thence by cable to Karachi. Prior to 1903 messages sent from London to Teheran had to be re-transmitted twice on the way. Then direct communication was made possible, and a few years later a land line was erected between Teheran and Karachi. A few weeks ago a small party of guests witnessed, at the London offices of the Indo-Euro-pean Telegraph Company, the sending of a message direct to Calcutta, and the receipt of a reply, "in less time than it would take to walk through Fleet Street.'' It must have been uncanny to watch the operator call up Calcutta, 7,000 miles away, and receive an answer almost instantly. Other cities were called up for news. Madras said it was cold and dry there, Bombay that it was hot, and Constantinople reminded London that the Turkish Parliament was sitting. Parts of this great system, it must be remembered, are kept open only with great difficulty and at great risk. In some districts of Persia employees of the company go in constant danger of their lives, and it is greatly to their credit that in a place like Tabriz, where there has

been fighting for some eighteen months, the service has never seriously broken down,