Читать книгу The American Electro Magnetic Telegraph. With the Reports of Congress, and a Description of All Telegraphs Known, Employing Electricity or Galvanism онлайн

27 страница из 28

During the period of thirteen years, many plans have been devised by the inventor to bring the telegraphic alphabet to its simplest form. The plan of using the common letters of the alphabet, twenty-six in number, with twenty-six wires, one wire to each letter, has received its due share of his time and thought. Other modes of using the common letters of the alphabet, with a single wire, has also been under his consideration. Plans of using two, three, four, five and six wires to one registering machine, have, in their turn, received proportionate study and deliberation. But these, and many other plans, after much care and many experiments, have been discarded; he being satisfied that they do not possess that essential element, simplicity, which belongs to his original first thought, and the one which he has adopted. A detailed account of these various plans with fewer or more wires, might be given here, but it will suffice merely to present the alphabet adapted to a register, using 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 wires, with a separate pen to each wire capable of working together, or in any succession. It is obvious that every additional pen will give an additional element to increase the combination, and were there any real advantage in such an arrangement it would have been adopted long since.