In 1842 Alexander Bain, a watchmaker of Thurso, produced what is known as a "chemical telegraph." The words to be transmitted were set up in large metal type, all capitals, connected with the positive pole of a battery, the negative pole of which was connected to earth. A metal brush, divided into five points, each terminating a wire, was pa.s.sed over the metal type. As often as a division of the brush touched metal it completed the electric circuit in the wire to which it was joined, and sent a current to the receiving station, where a similar brush was pa.s.sing at similar speed over a strip of paper soaked in iodide of pota.s.sium. The action of the electricity decomposed the solution, turning it blue or violet. The result was a series of letters divided longitudinally into five belts separated by white s.p.a.ces representing the intervals between the contact points of the brush.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The receiving instrument used by Messrs. Pollak & Virag in their high-speed system of telegraphy. This instrument is capable of receiving and photographically recording messages at the astonishing speed of 50,000 words an hour._]

The Bain Chemical Telegraph was able to transmit the enormous number of 1500 words per minute; that is, at ten times the rate of ordinary conversation! But even when improvements had reduced the line wires from five to one, the system, on account of the method of composing the message to be sent, was not found sufficiently practical to come into general use.

Its place was taken by slower but preferable systems: those of duplex and multiplex telegraphy.

When a message is sent over the wires, the actual time of making the signals is more than is required for the current to pa.s.s from place to place. This fact has been utilised by the inventors of methods whereby two or more messages may not only be sent the _same_ way along the same wire, but may also be sent in _different_ directions. Messages are "duplex" when they travel across one another, "multiplex" when they travel together.

The principle whereby several instruments are able to use the same wire is that of _distributing_ among the instruments the time during which they are in contact with the line.

Let us suppose that four transmitters are sending messages simultaneously from London to Edinburgh.

Wires from all four instruments are led into a circular contact-maker, divided into some hundreds of insulated segments connected in rotation with the four transmitters. Thus instrument A will be joined to segments 1, 5, 9, 13; instrument B to segments 2, 6, 10, 14; instrument C with segments 3, 7, 11, 15; and so on.

Along the top of the segments an arm, connected with the telegraph line to Edinburgh, revolves at a uniform rate. For about 1/500 of a second it unites a segment with an instrument. If there are 150 segments on the "distributor," and the arm revolves three times a second, each instrument will be put into contact with the line rather oftener than 110 times per second. And if the top speed of fifty words a minute is being worked to, each of the fifteen signals occurring in each second will be on the average divided among seven moments of contact.

A similar apparatus at Edinburgh receives the messages. It is evident that for the system to work satisfactorily, or even to escape dire confusion, the revolving arms must run at a level speed in perfect unison with one another. When the London arm is over segment 1, the Edinburgh arm must cover the same number. The greatest difficulty in multiplex telegraphy has been to adjust the timing exactly.

Paul la Cour of Copenhagen invented for driving the arms a device called the Phonic Wheel, as its action was regulated by the vibrations of a tuning-fork. The wheel, made of soft iron, and toothed on its circ.u.mference, revolves at a short distance from the pole of a magnet.

As often as a current enters the magnet the latter attracts the nearest tooth of the wheel; and if a regular series of currents pa.s.s through it the motion of the wheel will be uniform. M. la Cour produced the regularity of current impulses in the motor magnet by means of a tuning-fork, which is unable to vibrate more than a certain number of times a second, and at each vibration closed a circuit sending current into the magnet. To get two tuning-forks of the same note is an easy matter; and consequently a uniformity of rotation at both London and Edinburgh stations may be insured.

So sensitive is this "interrupter" system that as many as sixteen messages can be sent simultaneously, which means that a single wire is conveying from 500 to 800 words a minute. We can easily understand the huge saving that results from such a system; the cost of instruments, interrupter, &c., being but small in proportion to that of a number of separate conductors.

The word-sending capacity of a line may be even further increased by the use of automatic transmitters able to work much faster in signal-making than the human brain and hand. Sir Charles Wheatstone's Automatic Transmitter has long been used in the Post-Office establishments.

The messages to be sent are first of all punched on a long tape with three parallel rows of perforations. The central row is merely for guiding the tape through the transmitting machine. The positions of the holes in the two outside rows relatively to each other determine the character of the signal to be sent. Thus, when three holes (including the central one) are abreast, a Morse "dot" is signified; when the left-hand hole is one place behind the right hand, a "dash"

will be telegraphed.

In the case of a long communication the matter is divided among a number of clerks operating punching machines. Half-a-dozen operators could between them punch holes representing 250 to 300 words a minute; and the transmitter is capable of despatching as many in the same time, while it has the additional advantage of being tireless.

The action of the transmitter is based upon the reversal of the direction or nature of current. The punched tape is pa.s.sed between an oscillating lever, carrying two points, and plates connected with the two poles of the battery. As soon as a hole comes under a pin the pin drops through and makes a contact.

At the receiving end the wire is connected with a coil wound round the pole of a permanent bar-magnet. Such a magnet has what is known as a north pole and a south pole, the one attractive and the other repulsive of steel or soft iron. Any bar of soft iron can be made temporarily into a magnet by twisting round it a few turns of a wire in circuit with the poles of a battery. But which will be the north and which the south pole depends on the _direction_ of the current.

If, then, a current pa.s.ses in one direction round the north pole of a permanent magnet it will increase the magnet's attractive power, but will decrease it if sent in the other direction.

The "dot" holes punched in the tape being abreast cause first a positive and then a negative current following at a very short interval; but the "dash" holes not being opposite allow the positive current to occupy the wires for a longer period. Consequently the Morse marker rests for correspondingly unequal periods on the recording "tape," giving out a series of dots and dashes, as the inker is s.n.a.t.c.hed quickly or more leisurely from the paper.

The Wheatstone recorder has been worked up to 400 words a minute, and when two machines are by the multiplex method acting together this rate is of course doubled.

As a speed machine it has, however, been completely put in the shade by a more recent invention of two Hungarian electricians, Anton Pollak and Josef Virag, which combines the perforated strip method of transmission with the telephone and photography. The message is sent off by means of a punched tape, and is recorded by means of a telephonic diaphragm and light marking a sensitised paper.

In 1898 the inventors made trials of their system for the benefit of the United Electrical Company of Buda-Pesth. The Hungarian capital was connected by two double lines of wire with a station 200 miles distant, where the two sets were joined so as to give a single circuit of 400 miles in length. A series of tests in all weathers showed that the Pollak-Virag system could transmit as many as 100,000 words an hour over that distance.

From Hungary the inventors went to the United States, in which country of "records" no less than 155,000 words were despatched and received in the sixty minutes. This average--2580 words per minute, 43 per second--is truly remarkable! Even between New York and Chicago, separated by 950 odd miles, the wires kept up an average of 1000 per minute.

The apparatus that produces these marvellous results is of two types.

The one type records messages in the Morse alphabet, the other makes clearly-written longhand characters. The former is the faster of the two, but the legibility of the other more than compensates for the decrease of speed by one-half.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Specimens of the punched tape used for transmitting messages by the Pollak-Virag system, and of a message as it is delivered by the receiving machine._]

The Morse alphabet method closely resembles the Wheatstone system. The message is prepared for transmission by being punched on a tape. But there is this difference in the position of the holes, that whereas in the Wheatstone method two holes are used for each dot and dash, only one is required in the Pollak-Virag. If to the right of the central guiding line it signifies a "dash," if to the left, a "dot."

The "reversal-of-current" method, already explained, causes at the receiver end an increase or decrease in the power of a permanent magnet to attract or repel a diaphragm, the centre of which is connected by a very fine metal bar with the centre of a tiny mirror hinged at one side on two points. A very slight movement of the diaphragm produces an exaggerated movement of the mirror, which, as it tilts backwards and forwards, reflects the light from an electric lamp on to a lens, which concentrates the rays into a bright spot, and focuses them on to a surface of sensitised paper.

In their earliest apparatus the inventors attached the paper to the circ.u.mference of a vertical cylinder, which revolved at an even pace on an axle, furnished at the lower end with a screw thread, so that the portion of paper affected by the light occupied a spiral path from top to bottom of the cylinder.

In a later edition, however, an endless band of sensitised paper is employed, and the lamp is screened from the mirror by a horizontal mantle in which is cut a helical slit making one complete turn of the cylinder in its length. The mantle is rotated in unison with the machinery driving the sensitised band; and as it revolves, the spot at which the light from the filament can pa.s.s through the slit to the mirror is constantly shifting from right to left, and the point at which the reflected light from the mirror strikes the sensitised paper from left to right. At the moment when a line is finished, the right extremity of the mantle begins to pa.s.s light again, and the bright spot of light recommences its work at the left edge of the band, which has now moved on a s.p.a.ce.

The movements of the mirror backwards and forwards produce on the paper a zigzag tracing known as syphon-writing. The record, which is continuous from side to side of the band, is a series of zigzag up-and-down strokes, corresponding to the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet.

The apparatus for transmitting longhand characters is more complicated than that just described. Two telephones are now used, and the punched tape has in it five rows of perforations.

If we take a copy-book and examine the letters, we shall see that they all occupy one, two, or three bands of s.p.a.ce. For instance, _a_, between the lines, occupies one band; _g_, two bands; and _f_, three.

In forming letters, the movements of the fingers trace curves and straight lines, the curves being the resultants of combined horizontal and vertical movements.

Messrs. Pollak and Virag, in order to produce curves, were obliged to add a second telephone, furnished also with a metal bar joined to the mirror, which rests on three points instead of on two. One of these points is fixed, the other two represent the ends of the two diaphragm bars, which move the mirror vertically and horizontally respectively, either separately or simultaneously.

A word about the punched paper before going further. It contains, as we have said, five rows of perforations. The top three of these are concerned only with the up-and-down strokes of the letters, the bottom two with the cross strokes. When a hole of one set is acting in unison with a hole of the other set a composite movement or curve results.

The topmost row of all sends through the wires a negative current of known strength; this produces upward and return strokes in the upper zone of the letters: for instance, the upper part of a _t_. The second row pa.s.ses _positive_ currents of equal strength with the negative, and influences the up-and-down strokes of the centre zone, _e.g._ those of _o_; the third row pa.s.ses positive currents _twice_ as strong as the negative, and is responsible for double-length vertical strokes in the centre and lower zones, _e.g._ the stroke in _p_.

In order that the record shall not be a series of zigzags it is necessary that the return strokes in the vertical elements shall be on the same path as the out strokes; and as the point of light is continuously tending to move from left to right of the paper there must at times be present a counteracting tendency counterbalancing it exactly, so that the path of the light point is purely vertical. At other times not merely must the horizontal movements balance each other, but the right-to-left element must be stronger than the left-to-right, so that strokes such as the left curve of an _e_ may be possible. To this end rows 4 and 5 of the perforations pa.s.s currents working the second telephone diaphragm, which moves the mirror on a vertical axis so that it reflects the ray horizontally.

It will be noticed that the holes in rows 3, 4, 5 vary in size to permit the pa.s.sage of currents during periods of different length. In this manner the little junction-hooks of such letters as _r_, _w_, _v_, _b_ are effected.

As fast as the sensitised paper strip is covered with the movements of the dancing spot of light it is pa.s.sed on over rollers through developing and fixing chemical baths; so that the receiving of messages is purely automatic.

The reader can judge for himself the results of this ingenious system as shown in a short section of a message transmitted by Mr. Pollak.

The words shown actually occupied two seconds in transmission. They are beautifully clear.

It is said that by the aid of a special "multiplex" device thirty sets of Pollak-Virag apparatus can be used simultaneously on a line! The reader will be able, by the aid of a small calculation, to arrive at some interesting figures as regards their united output.

THE TELEPHONE.

A common enough sight in any large town is a great sheaf of fine wires running across the streets and over the houses. If you traced their career in one direction you would find that they suddenly terminate, or rather combine into cables, and disappear into the recesses of a house, which is the Telephone Exchange. If you tracked them the other way your experience would be varied enough. Some wires would lead you into public inst.i.tutions, some into offices, some into snug rooms in private houses. At one time your journey would end in the town, at another you would find yourself roaming far into the country, through green fields and leafy lanes until at last you ran the wire to earth in some large mansion standing in a lordly park. Perhaps you might have to travel hundreds of miles, having struck a "trunk" line connecting two important cities; or you might even be called upon to turn fish and plunge beneath the sea for a while, groping your way along a submarine cable.

In addition to the visible overhead wires that traverse a town there are many led underground through special conduits. And many telephone wires never come out of doors at all, their object being to furnish communication between the rooms of the same house. The telephone and its friend, the electric-bell, are now a regular part of the equipment of any large premises. The master of the house goes to his telephone when he wishes to address the cook or the steward, or the head-gardener or the coachman. It saves time and labour.

Should he desire to speak to his town-offices he will, unless connected direct, "ring up" the Exchange, into which, as we have seen, flow all the wires of the subscribers to the telephone system of that district. The ringing-up is usually done by rapidly turning a handle which works an electric magnet and rings a bell in the Exchange. The operator there, generally a girl, demands the number of the person with whom the ringer wants to speak, rings up that number, and connects the wires of the two parties.

In some exchanges, _e.g._ the new Post-Office telephone exchanges, the place of electric-bells is taken by lamps, to the great advantage of the operators, whose ears are thus freed from perpetual jangling. The action of unhooking the telephone receiver at the subscriber's end sends a current into a relay which closes the circuit of an electric lamp opposite the subscriber's number in the exchange. Similarly, when the conversation is completed the action of hanging up the receiver again lights another lamp of a different colour, given the exchange warning that the wires are free again.

In America, the country of automatic appliances, the operator is sometimes entirely dispensed with. A subscriber is able, by means of a mechanical contrivance, to put himself in communication with any other subscriber unless that subscriber is engaged, in which case a dial records the fact.