A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

Origin and growth of the ideas which later linked the world with submarine cables and wireless telegraphy.

In the year 1844, at the time the Morse system of electric telegraphy was introduced, and fourteen years later, when Europe and America were joined by telegraph cable, great civic honors were accorded the scientific pioneers who perfected these systems of long distance instantaneous communication. In the great speeches delivered by the gentlemen present at these memorable celebrations the main thread of thought -almost a prayer- running through the remarks of all speakers was that the telegraph would prove to be a harbinger of universal peace, friendship and civilization.

That the hopes of those who were here to welcome the advent of the telegraph have not in full been realized, surely should not be charged to some unsuspected quality or property of the new art; but rather should we understand that a wide enough span has not not as yet intervened between the date of discovery and our own times for the art to work out its true destiny. As the investigator gropes back through the attenuated records of the past in search of the birth of the idea of the telegraph he is perplexed by the many attempts previously made to lay finger upon the genesis, the origin, of the telegraphic idea.

The inspired author of the Book of Job exclaims, in an interrogatory framed to suggest the impossible, "Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say unto Thee, here we are?" Surely the scientists of our own times have given the answer, and we are now able to "send lightnings" where we will and when we will. Were it sensible to attribute to speculative fancy the beginning of any achievement or accomplishment which should ultimately have practical value, then we may say that John Baptista Porta, an Italian prodigy (1575) has claims which entitle him to recognition in telegraph history. In one of his published works Porta says:

"To a friend, that is at a far distance from us, fast shut up in prison, we may relate our minds; which I do not doubt may be done by two mariner's compasses having the alphabet writ upon them."

In the year 1753, Charles Marshall, of Scotland, sent to The Scot's Magazine a communication which contained the earliest recorded reference to an electric telegraph, and as the telegraph was the fore-runner of all electrical activities, historians of electrical development in all civilized countries have in hundreds of instances made reference to the article which appeared in the February, 1753, issue of this magazine.

The article states, in part:

"It is well known to all who are conversant in electrical experiments that the electric power may be propagated along a small wire, from one place to another, without being sensibly abated by the length of its progress; let, then, a set of wires equal in numher to the letters of the alphabet be extended horizontally between two given places parallel to each other and each of them about an inch distant from that next to it. At every twenty yards' end let them be fixed in glass or Jewelers' cement to some firm body, both to prevent them from touching the earth or any other non-electric, and from breaking from their own gravity."

After the publication of the "C. M." article nearly a quarter of a century elapsed before the first method of electric telegraphy was tried out; namely, that of George Louis LeSage of Geneva. Moigno writing in 1852, Sabine in 1867, and Taylor in 1879, all state that LeSage actually established his telegraph system at Geneva in the rear 1774. LeSage's method of telegraphing was almost identical with that suggested by "C. M." in The Scot's Magazine, previously mentioned. Then followed the telegraph experiments of Lomond, in France (1787), Claude Chappe, in France (1793), M. Reusser, in Switzerland (1794), Caballo, in England (1795), Salva, in Spain (1798), Soemmering, in Bavaria (1807), Schweigger, in Germany (1815), and Francis Ronalds, in England (1816).

In chronological order the next noteworthy attempt made to devise a system of telegraphy was that of Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, in the year 1828, An account of Dyar's experiments is interesting; first, because his ill-fated invention was the first telegraph tried in America, and, second, because his system was the last of the long line of impracticable telegraphs which were dependent upon frictional electric machines as sources of current. About the time Dyar was making his telegraph, Sturgeon, in England, and Joseph Henry, in America, were experimenting with electromagnets-those obedient and tractable little helpmates which were destined to provide us with a real telegraph system and to revolutionize mechanical motion. Also, a year previously (1827), Ohm's Law had been announced.

Dyar's telegraph was of the electrochemical order, being operated by sparks produced by a friction machine, the sparks being spaced and regulated by a pendulum. There is no evidence to show that a receiving device was actually constructed, although Dyar proposed using a litmus paper receiver as soon as the experiments made a transcribing device necessary. The experiments were conducted on Long Island over a great length of wire strung around a race course, and were satisfactory to the extent that he showed that sparks made at one end of the circuit could be observed at the other end of the wire. Presumably a metallic circuit was used, as no mention is made of the use of a ground return. In erecting the poles and wire, Dyar was aided by a Mr. Brown, of Providence, R. I., the legal side of the undertaking being in the hands of a Mr. Connell, of New York. As soon, however, as the experiments were well under way, Connell brought suit against Dyar for twenty thousand dollars, and, although the case was dismissed, John F. White, Dyar's patent attorney, notified him that Connell had secured a writ against Dyar charging conspiracy against the government for attempting to carry on secret communication between cities. Dyar forthwith abandoned his experiments and left the state in order to escape prosecution.

The important discoveries in electromagnetism made by Oersted, in Denmark (1820), Faraday, in England (1823), Sturgeon, in England (1824), and Henry, in America (1827), speedily brought to the front entirely new ideas and agencies from which a practical system of telegraphy might be constructed. It is true, of course, that the operation of lines over considerable distances was not efficiently practicable until economical and reliable primary batteries were brought out. The primary cells introduced by John Frederick Daniell, in England (1836) and by William Grove, in England (1837) supplied the missing link and from that time onward practical telegraph systems were rapidly introduced and extended to meet social, governmental, and commercial requirements in all civilized countries.

In devising telegraphs the earliest use made of the principles of electro-magnetism was in connection with what is known as "the needle system." Baron Schilling, in Russia (1832) exhibited a method of signaling employing thirty-six deflecting needles. Gauss and Weber, in Germany, erected a metallic circuit about two miles long (1833), the received signals being indicated by freely suspended needles. The practical development of this system was taken up by Steinheil who in 1837, had several miles of lines in operation in Bravaria. Steinheil devised a receiving arrangement employing bells of different pitch to indicate the letters of the alphabet. Steinheil's chief claim to fame rests upon his discovery made in the year 1837 that the earth could be used as the return portion on an electrical circuit. In England, in the year 1837, Edward Davy exhibited a telegraph system employing deflecting needles to indicate the received signals and in the same year Cooke and Wheatstone, in England procured an English patent (June 12) for a needle telegraph system employing six wires and five deflecting needles. (The American patent was granted June 10, 1840.)

We now arrive at the point where we may truthfully transfer the scene of telegraphic activity and invention from Europe to America. During the past forty years various desultory attempts have been made purporting to establish the view that Joseph Henry, and not S. F. B. Morse, invented the system of electric telegraphy universally known as the Morse Telegraph System. Henry's exemplary life and his profound writings vividly remind one of the life and work of his great English contemporary Michael Faraday. Scientific history unreservedly accords to Henry the honor of being the first to devise electron magnets of a useful type; but there is plenty of evidence to show that in the beginning he did not think much about or concern himself with the development of electric telegraphy

The thing Henry did which has misled some of his biographers was to suspend around the walls of the upper rooms in the Albany Academy a circuit consisting of a mile of copper wire In which was connected a primary battery and an electron magnet. A permanently magnetized steel rod was mounted on a pivot (like a compass needle) and situated in such position relatively to the electromagnet that one extremity of the rod could play between the polar extremities of the magnet. Near the other end of the steel rod the gong of a small office bell was placed. When the current from the primary battery was sent through the circuit in one direction the rod was attracted into contact with one pole of the magnet, resulting in the opposite end of the rod striking the bell, thus giving a signal. When the current was reversed through the circuit the rod was attracted to the other pole of the electro-magnet, again causing the gong to be tapped. These demonstrations were made in the year 1832.

Morse's first idea of the telegraph came to him in the year 1832--he was then forty-one years of age--while he was on board the packet-ship Sully, sailing from Havre, France,to New York. A fellow passenger--Dr. Charles T. Jackson--one day at the dinner table discoursed upon the advances which had recently been made in the science of electricity, explaining the method of increasing the power of a magnet by passing electric current through convolutlons of insulated wire wound upon a soft iron bar. The speaker stated that electricity was known to travel through great lengths of conducting wire, practically instantaneously; whereupon Morse, who was present, propounded the question: "If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity."

Morse was a portrait painter, not a scientist, and from his question, above quoted, it may be understood that his first vision of the possibilities of electricity disclosed to his practical mind the growing need for a system of transmitting intelligence now become possible because of discoveries and agencies already at hand. Nothing short of inspiration could have given Morse his original broad conception of the ultimate utility of a system of instantaneous communication, and the way he overcame subsequent trials and discouragements while gathering up the elements of a workable system proved.that he had unlimited faith, not only in ultimate technical success, but also in the meed certain to be awarded the first in the field with a practical system of electric telegraphy.

There were in the world at that time a number of eminent savants much better equipped than Morse was to solve the problem: In France, Peltier, Arago, De La Rive, and Ampere; in England, Faraday, Sturgeon, Cooke, Wheatstone, and Ronalds; in Russia, Jacobi, and Schilling; in Germany, Ruhmkorff, Lenz, Steinheil, Ohm, and Soemmering; in America, Joseph Henry, Page, Silliman, Day, and Frisbie. In scientific history these men all are famous as the foremost scientists of their times, and most of them were in the heyday of manhood at the time the artist Morse by patient but persevering labor gave to the world the crowning electrical achievement of the century.

The fact that the five years intervening between October, 1832 (the date of the Morse-Jackson conversation on board the Sully) and November, 1837, were consumed by Morse in studying the requirements, and in constructing the first crude apparatus, but calls attention to the fact that there was an extended opportunity afforded others who may have been better informed electrically, or who may have had the means necessary to carry on experiments. That others did not, during this period, overtake and pass Morse in the march toward the goal of success points to the conclusion that Morse, and Morse only, had a true understanding of the entire problem.

When Morse arrived in New York from Europe, November 15, 1832, he at once set to work experimenting along lines suggested in numerous sketches and diagrams which he had recorded in his notebook while on ship-board, but owing to lack of funds and to inadequate shop facilities it was not until 1835 that he was able to assemble a working model embodying his ideas. By September 2, 1837, he had succeeded in building two sets of instruments, one for each end of a circuit, and on that date gave a public demonstration of his invention in the great hall of New York City University, where he was employed as a professor.

It was on this occasion that Morse had the good fortune to meet Mr. Alfred Vail, son of Judge Stephen Vail, proprietor of the Speedwell Iron Works at Morristown, New Jersey. Alfred Vail was then thirty years of age and had recently graduated from the University of the City of New York. Upon witnessing Morse's telegraph demonstrations in 1837, Vail be came intensely interested, and learning that Morse was greatly in need of capital and mechanical assistance, undertook to induce his father to furnish financial backing for Morse's enterprises and himself agreed to take up the work of constructing improved apparatus at Speedwell. Morse's caveat was filed in the patent office at Washington, October 6, 1837, and his application for letters patent was filed April 7, 1838. On November 28, 1837, Morse advised the Secretary of the Treasury at Washington--with whom he had previous correspondence regarding the telegraph--that he had succeeded in operating a telegraph circuit ten miles in length.

From the year 1837 until 1842 Morse's time was taken up procuring patent protection in European countries giving exhibitions of his system in the large cities in this country and in perfecting details of the mechanism of the telegraph. Also, during these years a continuous effort was made to induce the American government to make an appropriation to defray the costs of establishing an experimental line of telegraph between two of the eastern cities. In December, 1842, Morse was persuaded to make one more application to Congress, and, on March 3, 1843, a bill appropriating thirty thousand dollars to aid the enterprise passed through the House by a very close margin. Plans were immediately made to construct a line between Washington and Baltimore the conductors to be laid underground between these points

Ezra Cornell later the founder of Cornell University was engaged to take charge of the conduit work, leaving New York for Baltimore on October 17, 1843. The conductors consisted of four insulated No. 16 copper wires inclosed in a lead pipe which was laid in a trench between the double tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad extending between Washington and Baltimore. Early in the year 1844 it was discovered that the conductors in the pipe were badly mixed after about ten miles of the underground system had been constructed. The underground scheme was then abandoned and the wires strung on poles.

On May 24, 1844, the famous "first message," "What Hath God Wrought?" was sent over the line from Washington.

The Washington-Baltimore line was regarded, for a time, as government property, and on May 15, 1845, a charter was granted for the first private commercial telegraph line in America--The Magnetic Telegraph Company. The success of Morse's first line created wide interest in the telegraph, and the construction of lines in many directions was soon begun. In 1846 a line was opened for service between New York and Boston, another between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and still another between Buffalo, New York, and Toronto, Canada; in 1847, a line between Troy, New York, and Montreal, Canada, in 1848, a line between Portland, Maine, and Calais, Maine, and many other lines. In 1849 the House Printing Telegraph Company was organized, and constructed lines between New York and Boston and between New York and Philadelphia. A year later "House" lines were built between New York and Buffalo and between Buffalo and Cincinnati, the character of pole line construction showing great improvement over that of lines previously constructed. The "House" system was operated in opposition to the Morse lines.

In the year 1850 still another opposition company, known as the Merchants' Line, entered the field, erecting lines between New York and Boston and between New York and Washington. The system was based upon the electrochemical telegraph inventions of Alexander Bain, of Scotland. Bain had applied for an American patent in the year 1849. After about three years of operation the Bain lines consolidated with the Morse lines, the combination taking the name "Union Lines." In the year 1851 there were over fifty separate telegraph companies doing business in the United States, many of them operating under Morse's patents, others using then existing printing telegraph systems. On April 2, 1851, Henry S. Potter was elected president of the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, the immediate predecessor of the Western Union Telegraph Company, of which latter company Mr. Potter was the first president.

It may well be imagined that with fifty or more telegraph companies in the field, many of them operating in exclusive territory, the cost of telegraphing, together with the delay in transferring messages from one company to its connections, created a situation which had to be corrected if the new art was to have a fair opportunity to be efficiently useful.

Although it was not until 1866 that the headquarters of the Western Union Company was moved from Rochester, New York, to New York City, a movement was set in motion in 1851 with the object of bringing about consolidation of the various adjoining telegraph lines. Also, in 1851 the application of the telegraph to railroad requirements was begun. In that year the first telegraphic train order was sent, on the Erie Railroad. Within two years thereafter the Erie Railroad had 497 miles of telegraph line in operation, with fifty-two telegraph stations. and employed sixty-five telegraphers.

The rapid extension of the telegraph which followed to meet railroad and commercial requirements attracted to the work many bright minds, and during the years intervening between 1851 and 1858 many improvements were made in telegraph apparatus. In 1851 the first automatic repeater was invented, by C. S. Buckley. In 1852 Moses G. Farmer experimented with double telegraph transmission over a single wire. In 1855 George F. Milliken, of Boston, introduced the first spring-jack switch-board, and in the same year George M. Phelps and David E. Hughes perfected new printing telegraph systems. In 1857 Farmer and Goodman introduced an improvement in automatic telegraph repeaters.

In the year 1857 the first attempt was made to lay a submarine telegraph cable between Europe and America, and although the first efforts failed of success, the experience gained proved of inestimable value in a later enterprise. The first submarine cable laid was that between Dover, England, and Calais, France, in the year 1851. Two years later a six--conductor cable was laid between England and Ireland. In the year 1856 American and British naval officers made extensive soundings in the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and America for the purpose of charting possible routes for cables to be laid between Europe and North America. During the year 1856 a cable was laid between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, a distance of eighty-five miles.

In the month of August, 1857, the first attempt was made to lay a cable across the Atlantic. The venture failed, owing chiefly to the employment of imperfectly designed cable-laying machinery. Three hundred and thirty miles of the cable was lost in the sea. In the summer of 1858 another attempt was made to forge the link between Europe and America. The expedition met with several mishaps, but on August 5 of that year the completed cable was ready for test between Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, and Valentia, Ireland, a distance of 1,960 miles on the surface of the ocean, the actual length of the cable being 2,267 miles. The extra 307 miles of cable was taken up in following the hills and dales of the sea bottom. After three weeks of fairly satisfactory operation, chiefly of an experimental nature, this cable failed.

In the year 1865 Cyrus W. Field, of New York, employing the famous British ship Great Eastern, made a brave but unsuccessful attempt to establish the much desired telegraphic connection across the Atlantic. When 1,186 miles of cable had been passed overboard the strand broke, and its recovery was, for the time being, abandoned. In 1866 Mr. Field reorganized the enterprise under the name of The Anglo-American Telegraph Company, and once more to the Great Eastern the task was assigned to complete the job. The route taken in crossing the Atlantic was about twenty-seven miles north of the line along which the 1865 cable was laid. The cable extended between Foilhommerun Bay, Ireland, and Heart's Content, Newfoundland. The Great Eastern made the trip in fourteen days, sailing 1,909 miles and laying 2,113 miles of cable. This was the first satisfactory cable laid across the Atlantic, and in cable circles July 27, 1866, is known as the date upon which submarine telegraphy became an accomplished fact. The second Atlantic cable was made up of the abandoned section of the 1865 cable spliced to a new section The work was done by the Great Eastern in September 1866.

At the start both of these cables were worked at a speed of six words per minute, but improvements made in terminal apparatus together with increased skill on the part of the operating staff shortly resulted in a speed of seventeen words per minute. In later years the employment of Lord Kelvin's siphon recorder as a receiving instrument, with other improvements ran the speed of cable operation up to forty words per minute. Today a speed of forty-five words per minute simultaneously in each direction over a cable is the ordinary gait, while certain cables which are equipped with electrical amplifiers of recent invention are carrying 135 words per minute.

Going back for a moment to where we left off in the development of land line telegraph systems--the year 1858--the next important period was that of the civil war in the United States. On March 1, 1861, overland telegraph communication was for the first time established between cities on the Atlantic coast and California, and many other lines north, south, east and west were opened to traffic. The Northwestern Telegraph Company erected a line consisting of a Number 8 iron wire between Milwaukee Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota, in the year 1862. At the various points where the wire crossed the Mississippi river watchmen were stationed to lower the wire into the river in order to prevent steamboats from breaking the strand as they passed up or down the river. It was in the year 1863 that the original Morse patents expired. A year later several of the existing independent telegraph concerns combined under the name of the United States Telegraph Company. In 1865 two new telegraph companies entered the field, namely, the Franklin Telegraph Company and the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. In the year 1866 the United States Telegraph Company, together with other independent lines, consolidated with the Western Union Company, and in that year the general offices of the Western Union Company were transferred from Rochester to New York City.

During the period of the civil war the telegraph was used for the first time in this country in military operations. For the first time in history the value of the telegraph to armies in the field was demonstrated during this conflict. Comparing Sherman's operations in 1864 with Napoleon's plans of 1812 to invade Russia, the great benefits of a ready means of instantaneous communication between points remotely separated were evidenced, and it is to the point to observe that owing to antiquated methods of communication it required nearly six months for Napoleon to concentrate a force of 500,000 men to enter Russia via Poland. Lack of an adequate means of communication in advance and to the rear was a handicap which spelled ultimate disaster for the French armies. After 84 days' march and a costly battle, Napoleon entered Moscow, only to find that the country had been laid waste and the city of Moscow burned down. In the face of an approaching winter Napoleon retreated, and, chiefly owing to lack of communications, lost 450,000 men before reaching a base of supplies.

In the year 1864, with thoroughly organized telegraphic communications, General Sherman began his march into Georgia with 100,000 men; within three months he entered Atlanta. Reaching that point, Sherman was able to communicate with the commanding general 1,500 miles away and to plan his march to the sea, where, instead of meeting desolation, he found available plentiful stores and supplies provided for his coming-all through the medium of the telegraph.

During the period of the civil war the financial resources of the country had been so taken up with the prosecution of military undertakings that only a limited amount of new line was constructed. Also, some of the existing trunk lines had not been maintained with a view to coming increase in traffic; and as it developed that during the period of reconstruction the telegraph was used extensively for social and commercial correspondence a situation was presented wherein additional wires would have to be strung over all main routes, or that American genius would forthwith have to invent systems making possible the transmission of more than one message over an individual wire simultaneously. And, as always, American genius met the issue fairly and in a satisfactory degree.

Once more harking back a few years we find that in 1852 Moses G. Farmer, that earnest pioneer philosopher, had conducted experiments with a view to setting up apparatus capable of doubling the capacity of a single wire. Although Farmer did not attain complete success, he went far enough to start others working along the same lines. Experiments with a similar end in view were conducted by Gintl, in Austria, and by Siemens and Halske, in Germany, in the year 1853; also by Stark, in Austria, and Bernstein, in Germany, in 1855. It was not, however, until the year 1868 that a practical method of duplex telegraphy was invented. In that year Mr. Joseph B. Stearns, of Boston, brought out a workable system, which was first placed in service on the lines of the Franklin Telegraph Company between New York and Boston, and a year or two later on the lines of the Western Union Company. The practical application of this invention at once doubled the capacity of all single wires so operated.

It has been stated that "coming events cast their shadows before," and as a momentous event closely related to the needs of the telegraph in the year 1869 it is apropos here to record that it was in that year that Thomas A. Edison-then a youth of twenty-two years-arrived in New York City. In 1872 Mr. Edison invented a chemical automatic high-speed system which made possible the transmission of a greatly increased number of words over a wire in a given time, and a year later Edison and Prescott successfully operated a quadruplex system of telegraphy over a circuit from New York to Boston. This system provided for simultaneous transmission of two messages in each direction over a single wire. American genius had not been found wanting.

The duplex and quadruplex systems have not only been of great value in increasing the capacity of lines for Morse operation, but have been successfully applied in further increasing the line capacity in connection with high-speed automatic telegraphy. The duplex principle forms a part of modern printing telegraph systems, permitting that lines operated as printer circuits may carry one message in each direction at a time simultaneously. In the year 1876 the first underground pneumatic tubes were laid between the main office of the Western Union Company, in New York, and the telegraph office in the Wall Street district, and in 1877 two underground cables 2,200 feet long, with 30 conductors each, were laid in New York City for telegraph purposes. In 1879 Stephen D. Field first employed dynamos for the generation of electricity for telegraph purposes in place of gravity cells, then extensively used for this purpose.

Although the telephone arrived in the year 1876, it was not until twenty years later that telephone service had developed to an extent which made it a competitor of the telegraph to be reckoned with. The rapid increase of telegraph traffic during these years resulted in the telegraph being regarded as a fertile field for investment. Once more there was an epidemic of new telegraph companies, almost as widespread as that prevailing in the early fifties. In 1879 an opposition company entered the field under the name of The Baltimore and Ohio Telegraph Company. In 1884 David Homer Bates, at that time assistant general manager of the Western Union Company, became President of the B. & O. Company. In 1887 this company had a total of 50,978 miles of wire in operation, extending from Maine to Texas by way of New York, Washington, Chicago, and St. Louis. In October, 1887, the B. & O. Company consolidated with the Western Union Company.

In 1879 The American Rapid Telegraph Company was organized with a capital of three million dollars. In 1883 the company had in operation about 15,000 miles of wires; on the trunk lines using the newly invented Foote and Randall high-speed chemical automatic system. The automatic system of operation was early abandoned in favor of Morse instruments, and in the year 1884 the American Rapid Company was absorbed by the Western Union. In 1883 The Mutual Union Telegraph Company was organized with the very modest capital of six hundred thousand dollars. A year later the company's plant was leased to the Western Union for a term of ninety-nine years.

Still another telegraph company was launched in the year 1881, known as the Bankers' and Merchants' Line, with a capital of one million dollars. In September, 1884, this company was declared bankrupt, and in 1885 the property was taken over by The United Lines Telegraph Company, a newly organized concern. The United Lines Company, in turn, within a short time was taken over by the Postal Telegraph--Cable Company (first organized in the year 1881 and reorganized in 1883), which company has remained in the field up to the present time in opposition to the Western Union Telegraph Company. Dropping for a moment the story of land line telegraphs it may be well to revert to the account of the extension of submarine cables which followed the laying of the first successful trans-atlantic cable in the year 1866, previously referred to.

Telegraphic connection between Europe and America was not long left dependent upon the two strands which joined the two continents in the year 1866. Additional cables were laid in the years 1873, 1874, 1880 and 1894, the main sections extending between Ireland and Newfoundland. The 1874 cable was the last cable-laying enterprise in which the famous ship Great Easterly was employed. In 1869 and in 1879 cables were laid between the coasts of France and America. The Commercial Cable Company laid two cables across the Atlantic in I849 one 1894 one in 1905 and one in the year 1901.Two submarine cables were laid between Germany and the United States, one in 1900 and the other in 1904. At the present time (1917) there are seventeen cables in operation between Europe and North America.

It was not until the year 1903 that the Pacific Ocean was spanned by a submarine cable. In that year an all-British cable was laid from a port in the province of British Columbia, Canada, to Australia Also in the year 1903 the Commercial Cable Company laid an all-American cable between San Francisco and the Philippine Islands. In 1906 this cable was extended to Japan and China. In 1866 a cable was laid between Punta Rassa, Florida, and Havana, Cuba, and in 1880 a cable between Galveston, Texas, and Vera Cruz, Mexico. Connection was made with South America in the year 1882 by means of a cable laid between New York and Colon, Panama, thence across the Isthmus and along the west coast of South America. Since that time duplicate cables have been laid along all main routes. At this writing, 1918, there are 290,000 miles of submarine cable in use having been laid at a cost of $300,000,000, and in the waters of the globe forty-six cable steamers are employed in the task of repairing and maintaining these submarine lines.

As a reminder that sending four telegrams over one wire simultaneously, or hooking up two typewriters by a wire five hundred miles long, was not to be the untie mate of telegraphic achievement, in the year 1896 news despatches came over the cable from London announcing that an Italian youth named Marconi had arrived in England with apparatus of his invention which made possible the sending of telegrams over short distances without the need of intervening wires. In the years immediately following 1896 speculation was rife the world over as to whether or not connecting wires and submarine cables were doomed. Although wireless telegraphy has made great strides since 1896, it is apparent that it has developed a field of its own-a field of great and ever expanding usefulness; but, on the other hand, it is a fact that additional land wires are still being erected and additional submarine cables laid.

Wireless telegraphy may truthfully be said to have had its beginning when Clerk Maxwell, the great English physicist, about the year 1864, announced himagnetic theory of light. In the year 1888 Heinrich Hertz, in Germany, reaped the harvest by experimentally proving Maxwell's theories and announcing a method of producing controllable electromagnetic vibrations. In 1891 Branly, in France, discovered a practical method of detecting Hertz' waves at any point in space, and in the year 1894 Oliver Lodge, in England, constructed and exhibited various forms of the Branly detector in action. In Italy, in the year 1895, Marconi experimented with the devices of Hertz and Branly and constructed apparatus capable of telegraphing over short distances without the use of connecting wires. In 1896 Marconi, through the cooperation of Mr. W. H. Preece, chief electrical engineer of the British Post-Office Telegraphs, transmitted signals over a distance of one and three-fourths miles on Salisbury Plain. In March, 1897, a distance of four miles on Salisbury Plain was covered, and on May thirteenth of that year communication was established between Lavernock Point and Brean Down, a distance of eight miles.

In America (1890-1897) many students of science were in touch with the discoveries being made in Europe, and it was during the latter year that the utilitarian American mind first sensed the commercial possibilities of the newly discovered method of transmitting telegraphic signals. In September, 1899, during the International Yacht Races off New York harbor, the steamer Ponce was equipped with radio apparatus by Marconi for the purpose of transmitting reports of the progress of the race. Two receiving stations were equipped; one on the Commercial Cable Company's cable ship Mackay Bennett, stationed near Sandy Hook, and connected with a land line station on shore by means of an ordinary submarine cable; the other at Navesink Highlands. This demonstration, although not highly successful, brought the subject to the fore in this country. In the year 1900 the first Marconi station at Cape Cod, Mass., was built, and a year later the station at Siasconset was completed. The intention was to communicate with ships at sea, later to be equipped with radio apparatus.

The crowning radio event of the year 1901 was the reception by Mr. Marconi, at St. Johns, Newfoundland, of the letter "S," transmitted as a test signal from his English station; this was on December 21, 1901.

Beginning in the year 1902, many improvements in radio apparatus were made by American inventors; notably Dr. Lee De Forest, Prof. R. A. Fessenden, Nikola Tesla, John Stone Stone, and W. W. Massie. When first introduced commercially in this country radio telegraphy was exploited by a number of separate operating and manufacturing companies, and during the first seven or eight years the practices of stock jobbing and of organizing fake companies retarded the development of the new system. However, as was the experience with land line telegraphy, all of these companies which had tangible assets ultimately consolidated with the Marconi Company, the major concern, and by the year 1912 the business had become a commercial reality. High power coastal stations have been erected, which now are capable of spanning the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.

The fact that the World-German war, begun in the summer of the year 1914, necessitated the taking over by the Entente naval authorities of all highpower stations for the purposes of the war temporarily interrupted extensive use of radio for commercial purposes, but is looked upon only as a setback by the operating company. It is predicted that after the termination of the great war radio telegraphy will come into its own, and that a world service will be established which will vigorously compete with existing submarine cable lines. From the present viewpoint there is little probability that radio will in the near future prove a serious competitor of land line telegraph systems. The cable companies, too, regard the extension of radio operation rather as an aid or auxiliary than as an opposition service. In the year 1913 Mr. Edward J. Nally, who had been Vice-President and General Manager of the Postal Telegraph-Cable Company, became General Manager of the American Marconi Company, and from that time onward the management and operation of the radio system passed into the hands of thoroughly trained telegraph executives.

In conclusion, we shall take up the story of land line telegraphy where we left off with it in the year 1883, at the time the reorganized Postal Telegraph-Cable Company entered the field in earnest, under the aggressive management of the late John W. Mackay.

One of the most common remarks made in uninformed circles in reference to the state of the art of telegraphy at the present time is that the telegraph stands today where Morse and his immediate successors left it fifty years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth than this. In fact, it may safely be said that nothing remains of Morse's original work except the sending key and the symbol code, or alphabet. Even the key has during the past fifteen years been used only to a limited extent. Numerous technical improvements have been made in the design and arrangement of apparatus, and the fact that today eighty telegrams per hour are handled over a single outlet where fifteen years ago half that number in the same time was regarded as good performance, and that during the same period the time of transmission of a telegram between cities remotely separated has been reduced at least one-half, cannot but be admitted as convincing evidence that vast improvement has taken place. It should be remembered that toll telephone service was opened for public use between New York and Boston in the year 1887 and between New York and Chicago in 1892; also in other directions and between many other cities prior to and subsequent to the year 1887; but notwithstanding that the telephone has carried an ever increasing volume of long distance traffic, telegraph message traffic has continuously increased to an extent which today taxes to the utmost the carrying capacity of the vast network of lines joining together every village, town, and city of importance in the country. After the disappearance of the "House," "Hughes" and "Phelps" printing telegraph systems in the early days of telegraphy, ordinary Morse operation, with a few scattered Wheatstone circuits, held the field during a period of thirty years. In the year 1907 the Barclay-Bucking ham printing telegraph system was introduced on the lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company and for a number of years thereafter was quite extensively em ployed. In the same year the Postal Telegraph Company experimented with the printing telegraph inventions of Prof. H. A. Rowland. The Rowland was a beautiful and ingenious system capable of transmitting eight telegrams simultaneously over a single wire, the received message being reproduced in typewritten characters in page form. At the expiration of a year or two the system was discontinued by the Postal Company because it was decided that it did not ideally meet existing traffic conditions. Then followed the printer invented by John E. Wright, an old associate of Mr. Edison. The Wright printer permitted the transmission of one message in each direction over a single wire simultaneously. Mechanical difficulties and frequent circuit failures resulted in the printer being returned to the shops for further development about the year 1911. It has not since reappeared in commercial service.

In 1910 Messrs. Krum and Morton introduced a comparatively simple duplex printer system, known as the Morkum, and which at the present time is quite extensively employed on both commercial and railroad telegraph lines. In the year 1909 the American Telegraph and Telephone Company purchased a controlling interest in the Western Union Telegraph Company, with the object of effecting economies which it was thought would ensue from the complementary operation of the lines owned by each company. The combination lasted until January, 1914, when it was dissolved on account of government objection to the continued joint operation of what were considered competing wire systems. The introduction of "night-letter" and "day-letter" service in the year 1911, although quite an innovation in this country, very soon yielded an increase in wire traffic which seriously taxed the existing facilities of both the Postal and Western Union Companies.

The Western Union Company met the situation by developing to a high degree of efficiency a multiplex printing telegraph system based on the patents of Mr. Donald Murray, of London, England, while the Postal Company terminated all contracts for leased wires to brokerage concerns, thus releasing all of their wires for message traffic taken in over the counter. In the year 1871 the number of telegrams handled daily in the main office of the Western Union Company at New York was 3,500. In 1875 this had grown to 35,000 telegrams per day. In the year 1917 approximately 200,000 telegrams daily are handled through this office, and it requires the space of three entire Boors of the big telegraph building at 24 Walker Street to house the apparatus and staff necessary to handle this great volume of traffic. Seating space is provided for 1,025 telegraphers. All of the regular "message" wires extending between New York and Chicago are operated by the printer system, as also are most of the principal direct circuits connecting New York with other large cities north, east, south and west.

The Postal Telegraph-Cable Company also is doing an enormous business throughout the United States. Direct wires are maintained between New York and all cities of importance in this country and in Canada. The company's own cable system supplies rapid fire connections with Europe via the Atlantic, and with China and Japan via the Pacific ocean. At the present time-twenty-five years after toll telephone service was inaugurated between New York City and Chicago -we find that there are about fifty thousand commercial telegraph employees in the United States. This is exclusive of railroad telegraph employees to an almost equal number. There are approximately 250,000 miles of telegraph pole line and 2,000,000 miles of telegraph wire, besides 320,000 miles of wire owned and operated by railroad companies in the United States.

As an illuminating commentary upon the importance to the nation of the telegraph and the telegrapher, it may be pointed out that a few months ago when the registration of the national resources was called for by the President, of the thousands of professions which men practice one of the very few considered in the Registration was: "Are you a telegraph operator?" Verily, as one writer has said:

"The wire is serving. Seventy years ago a portrait painter sat at a clumsy desk in Washington and jiggled a metal tab with nervous finger. In Baltimore an armature clicked, and one understanding its untried speech translated the click into 'What hath God wrought!' That day was born the wire-born a creature of service; born to obliterate space and make the earth a backyard for over-fence chattings between the peoples."

Later on (about 1912) improvements were made in this system. The photograph herewith reproduced shows this equipment as now used. The metropolitan telegraph lines, mostly under ground, are brought into a monitor switchboard resembling somewhat a modern telephone switchboard. Incoming telegraph calls are indicated by miniature red lamps lighting up, and remaining so until the call is answered. On the shelf level of this board is mounted a bank of miniature white lamps, each one being connected by wire to an operator's position somewhere in the main operating room. When an operator is idle the white lamp at the monitor board indicates this condition. The general result, therefore, is that at a given time all illuminated white lamps indicate idle operators and all illuminated red lights unanswered calls. The monitor operators job is to connect idle operators with incoming calls. This system equalizes the load, reduces delays, and constitutes one of the most noticeable differences between the telegraph of today and the telegraph of twenty years ago.

Donald McNicol

Fire Alarm Telegraph and Electric Police Patrol Systems

The suggestion of the possibility of the use of the telegraph for fire alarm purposes came soon after the inauguration of the electromagnetic telegraph by Morse, but the suggestion was not put to practical application for several years.

Dr. W. F. Channing; of Boston, is credited with having first suggested the idea in 1839, when the telegraph itself was still a crude and imperfect means of communication. Dr. Channing had no device or apparatus at that time, but in 1845, in a communication to the Boston Advertiser, he made a much more definite suggestion. He advised that "a central office should be established in some public building, in which the necessary battery, together with a Morse register and an alarm bell, should be located; a double wire to proceed thence over the housetops successively to every engine house and fire bell in the city and return again to complete its circuit to the place from which it started." Under this plan a Morse register in connection with an alarm bell was to be placed in each station thus established, also a key, by the simple depression of which an appropriate signal would be instantly conveyed to every station on the circuit.

Dr. Channing in this article also suggested the modification of having five or six circuits, or even a circuit from every station to the central office. By this method the operator would be able to communicate directly to all the stations, and, if so desired, every alarm of fire might be made to pass through the central office before being communicated to the different stations. Many other modifications of his design were suggested by Dr. Channing, one of which dearly indicates the electromechanical bell striker as follows:

There is, however, one which deserves to be specially mentioned. By a slight change of the arrangement of the alarm bell stations and increase of machinery, the hammers of the bells could all be disposed so as to strike mechanically on the communication of a galvanic impulse from the central office. The agent (operator) would therefore be enabled, by depressing a single key with his finger at certain intervals to ring out an alarm defining the position of the fire simultaneously on every church bell of the city. After stating his ideas of the use of the telegraph for fire-alarm purposes, Dr. Channing urges the municipal authorities of Boston to give his project consideration, and says that as Boston had been much behind other cities in fire-alarm efficiency it would, by the adoption of this system, be placed in advance of them.

But nothing was done in the shape of electrical fire-alarm in Boston until the winter of 1847-1848. L. L. Sadler, superintendent of the Boston and New York telegraph line in a discussion with F. O. J. Smith about the feasibility of using telegraphy for fire alarm purposes, said that an operator in his employ at Framingham, Mass., named Moses G. Farmer, who was the most ingenious man he had ever seen, could without doubt work out a system that would operate effectively. Young Farmer, having the problem placed before him, took about a week to produce an apparatus, based upon electromagnets and the striking mechanism of an old church clock. This was the first machine ever devised and constructed for giving a fire alarm by electric action, and was the starting point of all the subsequent work in that direction. But no early result came from it, though Mayor Quincy of Boston indorsed the apparatus.

Dr. W. F. Channing was still fully possessed with the fire-alarm idea, and in 1851 he succeeded in getting favorable action by the Boston City Council, which voted ten thousand dollars for experimentation in a fire alarm telegraph system. His plan, which was adopted with some modifications, provided for numerous box stations, connected by telegraph circuits with the central office, from which all alarm signals received from the boxes were to be sent out over other circuits to the bell towers, so that the box signals would be simultaneously struck, electrically, by every fire alarm in the city. The system as modified was adopted for thirty-nine signal stations and was carried out, making Boston the pioneer in the regular adoption of an electric fire-alarm system. Professor Farmer, who had invented the first fire-alarm electrical device, became superintendent of the Boston fire-alarm system, serving from 1851 to 1855, and was connected with the department in an advisory capacity until 1859. He and Dr. Channing became associated in the perfecting of the system, and by these two, singly and together, most of the basic patents of the present fire-alarm system were taken out.

Though the Boston system was the first to take permanent root and satisfactory form, it was not the first to use the telegraph as a signal of the existence of fires. The first municipal action taken by any city in. connection with the use of telegraphy by a fire department was taken by the common council of the City of New York in November, 1846, when it authorized the adoption of the Morse magnetic telegraph into the fire service. At a meeting of the engineers and firemen, held a month later, some plans recommended by the chief engineer were approved, and a committee of five was appointed to secure their official adoption. In 1847 a permit was granted to Hugh Downing and Royal E. House, a prominent telegraph inventor, to setup a line of telegraph for fire purposes in various sections of the city, at a cost of five hundred dollars. In 1851 the connection of the bell towers with fire headquarters by telegraph was completed with beneficial results, but the official record shows that it aroused such public curiosity that the entire telegraph apparatus was often put out of service by the tampering fingers of innocent ( but ignorant) visitors. So that nothing permanent resulted, and New York continued the old method with watchmen and bell towers until 1869, four years after the paid fire department had been organized, when the city took up modern electrical fire alarm methods. Outside of the official pioneer efforts, Charles Robertson (who introduced the Morse telegraph system into Germany), had utilized it in New York City in 1850 to aid the fire department in signalling the existence of fires.

The fundamental patent covering the invention of the fire-alarm telegraph, as exemplified by the Boston system, was granted to Dr. W. F. Channing and Moses G. Farmer May 19, 1857, and another patent was issued to them March 8, 1859, for a repeater.

To Farmer alone were issued May 4, 1852, patents for an improved signal box in which the magnets were shunted by the closing of the outside box door, a practice that became a permanent feature of fire alarm telegraph mechanism, and on February 22,1859, he received a patent for an automatic system in which the central office is dispensed with, and the signal boxes and alarm bells are all placed in one circuit; and where, consequently, when an alarm of fire is given, all the bells will strike instantly and simultaneously, without the aid of an operator. This was called the "village system," because especially adapted to small places where the expense of a central office would be prohibitory. Two other patents were issued to Farmer in 1859-one for an "electric-magnetic apparatus for setting water motors in motion," which was applied, for a short time, to operate some of the bell-striking machines of the Boston system in place of weights. The other patent was for "mechanism for operating signal whistles by electromagnetism." In 1856 Charles T. Chester received a patent for "an automatic electric circuit breaker." It included a brake, moved automatically by means of clockwork actuated by a spring. This is notable as the first automatic signal box, and though this identical apparatus never came into public use, it was the forerunner of other devices that were of much value in fire alarm telegraph development.

The late John N. Gamewell, of South Carolina, came into the fire alarm telegraph situation in 1855 through hearing Dr. W. F. Channing deliver a lecture on the subject at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Mr. Gamewell was very much impressed by this exposition of the idea and workings of the system, and he at once entered into negotiations with Messrs. (Channing and Farmer, and secured the right to use their inventions and patents in the Southern States. In 1859 he purchased the rights for the rest of the country. From his first connection with the fire alarm system he devoted his commanding business ability to the advancement and extended use of the fire alarm telegraph system. The original Boston system, installed in 1852, comprised only 19 tower bell strikers and 26 signal stations, and during the year 1854 -two years after the system had been introduced-the number of fire alarms in Boston was only 195. The Boston system, with some improvements, was taken up in Philadelphia in 1855, and St. Louis closed a contract in 1856, though the plant there was not in use until early in 1858. The cities of New Orleans and Baltimore adopted the system in 1860, but further development was seriously arrested by the outbreak of the Civil War. After the close of the war Mr. Gamewell organized the Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph Company, and devoted much vigor to the extension of the system. When Mr. Gamewell purchased the Channing-Farmer patents he enlisted the cooperation of men of noteworthy inventive genius and great mechanical skill. Three of these were Edwin Rogers, James M. Gardiner and Moses G. Crane, who, by their inventions, made marked impress upon the progress of the fire alarm telegraph.

Edwin Rogers was the inventor who devised the new features of the first fire alarm system equipped with automatic signal boxes, which was introduced into the city of Mobile in 1866. It differed from Farmer's village system, which placed all the apparatus in one circuit, by providing four circuits, which was a novel feature, and for which Mr. Rogers invented a new apparatus which automatically transferred a signal from any one circuit to every other circuit, and would mechanically close every other circuit should any one circuit remain open. Mr. Rogers received a patent for the first automatic repeater for fire alarm purposes in 1870.

At Boston the original crank-operated signal boxes of 1852 remained until 1866, when they were replaced by automatic boxes. Joseph B. Stearns, who succeeded Farmer as superintendent of the Boston fire-alarm telegraph, received a patent for an apparatus operated by "reverse currents," which permitted the simultaneous use of the same wire for receiving a signal from a box and transmitting it to the alarm bells. For the proper working of this system it was necessary that the person turning in the alarm should, as the directions read, "pull the hook down once and let go." Where this was done the proper box number appeared at the central station indicator. But quite often the numbers turned in were unintelligible or erroneous, and this was long a mystery to the management. But it was finally discovered that the person signalling would frequently ignore the letter of the directions and would give one or more extra pulls by way of emphasis, and thus cause the trouble. Two patents to remedy this condition were issued: one to Stephen and Charles T. Chester, and the other to Edwin Rogers and Moses T. Crane.

Other interferences came from simultaneous alarms from several boxes on the same circuit. The first patent for a non-interference box was issued to Mr. Gamewell in 1871, and an improvement greatly enhancing its efficiency was patented by J. M. Gardiner in 1880. All of the devices were improved from time to time as working defects called for remedies. In the early installations the Grove cell was used to furnish the electric energy, but it was succeeded by the much more satisfactory Daniell cell, which was used until the Callaud or gravity cell was introduced in 1871, and soon supplanted all previously used types of cells. Since then the storage battery has taken the place of the gravity cells, and in the larger plants the dynamo has been applied to the purpose. The first to be thus equipped was Boston, about 1892, first for a single circuit, but soon after for the entire plant.

Even in its earliest applications the fire alarm telegraph possessed such manifest advantages over the old tower and watchman system that it would seem natural that its adoption should follow rapidly upon its first experimental demonstrations. But even after the Civil War conservatism anal the devious ways of municipal politics retarded its adoption. The strongest opposition came from the volunteer fire departments which, in the larger cities, were made up of groups of local organizations that were in fact political clubs, each headed or controlled by a local boss. As the fire alarm telegraph, to reach a high degree of usefulness, needed behind it a paid fire department, strongly organized and coordinated upon a basis of complete efficiency, machine politicians saw in its adoption a blow at the volunteer companies which were such a strong factor in party strength. Therefore the system was not adopted until 1869 in New York, though it had been in successful operation for seventeen years before that date in Boston. Most of the other cities lagged behind, for even in 1871 only twenty cities had adopted the fire alarm telegraph.

After that date, however, the system spread with great rapidity, and there were seventy-five cities using it in 1875. Following that year was a steadily expanding appreciation of things electrical, including the fire alarm telegraph, so that at the beginning of the Twentieth Century there was scarcely a city of ten thousand or more inhabitants that had not installed the fire alarm telegraph as a prominent feature of its fire protection programme, and many of even smaller population had adopted it also.

An improvement in signal boxes was introduced by Mr. Tooker, of Chicago, in 1875. Before that, delays had been frequent in transmitting alarms because the key to open the box could not be found on the instant. The Tooker keyless door was intended to deter malicious persons from sending in false alarms or otherwise interfering with the apparatus. The door was opened by the turning of a handle, which wound up a spring, thus setting in motion the mechanism by which a local alarm was sounded on a small gong within a box. The person using the Tooker device, having turned the handle of the door and heard the local alarm, often thought he had done all that was necessary, and would walk away without pulling the hook that sent in the signal to "central," so that the vital part of the signal was omitted. The next step in the development of the idea was the invention made by M. H. Suren in 1895. In the operation of this invention it was only necessary that the handle of the door should be turned, whereupon the bell rang and the alarm was transmitted to the central office without even opening the door of the box. A similar development is seen in the device patented by J. J. Ruddick in 1889, by means of which the boxes, besides being non-interfering, are made to succeed each other, each in turn sending in its own definite signal, even if three or four boxes on the same circuit are pulled at the same time.

Mention has been made of Edwin Rogers' automatic repeater, invented in 1870 as an improvement on Farmer's village system, which made it practicable to strike all the bells and gongs of a fire alarm system directly from one street signal box without the intervention of an operator at the central office. John P. Barrett, then superintendent of the fire alarm telegraph of the City of Chicago, invented in 1876 a device known as the joker which carried the valuable idea of the Farmer System into a new application and gave its benefits to large central station systems. By Leans of the Barrett invention alarms can he sent directly from a signal box to the fire companies whose duty it is to respond first, and this, in combination with the automatic repeater, was found to be an improvement of very great value in city fire alarm work. In central stations of the fire alarm telegraph there have been many improvements to make the system more and more efficient. The electromechanical indicator, which was first introduced in 1875, is a general feature of the fire engine house, and as electrical art has progressed new and ingenious devices have been introduced to render more responsive and to speed up the operations of the fire fighting force.

There has been a continuous development of the use of the telephone for fire alarm purposes. Its efficiency for that purpose is very great in reporting fires in the business district or in the better residence sections, where the telephone is in general use, but in the poorer tenement sections, where telephones are few and inaccessible, the automatic fire alarm box, usually easily distinguished by the poles and boxes being painted red, is the main fire alarm resource. Like other matters of electrical application, the fire alarm telegraph has been subject to constant innovation and improvement. New conditions of service have called for these advances, and while the system in use in the fire-protected cities of the United States are greatly varied, some cities finding the old equipment sufficient for their needs, others have found new methods necessary. In New York City, and especially in the Borough of Manhattan, where the main streets are underlaid by the wires of many circuits of various voltages, some of high tension, which were detrimental to the proper working of the fire alarm telegraph lines in the old fire department subway, it was found necessary to install a new modern fire alarm system for the island of Manhattan.

The matter had been long contemplated and in 1907 the need in this direction was investigated by J. J. Carty and Kempster B. Miller, who reported a preliminary plan and stated the engineering principles which should govern the new installation. The matter did not reach definite action until 1915, when a report was made to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment by Robert Adamson, fire commissioner, and Putnam A. Bates, electrical engineer. Under the new plan the fire department discontinued the use for fire alarm purposes of the old fire department subways and also the high-tension subways of the Consolidated Electrical Telegraph and Subway Company, confining the fire alarm cables to the low-tension system of subways to be supplied by the Empire City Subway Company, thereby eliminating, as far as existing conditions make it practicable to do so, the possibility of contact between conductors of the fire alarm system and foreign circuits containing dangerous voltages. This project utilized such parts of recent construction as were adapted to the new system, and supplied the remainder by new construction. Thus was introduced into the Borough of Manhattan an entirely new fire alarm system, modern in every respect, including the cables, fire alarm boxes, and a new fireproof central station in Central Park.

Under this plan only ten street boxes are attached to any single circuit. Each fire house is connected with the central office by circuits wholly independent of the alarm-box circuits, a maximum of four companies being connected on any one of these circuits. Fire alarms are sent to the new central headquarters from the street boxes, and are thence transmitted to the fire house over the central office circuit. Provision is made by means of independent circuits for notifying independently the chief of the department, his under chiefs, all fire-boat stations and the Insurance Patrol, so that they shall receive all alarms of fire at all hours. In this latter system is included a connection with the high pressure pumping stations, the Edison Company's waterside power station, which furnishes the current for the pressure pumping, and police headquarters. Wires in the feeder cables provide direct connections with fire headquarters in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. Public schools, hospitals and other similar buildings are also connected with the street-box system, each such building having one box assigned to it.

Auxiliary systems of fire alarm telegraph, installed in convenient places in buildings, are important as fire-prevention aids. Boxes are placed in schools, for instance, near the teachers' desks. The box has a pane of glass in front which, in case of fire, is broken and a ring inside pulled down. This action operates a trip in the nearest street box and causes an alarm to be sent to fire headquarters. Such an auxiliary circuit has a special battery and is not connected electrically with the regular circuits of the fire alarm system. Still another class of fire alarm telegraph apparatus is that known as the thermostatic group. In this the materials or mechanism of the thermostats are so sensitive to high temperatures that when a certain degree of heat is reached the circuit is closed and an alarm is automatically turned in. There are many applications of this principle, but one of the most widely known and most popular, particularly in textile factory districts where it has become a feature of insurance economy through "factory mutual" insurance organizations, is the combination of the automatic sprinkler with the thermostatic alarm. The same idea has also been applied to many stores and warehouses in the cities.

In connection with the efficiency of automatic fire alarms, the National Fire Protective Association has gathered some valuable statistics which give insight into the progressive efficiency of fire alarm service for the fifteen years from 1897 to 1911 inclusive. It was shown that where the protection was by watchmen alone there were failures in 10 per cent of the cases; by sprinkler alarm alone, 7 per cent of failures, and thermostats alone 21 per cent of failures. But in the later years of that period the thermostats made great improvement in efficiency, and in the year 1911 proved 100 per cent efficient. This increase of efficiency for thermostats, as compared with their earlier records, is because prior to 1905 very few automatic alarm systems were connected with centralstations except in a few cities. Most installations were without either connection or supervision an operating company, hence both maintenance and service were often deficient. Only systems operating through a central station are now approved by the National Board of Fire Underwriters. Variations in interior fire alarm apparatus have to be sometimes made to adapt them to the legislation of particular states, and thus there is a special form of such apparatus to operate on the 110-volt direct-current underground circuits in New York City.

Installations of automatic fire alarm systems are now largely confined to city buildings, where the system is connected with a central station-operated by an alarm company-which, in turn, transmits the alarm to the Fire Department. The installation of thermostats in outlying or country risks has not generally proved satisfactory, owing principally to poor inspection and maintenance, rather than defects in mechanism. The automatic systems which, installed and operated under present underwriters' rules, afford the most complete protection are those which combine the automatic thermostatic alarm with the automatic sprinkler system, thus extinguishing or at least retarding the progress of the fire, while giving effective alarm to bring assistance from the fire department. In the various applications of electricity to the work of fire alarm the world's most useful servant, electricity, has brought great and increasing efficiency and has saved vast numbers of lives and untold millions of dollars' worth of property.

Electric Police Patrol Systems

When the telegraph was introduced into use and had demonstrated its practicability, those charged with the administration of law connected with the detection and suppression of crime saw at once that it had great possibilities as a police aid. In fact, one of the earliest instances of the use of the telegraph in England-and that which did most to direct public attention to it at that time-was the forwarding from one city to another of a telegram describing an escaped murderer, who was promptly arrested by means of the assistance thus given.

American cities soon adopted the practice of enlisting telegraph operators as members of the police force, to transmit messages and receive signals over wires connected with the police stations in the various precincts. The usefulness of the telegraph was restricted by the fact that signals were based upon Morse Telegraphy with the use of the key and sounder, as that would require a large and expensive staff of operators. In 1858 a dial telegraph was made by the firm of Charles T. and J. N. Chester for the New York City Police Department, and the same device was soon afterward adopted by the City of Philadelphia. This system substituted for the Morse key and sounder an electrical apparatus, with a keyboard something like that of the typewriter, and enabled a message to be sent directly in letters of the alphabet, thus avoiding the necessity of translating them into dots and dashes and then having them translated back again. But even this work required a certain degree of technical efficiency in manipulation that few acquired, and except certain communications that could be made by a few short signals. Thus the telegraph, while in many ways a great help to the police, had severe limitations on its usefulness.

The invention of the telephone, therefore was a great boon to police administration, and in 1880 John P. Barrett, whose previous position as superintendent of the fire alarm telegraph of Chicago had been enlarged to that of superintendent of the city electrical department, introduced the combination of telegraph and telephone as an auxiliary to the police force. In the exhaustive census report on "Electrical Industries, 1902," edited by Thomas Comerford Martin and published by the Government Census Bureau in 1906, the early history of this combined system is briefly epitomized, as follows:

"The system was first installed in one of the most turbulent districts of the city, and at once increased tremendously the efficiency of the force, chiefly in the way of making a rapid concentration at any troubled point. Its success was so rapid that by 1893 no fewer than one thousand street stations had been installed all over Chicago, and in addition several hundred private boxes had been put in, giving instant communication, at any hour of the day or night, with all the stations of every precinct. Since that time the idea has been carried even farther in various ways, not only in Chicago, but in other cities. Milwaukee was the second city to adopt the police telephone booth, the installation being made in 1883. Brooklyn followed in February, 1884, with many improvements, which appear to have been made there for the first time. Upon the suggestion of Frank C. Mason, superintendent of the police telephone bureau, iron boxes, similar to those employed in fire alarm telegraphy, were used instead of the unsightly booth. Philadelphia, however, adhered to the booth, introducing it in July, 1884. Since that time the system has been extended year by year, and some of the more modern street boxes have been introduced."

"The private boxes placed in residences, banks, hotels, etc., enable the persons using them to call up the police at any time by simply turning in an alarm, by pulling the lever or handle attached to the box, so that upon arrival the police can immediately let themselves in and proceed to business. Each night the renter of the alarm box can make a test of the system, an answering ring showing the line to be in working order; in the same way, after an alarm has been sent in, a return tap signal of the bell gives assurance that the call has been heard and will be attended to immediately."

Police patrol systems continue many features of this original system, the signal box being provided with a telephone, by means of which patrolmen can communicate with police headquarters. But various other devices for signalling and telegraph purposes have been invented and are in use in various cities. Through one type of box the patrolman advises the central office of his being on duty by opening the box with a special key, thus transmitting the number of the box, which, with the time, is recorded automatically upon a slip of paper by an electric time stamp. These signals are transmitted at a higher rate than fire alarm signals, for the reason that no heavy apparatus, such as a gong, is used. They work upon a principle similar to that of a watchman's automatic registering system, being received at the central office without the intervention of an operator. The mechanism of the box is such that when a signal requiring immediate attention is sent in, a local circuit is closed by a bell magnet, thus calling special attention to the incoming signal, and various other modifications are made to suit the various conditions and emergencies.

Of a late type are the seven call boxes recently installed for the police signal system of the city of Winnepeg, Man. There are two distinct circuits brought to each box-one a telephone circuit and the other the signal or telegraph circuit. The telephone instrument is an ordinary common batterybridging set, the transmitter being mounted on the inner door. Included in the signal circuit and within the box is an electromechanical mechanism actuated either by turning a key in a special keyhole in the outer door, or (after opening the outer door) by pulling a lever. Either operation automatically transmits a number of impulses, giving the number of the box and the patrol wagon signal. As this is the most urgent signal, no other act is necessary to secure this aid. There is also a movable pointer, normally set at wagon position, and automatically returning to that position, after having been used at any other position. By its means it is possible to transmit automatically a fire or ambulance call, or the patrolman's report signals, three of which are separately designated. There is also wired into this circuit, but not exposed to the patrolman, a single stroke bell enabling the officer to know whether the line is already in use a telegraph key for inspector's trouble signals, and automatic cutouts that operate upon the closing of the outer door. The mechanism is very accurate and speedy, and represents the great advance made in such signalling service as the result of modern invention.

Source: http://www.cif.rochester.edu/~lula/elec/2.html

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