prepared paper in the form of tape. In the larger volume of business which is being considered here, it does not seem certain that tape would be the best form for the sending and receiving paper. It would be an advantage to have the letters received upon sheets of paper with the dots and dashes arranged in paral lel lines. Besides facilitating the reading, this form would be more convenient for mailing. It would also easily permit reference to any part of the letter at a glance. The amount of paper required by the use of sheet form instead of tape would be reduced, which is an item of importance where such a volume of business is being handled. Sending and receiving from the surface of a cylinder seems entirely practicable.

Another point which must be considered is whether with these systems, the induced currents from neighboring wires along the line or from any other cause will affect the legitimate signals materially, as has been at times the case with the Wheatstone system. In reply to this it can be said that these receivers for telegraphy are not necessarily more sensitive to small currents because they are rapid. On the contrary, they may be made to require as much current as is found desirable to rid them of the effects of outside influences, and at the same time retain the property of quick action in response to currents of the proper magnitude. In this connection it may be said that the utility of a single line wire becomes so great that more attention will be given in the future to the line construction and maintenance. If millions of dollars are invested in the construction of a single railroad, is it not as necessary to make the telegraph lines which carry important and profitable business as perfect in their construction?

The telegraph line of the future will comprise substantial poles carrying a few copper wires worked to their full capacity for transmitting electric signals. The cost of maintenance of such a line when once constructed will be little more than for an ordinary iron wire now used, while its carrying capacity for intelligence at 3,000 words per minute simplex will be about equal to 160 wires used for hand transmission simplex. By duplexing the line, the carrying capacity is doubled and becomes 6,000 words per minute, which is about equal to 160 wires worked duplex, or to 80 wires worked by hand quadruplex.

It is thought that the influence which the inauguration of a telegraph letter system would have upon the existing telegraph

and telephone business would be to increase rather than diminish it. Each of these services has its own special field of usefulness but little affected by the others. A new field would be occupied rather than an old field supplanted. The present telegraph and telephone would still have their natural field of operation, even though the best hopes for a telegraph letter service are realized.

A single line capable of sending 6,000 words per minute between New York and Chicago, becomes a different kind of investment from a long distance telephone line where the number of words per minute with the fastest rate a speaker can talk is very slow in comparison, and the charge is $9 for five minutes' use of this line.

The application under government control of a rapid system of correspondence transmission such as has been outlined, operating in conjunction with the present postal system, by supplementing and relieving their service could hardly fail to prove of benefit to the people of the United States. This comes within the proper duty of the Post Office Department, and would be under the direct control of the Postmaster-General. The simplification in operation and expense which would result from uniting directly with the general post offices of large cities the telegraph letter service would soon be realized by the people and a better service insured.

As a practical means toward ultimately assuming the direct responsibility of this new service, it would probably be easy to secure private companies which would be willing to contract with the Post Office Department to transmit telegraph letters at a fixed rate for a term of years. In this manner the Department could gradually absorb this branch of its business and be relieved of any sudden new responsibility and radical reorganization.

It is not thought that the development of a rapid intelligence transmission service to the extent suggested could be accomplished before many years, nor indeed that the manner or means of this development should closely follow the lines indicated, but that something analogous to this development seems among the possibilities if not the probabilities of the near future.

The persistent efforts of Mr. Delany and the great system which he has developed are well known, and the ideas which he has advanced in regard to the applications of rapid systems are in the main in accordance with those stated herein,

DISCUSSION IN CHICAGO APRIL 21ST 1897.

(Mr. A. V. Abbott, in the Chair.)

DR. FREDERICK BEDELL:-It gives me great pleasure this evening to read a paper prepared by Dr. Crehore, with whom I have been so closely associated in scientific work, and Lieut. Squier. The paper deals with a system of high-speed telegraphy, the speed attained being far beyond the speed reached by the methods now in vogue. The paper is a long one, and as each of you have a copy of it in hand, I will pass rapidly over the minor details, and devote more time to the salient points of the paper. [Dr. Bedell then read the paper.]

PROF. W. M. STINE:-I would like to have you explain how the plate is held, and the mechanism of the revolving disk, also how the exposure of the plate is effected. Is the apparatus used in the light?

DR. BEDELL:-The plate is held in a light-proof plate holder. The whole apparatus is used in the light. When used as a chronograph for determining the velocity of projectiles, the operator presses a key, and a circuit is closed which starts the projectile; the shutter is opened automatically by means of an electro-magnetic device, so that the shutter is only open during the time of one revolution of the plate. This instrument (the Polarizing Photo-Chronograph measuring instrument) can be read to one one-thousandth of a degree, and estimated to one tenthousandth of a degree.

MR. A. V. ABBOTT (the Chairman):-Gentlemen, I for one feel we have listened this evening to a paper which will take us some time to digest, and assimilate, for the bearing of the subject upon that portion of electrical science with which it deals is of great importance. The only criticism which I could make upon the paper is, that the authors have failed to show a plan for doing away with the telegraphic system entirely, and do not indicate to us how to transmit intelligence by intuition from person to person, in all parts of the world at the same time. The salient point which has occurred to me this evening is the simplicity and at the same time the ingenuity, which the authors have displayed in their apparatus. The idea of transmitting signals by suppressing half of each wave at precisely the right time, so that the inductance of the line would have but little effect, seems such a simple and yet effective thing that we all wonder why we had not thought of it ourselves. But how to get an inertialess receiver, which was the question that occurred to me, to get something that would record those signals and place them on record, and in such shape that they could be translated and read,—it is a wonderful thing. To institute a set of signals is one thing; to receive and place them on record is a very different problem, and I think even Faraday would have been greatly surprised if any. one had predicted to him that the discovery of the effect of a

magnet on a ray of polarized light could be made the basis of such an invention.

MR. W. W. RYDER:-In railroad work there would hardly be a possibility, or I should say a probability, of an extended use of this system, as there is never a large accumulation of messages between any two points that would require such speed of trans

mission.

I realize, however, that it would mean a great deal to the commercial telegraph companies if this scheme could be put into practical operation upon the present telegraph circuits. There is always a great amount of business constantly passing between the larger cities, and such a system would be of great benefit in quickly handling it. This would be especially true when the wires are prostrated by storms. The messages could be prepared for transmission and as soon as the first wire was repaired, the business could be started at a rate that would quickly relieve the congestion.

MR. ABBOTT :—Humanity is never satisfied and always wants something a little better, or a little quicker; though I have heard it said that when railway postal facilities were first talked of, they were objected to by the more conservative as being entirely unnecessary, for had they not had a postman on horseback, who could travel five miles an hour, almost as fast as the railroad train of those days, and what did they want better than this? Besides, if there were better facilities, too much time might be spent in writing letters. When the telegraph came fifty years ago, the same objection was made; there were good postal facilities, and when the telephone came, there was the telegraph and the district messenger service. Individually I should feel that no invention could be too quick for us in this country. The faster we can work telegraph lines, the more economically the messages can be sent, and the more people will use the telegraph, if transmission can be cheapened.

-

PROF. C. V. KERR: The idea that is embodied in this system is certainly a very beautiful one, and seems extremely simple. Now, looking at it from a commercial standpoint, it seems to me that at the first stage this apparatus must be limited in its use to lines where there is a great congestion of telegraphic matter. The apparatus is necessarily expensive. There must be, in the first place, the apparatus for light, and then the polarizing apparatus, and then the apparatus for getting the record after the message is prepared on the strip of paper. If the apparatus for quickening the recording of the message itself can be made as beautiful and quick and simple as are the main ideas of the apparatus, it certainly will be a wonderful system. But we have first to prepare the message itself, then develop the photographic plate. Now, that will take time, and it will be expensive, so that, looking at the system from this point of view, my first impression would be that it is going to be limited in its applications unless

these points can be cheapened in some way. But it is not safe ever to say too much as to what can be done with a new invention, for again and again our ideas have been set aside by later developments.

MR. ABBOTT:-The complexity of the apparatus is certainly at present formidable, but, as Prof. Kerr has pertinently added, a new invention is always more complicated than it is in its succeeding steps. It is not impossible that simplification may occur in a very marked degree. Furthermore, even with its present complexity, it is not impossible that the cheapness of wholesale business might render it an eminently successful system. I think if photographers ten years ago had been presented with the kinetoscope and its companions of a similar nature, and had been asked to take twenty or thirty pictures per second, as is now successfully done, they would have said it was impossible, or if possible, would have been too expensive, while it is an actual fact that the cost is entirely within commercial bounds.

MR. F. E. DRAKE:-I confess to some considerable degree of interest in this very charming paper, having had several years experience in the telegraph. I realize the step that is here expressed, in passing from perhaps forty to fifty words a minute to three thousand words a minute, and believe there are a great many points of possible development in this system. With my limited experience in the old style telegraph, I can predict that under the careful scrutiny and painstaking zeal and ingenuity of these gentlemen, they will be able to accomplish a result which will be of great benefit to the entire world. We are so accustomed now to receiving intelligence with marvelous speed from all points of the globe, that this method is only in touch with what we most desire. From a technical standpoint, I do not feel in any way competent to express an opinion. The question of, photographic plates seems to me the most serious which rises in connection with this device. Another thing which occurs to me is the fact that you have to go through almost all of the old methods in order to get your message readable, although the speed attained in transmitting is marvelous. Then again, the receiving of the messages and getting them into condition for the understanding of the press and the public at large, adds to some pressing commercial features of the present code. I believe that one of the most important advances which will be made in this direction will be the simplification of the codes to be used, and the introduction of a new scheme of phonographic telegraph, expressing synchronously words, phrases and sentences. That one point strikes me as being the greatest possibility of this new invention, and I predict we will hear from it with a great amount of in

terest.

DR. BEDELL: Some of the speakers have expressed their opinion that, this system is exceedingly promising, but that it possesses obstacles, which, although of minor importance, may