A bit like our fax machines, this telegraph could send letters miles in a few minutes.
“An opportunity was afforded us on Saturday (says the Standard) of witnessing the practical application of Mr. Brett’s electric printing telegraph, at the office of the company in Parliament-street. This telegraph has for some time past been regularly worked in America, communications having been regularly made by it between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, a distance of 300 miles, with the most extraordinary accuracy and celerity. It is stated that the message of the Governor to the Legislature of New York, delivered in Albany on the 7th January, consisting of two columns and a half of solid nonpareil type (the kind of type in which the police records in this paper are printed), was published in the city of New York two hours after its delivery, having been transmitted sentence by sentence by the telegraph in question. The apparatus is as follows:- -At one extremity of the line is fixed a small box containing a row of keys (similar to those of a pianoforte), and marked with the letters of the alphabet, which is connected by a single wire to a printing machine at the other extremity, containing a wheel, having on its circumferences corresponding letters of the type wheel prints, and the alarm-bell rings at the other. The communications are printed on a scroll of paper of unlimited length, from which any portion of the correspondence may be cut off at pleasure. The experiments on Saturday last were very satisfactory; and proof was given that between 80 and 90 letters could be impressed with ease in a single minute upon the recipient paper, while the consecutive letters of the alphabet were even taken down in so short a time as eleven seconds! The appearance of the typography is clean, but the lines are slightly irregular. It is, however, beautifully clear and legible, and whatever defects there may be on the score of symmetry may, no doubt, be easily removed by a little mechanical consideration. The advantages which this telegraph enjoys over all others are too obvious to need mentioning. Correspondence can be transmitted from place to place, no matter the extent of distance, copies of which may be simultaneously secured at all the intermediate stations, and printed news thus fly over the surface of the land with the incomprehensible velocity of lightening.
In a letter addressed to Sir Robert Peel, in July 1845, by Mr. Brett, the attention of the Government was invited to the following proposals: – 1st. The immediate communication of orders and dispatches to all parts of the empire, and the instant return of answers to the same from the seats of local government, &c., all delivered in an unerring and printed form. 2d. A general telegraphic post-office system, uniting the chief and branch offices in London in connexion with all the offices throughout the kingdom, for transmitting messages of business, &c., from merchants, brokers, tradesmen, and police, military, and naval arrangements. That the invention contains within itself these and other advantages cannot for a moment be questioned; and it can hardly be doubted that, before long, the British public will more of less be in possession of them. Mr. Brett is likewise the originator and patentee of an oceanic line upon the same principle, which he affirms to be equally simple and practicable. – Times.”
The Stamford Mercury, 9th April, 1847.