Transactions of the Liverpool engineering society Volume 20 - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 Excerpt: ...over Delany's Multiplex instrument, and again paid £2000 a year Royalty. Earlier than that, in 1882, an American (Steam) brought over a new working Duplex arrangement, and we paid him about £1600 a year, so that we were willing to pay nearly £6000 a year to outsiders for improvements, but more improvements were made by the Officers of the Department without any payment at all. Another great improvement has been effected. Take, for instance, the circuit from London to Aberdeen fitted with the Wheatstone apparatus. If you had this one wire about 600 miles long, you would be able to transmit not more than 40 words a minute, but by inserting at intermediate points separated from each other about 200 miles, say at Leeds and Edinburgh, we are able to transmit from London to Aberdeen 600 words per minute, and we daily transmit 400, which is quite sufficient for our purpose. This matter of repeaters is another great unpaid improvement. This Wheatstone apparatus that I refer to is the making of our provincial press. The provincial press, especially the evening papers, are supported entirely by this Wheatstone apparatus. There are in the country 34 news circuits, and there is not a town where a daily paper is published that cannot--every morning on the breakfast table of every one of the subscribers--give verbatim reports of the House of Commons' debates, and the latest news from all parts of the world. This is done at great loss by the Post Office, and the only reward we get is splendid abuse. I will take next the question of telephony. In 1877 I went over to America and brought the first pair of practical telephones over to this country. The progress of telephony in this country has been a chequered one. There has been a muddle somewhere. It has not ...