chanical accuracy. It has been received at equal speed, and in such shape that it has become, if necessary, a matter of record. It has been reduced to typewriting at a speed unknown by the ordinary sound-operator, taking the message by ear-and it is delivered.

Just what has it cost? If the sender has ordered its delivery by mail, $5. If he has ordered its delivery by messenger, $5.13!

As a process, it is a bit startling. As a reality, it is very much in existence. As an actual servant of that big quantity termed the general public, it is not yet doing its work; but as regards the Telepost that "not yet" is a term certain of early extinction. The system of machinemade telegrams has come to stay and to grow and to demonstrate the fact that the Morse key, the si, hard-labor, handsent message and unreliable "wire"

are things of the past.

Rapid automatic telegraphy is not a brand-new idea. Systems have risenand died. In one instance, a persevering worker came so near to success that, with all conditions favorable for the test, it

With the right of operating over a line of telegraph wires secured, with the system installed, the Telepost put in one year of continuous daily operation, through through every variety of variety of inimical weather, through a winter, too, of much more than ordinary severity. And when the year was over, the inventor remained altogether triumphant! His claims had been justified. He had met and conquered the obstacles that had hitherto proved baffling, that had prevented the efficiency of every previous system. The static energy of the line was working, not against him, but for him!

And the practical working speed of 1,000 words per minute for the Telepost,

was possible to send 1,000 words per minute. But there was one element beyond control of the earlier inventors and operators-the residual magnetism or "static force" stored in the telegraph wire

wholly undisturbed by "vagrant currents," utterly unannoyed by any outside electrical influences, was a happily established fact!

For a brief glance at the actual work

ing of the Telepost system, we can do little better than quote the following description:

"Messages are sent by means of a perforated tape. . . . The tape is drawn through the perforating machine at any desired speed under a pair of steel punches. Each of these punches is operated by a magnet. The magnets are controlled by the usual Morse transmitting key. A downward stroke of the key causes one of the punches to operate, and upon release of the key the other punch operates. Thus, each operation of the

THE TRANSMITTER.

key, whether for dot or dash, serves to make two perforations of the tape, one near the upper edge and the other near the lower edge of the tape. The primary and secondary perforations have an angular relation to each other which is due to the fact that the tape is constantly running, and which varies with the interval of time between the downward stroke and the release of the key.

"When a message has been perforated in the tape, the latter is passed through the transmitting machine. Here the primary perforations co-operate with suitable mechanism to send positive electric impulses through the line, while the secondary perforations permit the passage of negative electric impulses.

"The perforated tape at the transmitting end passes between two primary contact fingers and two secondary contact fingers. When the primary fingers make a contact through the perforations of the tape, they send a positive impulse over the line. This impulse is followed at the proper interval by the negative impulse,

by contact of the fingers through the secondary perforations.

"The signal or impulse is electrolytically recorded at the receiving end on a chemically prepared tape, by means of an iron electrode connected with the line and a platinum electrode connected with earth. The current passing through the chemical tape from the iron electrode to the platinum electrode, forms a blue mark on the tape at the point of the contact finger."

All of which is doubtless quite true; and also reasonably confusing to the lay mind. A bird's eye view of the actual working of the Telepost system may be of more immediate interest.

For a beginning, the sending tape may be perforated in two ways.

The Morse key may be connected with the perforator and the message ticked off in the usual manner. The average working speed of the average Morse operator is from fifteen to twenty words per minute, and somewhat higher in the case of exceptionally expert operators; and under the best of previous systems no more than four messages could be run simultaneously over the same line. If, with the Telepost system, a steady working average of 1,000 words may be maintained -and on occasions 5,000 words may be sent-how many Morse operators would be required to run a Telepost line to its full capacity from morning till night? It's worthy of pencil and paper.

Again, as noted above, the perforation may be better accomplished by the keyboard perforator. This ingenious contrivance enables anyone acquainted with the letters of the English language to send messages in Morse with absolute accuracy and, after a very little practice, with a speed far beyond that of the key.

Another application of the keyboard perforator is found in the keyboard transmitter, through which agency one may sit before the conventional typewriter keys and send Morse for reception by sound at a speed far in excess of that

possible by the ordinary Morse key. As concerns the receiving end of the service, the chemically prepared tape is not altogether alone. It is the startling, the high speed method, but there are others.

For one thing, tape transmission may be slowed down from the thousand-word pace and be received by ear by the ordinary Morse operator at the small station where business would not warrant the full equipment.

For another and this chiefly where it is desirable to send matter for re-transmission to a number of other points-it is perfectly possible to receive the message at the other end in the form of perforated tape once more. By means of the automatic tape duplicator, a perforated message may be reproduced as easily a thousand miles away from the operator as within ten inches of his elbow, and from there be re-sent to fifty different points.

So that the applications of the system, and the many transpositions of which it is capable are varied and broad-and too numerous to receive adequate attention in the scope of an article such as this. Of all of them, the lightning-like sending of words, the cyclonic automatic reception of the message on the chemical tape, are by all odds the most fascinating.

Let us see just what this rapid-fire business is going to accomplish.

For point the first, let us take a strictly American one: the Telepost is a money saver all around. That, naturally, means a money-maker. It has been estimated that the average charge of the older telegraph companies for a ten word message is thirty-one cents. The charge for a fifty word Telepost-delivered by mailor a twenty-five word telegram, delivered by messenger, is twenty-five cents between any two stations in the United States. In other words, the plain citizen may do either five or ten times the amount of telegraphing for several cents less. There seems to be a radical difference between the dollars-and-cents aspect of the old order and the new.

We are a hurrying nation, too, if one ever existed. We seem to be hurrying just a little faster with each succeeding year, and the Telepost chimes in neatly with the spirit of the times. Con

sider the feat of reeling off an entire newspaper page of news matter in a space of ten small minutes-and side by side consider the time that would be required by the fifteen-words-a-minute to accomplish the same amount of work. Again, on the speed side of the case, consider the actual fact of fifty dispatchers working at one end of a single Telepost wire, and fifty typewriters working at the other end over the transcribing of wired messages-and the line not overcrowded!

But

On the count of accuracy, we findsimple perfection. Machines are rarely guilty of mistakes; the Telepost mechanism itself is incapable of them. the perforating is done by human agency, you say? And the ordinary human is fully capable of all sorts of mistakes? Perhaps. But whether the tape be perforated by means of the extremely facile keyboard or by the conventional Morse key, the perforations are a matter of record. Let the errors of the careless operator occur, if they must; they are all neatly imprinted upon his tape-and careful manipulators of the typewriter keyboard are not difficult of discovery when we desire to replace the erring one.

Let us suppose that a message of high importance is to be sped across the continent, and that any violation of complete secrecy may entail a loss of thousands of dollars. The message tape is perforated in the firm's own office by the firm's own operator on the firm's own Telepost perforating machine. It is sent on the reel to the Telepost station. It is dispatched to the other end in a half dozen minutes. The original perforated message is returned to the firm's office by their own messenger, after he has watched the words whizz to their destination. The record at the other end, by this time, has been sent intact to the recipient for private transcription. And while the entire message has passed, and in such shape that it may be referred to, fifty years later, not a soul connected with the telegraph company need have the vaguest idea of what has traveled over the wire!

The system requires no special accommodation of any kind. It may be employed over any telephone circuit, without interfering in the slightest with whatever conversation may be passing over the wire.

A

NEW coastal canal is to slice off a strip of our Atlantic shore from Chesapeake bay south to Beaufort inlet. Its course is by way of the natural waterways of Albemarle, Pamlico, Croatan and, perhaps, Core sounds, and such other natural rivers, bays and inlets as may be available. And it is to pinch out a row of the most dangerous sea-miles known to our coast trade. A glance at the map will show in what way this is to be done.

The project as it now stands will start from the head of the southern branch of Elizabeth river, at Norfolk, Va., and will go either through the route of the present Albemarle and Chesapeake canal, or through a new canal to be cut, known as the Cooper creek route. The two routes are so near

ly alike in engineering featuresthat is, the good points of one are so nearly balanced by the bad points of the other, and vice versa, that the board of Engineers having the matter in charge, under Congress, have advised that cost of construction be the deciding factor, and the Albemarle and Chesapeake canal route is therefore chosen. But the hitch

comes in the purchase of this canal. The owners refuse to say what they will sell it for. Naturally, they want the best possible price. So the engineer board has determined its value, not as a property earning money, but by its value to the project. The final decision is that, if the canal can be purchased for half a million dollars, its use will be economical-if it cannot be purchased for that amount, then the Cooper creek canal should be dug.

The project is of enormous concern to the whole maritime world, and particularly to the coastwise trade. As things are at present, the only route south or north is past capes Lookout and Hatteras, the former bad enough, the latter the terror of the mariner-the Diamond Shoals, the "Grave

.

yard of the Atlantic," being so feared by sailors that, comparatively speaking, there is no coastwise trade up and down this stretch of coast, except by steam vessels. For a few days in the year, Hatteras smiles. The rest of the time, contrary cross currents, shifting sands, terrible and destructive winds, raise havoc with anything within their reach. As for barge towing, for freight, it is hardly thought of ten months in the year and the rest of the time essayed with fear and trembling

the Atlantic. Thus, securely land-locked, ships elude the dangerous capes.

Aside from the saving to the vessels of the coastwise trade the dangers of navigation they now encounter, the project will foster and build up a class of coast trade which now does not exist. From the south and from the north, heavy freighting in small quantities is done by rail. Anything but an iron. steamship-full is sent by rail. Lumber, cotton, iron, machinery, and such heavy freights have to go by land. But, if the inland passage is constructed, dozens of small firms, operating from one to a hundred barges, towed by tugs, will come into the field. It takes but little money to start a barge line, and the start can be made small and the business grow with increase of trade. Competition and water freights mean cheaper produce. The railroads are not opposed to the scheme, for the reason that they make more money on lighter classes of freight, and have now more business than they can handle. The sentiment seems to be in favor of shunting off the heavy, profitless freight, to the sea, and using the cars for staples of lighter and more expensive character.

OCEAN

THE PROPOSED ROUTES OF THE
NEW CANAL.

Owing to the cheaper cost of building, the North river route has been recommended by engineers.

and often loss of property and life.

But its national aspect, bulking large as it does to the unprejudiced eye, is not the part of the scheme which North Carolina sees, as much as the enormous help it will be to her, individually.. For all the eastern part of the state, with some of

The new inland waterway will avoid the two capes, and all their dangers. Starting at Norfolk, a sailing vessel, a barge, a string of barges, a steamer, too small for the outside passageanything that floats and does not draw too deeply can go through the river, the canal, into Currytuck sound or, by way of Pasquatank river into Albemarle sound, according to which route is finally adopted; thence into Pamlico sound and finally, by way of Neuse river and a short canal, into Bogue sound and out Beaufort inlet into