The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-07-31 00:00:00

" LETTER- TELEGRAMS."

It would appear from some recently issued statistics
of the French telegraph service that the system of
closed or letter telegrams, described to, and, we be-
lieve, recommended by, the Playfair Select Committee
on the telegraphs of this country, is already largely
in use in Paris (says The Times of Tuesday). This
method of communication consists in blowing the
telegram paper itself through a pneumatic tube, in-
stead of manipulating its contents verbally along the
telegraphic wire; and it appears that the pneumatic
system at present at work in Paris has a total length
of 77,600 metres, and that it is worked from six
stations, at which are located steam-engines having a
total power of 153 horses, besides six water-motors.
The servcie comprises a main system with double line,
at which terminate seven supplementary systems with
branches, trains running every three minutes on the
main system and every five minutes on the supple-
mentary ystems.

There are thirty-seven offices, or stations, situated
within the limits of the old octroi, while nine other
offices within these limits also take part in the service,
the transmission and delivery of telegram-cards being
accomplished through the medium of the nearest
pneumatic office or station.
The system was introduced on the Ist of May, 1879,
with a tariff of 50 centimes for open telegram-cards,
and 75 centimes for closed messages; while a prepaid
reply card, introduced in April of the present year
was charged one franc. These rates have since been
reduced to 30 centimes for the open cards, 50 centimes
for the closed cards, and 60 centimes for a card with a
prepaid reply form attached; so that it would now
seem to be possible to communicate from one part of
Paris to another and receive a reply back for little
more than half-a-franc, or about one-fourth of the cost
of an ordinary telegraphed message in London.
The extent to which the pneumatic service is used
in Paris may be judged from the fact that something
approachiag 400,000 despatches of all kinds pass over
the system every month, with the certainty of a large
increase when the reduced tariff has come into full
operation. Nor is the system—extensive as it wowld
seem to be for so compact a city as Paris—anything
like so complete as the authorities desire to make it.
For it appears that the Minister of Posts and Tele-
graphs proposes to extend it to the Communes annexed
to Paris in 1860 at a total expenditure of nearly two
millions of franca, and that such comparatively
distant points as Grenelle, Montrouge, Gobelins, and
Bercy, will eventually be included in the pneumatic
service of the French capital,
The advantages of this system as described to the
Playfair Select Committee are that the sender of a
message does all the clerical work connected with it
even down to addressing the envelope, and that it com-
bines complete secresy with absolute freedom from error
in transmission. In fact the pneumatic despatch is
simply a letter blown or sucked through a leaden or
iron tube instead of being forwarded in the ordinary
Post-office letter-bag—the difference in the services
being that the one is rapid and continuous, while the
other is slow and intermittent.