The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-11-05 00:00:00

AL T
heading"
artielt
of

ELEGRAPH SYSTE.
Under the h, A Walk through the Post Office,'
Standard has an le, from which we make the folio\
extracts :
In the heart . London stands a building which
some peoplesay covers,the area of an old City Parish.
From its air of peaceful repose it seems to contrast
strangely with its iisurroundingp ; inside, however, it is
filled with life, activity, and bustle to which the traffic
of the streets seems quietness itself. This is the
Central Office of the Postal Telegraphiciaystem ; and
as most people seem to think that a letter or telegram
when once handed in reaches its destination automa-
tically, and seldom bestow a thought upon the mar-
vellous organisation by which the transmission is
effected, it may not be amiss to give a sketch of what
- - 1_ a

THE POST

, on inside the two
..awcett so ably presides.
The building in which the work of the Central
Telegraphic Department is carried on was only com-
pleted in 1876, but it is already found to be too small
for its rapidly increasing business. •It is, sntd'speal,
the centre of the system of electric nerves with which
the country is furnished, messages from all parts of
the United Kingdom and abroad passing through it.
On entering the central hall a strange sight presents
itself accompanied by still stranger sounds; an im-
mense number of young men and women are busily
engaged at various forms of telegraph instruments, the
latter of which ring out an almost deafening clatter.
The full staff of operators consists of about fifteen
hundred, of whom one thousand are always on duty,
and fifty thousand messages are on the average sent
daily through the office.
The manner in which news is transmitted to the
various great towns in England is most interesting.
The messages, as they come in, are handed to a staff
of officials, who translate them, by means of in-
genious instruments, into a series of holes punched on
strips of paper, and representing the dots and dashes
of the Morse telegraphic alphabet. These strips are
then passed through Wheatstone automatic instru-
ment 1 which transmit the message simultaneously to
the principal centres of commercial activity. The
instruments by which this is effected are placed in a
row; each serves three lax ge towns; and as the
punched strip of paper pans from one to another it
records the original message at the other ends of
the wires, and almost at one and the same moment.
The longest wire is that which goes to Newcastle,
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen, and an
average of two hundred words per minute is delivered
at each of these towns simultaneously. The advan-
tage of the system is, that instead of employing a
staff of clerks to telegraph a message or speech to
each of the individual towns, the punched strip of
paper sends its automatically, and almost at the
same moment, to the twelve largest towns of the
Kingdom. By this means the greatest speed
and the most work is got out of a telegraphic
wire, and without some such system it would be
impossible to send round the verbatim reports
of political speeches which we are accustomed
to expect in the newspapers. Mr. Gladstone's
recent speech at Leeds, for instance, was reported,
punched on the slip, and sent off at the rate of about
200 words a minute. The machines for "punching"
the messages are worked by compressed air. The
press of work upon the wires are relieved so far as the
City is concerned by pneumatic tubes, by means of
which the messages are conveyed bodily, in small
leaden tubes covered with a kind of felt, to such points
as Mark-lane, Charing-cross, and the House of Com-
mons. Communications]between different parts of the
Central Telegraph Office are effected by the same
agency. The tubes are worked like some rail-
ways, by the block system; and the time occupied
in transmission may be judged by the fact that
it takes four minutes to send a "carrier "—as the
felt-covered leaden tube which contains the messages
is called—from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Charing-cross.
As each " carrier " contains a large roll of "messages,"
an immense saving of time is effected, for otherwise
every word would have to be transmitted by wire. As
the messages come in they are handed to young lady
officials, who have been thoroughly educated in the
topography of London, and who are, therefore, able
quickly to arrange them according to districts and
streets. The rooms also are divided into sections cor-
responding with these divisions of the town.
There is no direct communication with the General
Post Office and abroad; this is effected by the various
Continental Telegraph Companies, who send on the
news as they receive it by pneumatic tubes to the
Central Office, whence it is distributed all over Eng-
land by the processes already alluded to.
The hundreds of miles of wire which are laid about
the place communicate with a board, in the central
part of the building, on which are some thousands
of buttons with screws, by means of which the lines
can be changed about as occasion requires; this
board has an exact counterpart in the battery
room downstairs. The systems employed are of
a very varied character, automatic printing in the
Morse alphabet being used at some instruments,
while the messages which others bring are read off by
sound. These last require a small sounding board to
be placed before the operator, who would otherwise be
unable to distingoish the sounds amidst the din going
on around him. For some of the smaller towns the
old-fashioned arrangement of the oscillating needle is
still fouud convenient. . . .
Descending into the depths below the instrument
rooms' a scene is presented that almost equals the
wildest of Jules Verne's scientific visions. There we
see furnaces which feed, stoke, and generally attend
to themselves; mighty engines, cranks, and wheels
which work the pneumatic tubes; and three miles of
shelving containing twenty thousand batteries, or
cells, which supply the electricity itself.
Crossing over to the "Circulating Department,"
the head of the Post-office itself, a scene even more
surprising awaits us. The hour .is that for making
up the inland branch of the evening mails, and we
gaze from a lofty gallery down upon a large hall,
brilliantly illuminated with electric lights, and filled
with busy human beings, who at first sight appear
to be merely struggling to the surface amidst a
surging sea of letters. Letter bags lie all around,
beneath the feet of the officials, and blocking up the
gangways between the rows of desks or tables;
others are brought in and emptied in indiscriminate
haste upon the first available spacs, and the
supremest confusion apparently prevails. After
a few mimutes, however' the seeming chaos re-
solves itself into the most perfect order, and we see
that the greatest amount of work is being performed
in the least possible time. The letters come in from
the country and some of the London district offices in
bags, and the windows of the Central Post Office itself
also supply an immense number, which are caught
in baskets, and brought away by relays of boys. All
these are then emptied upon broad tables, and "faced,"
that is placed face upwards, with the addresses turned
the right way, so as to be easily read. They are then
stamped by an ingenious but simple contrivance, by
which the obliterating stamp and the date are both
impressed on the envelope at the same time.
Every bag has a pink note accompanying it, upon
which is recorded the number and description of
the registered letters which it contains. The officer
who opens the bag first looks for these and sends them
up to the Registered Letter Department, receiving a
signature for them before allowing them to go out of
his custody; and this system of passing them from
hand to hand and always obtaining a receipt for them
is kept up from first tc last, so that almost absolute
safety is ensured. At the first rough sorting the
letters are distributed into "roads," corresponding
with the principal lines of railway communication
over the country; the term being a survival of the
nomenclature of the old coaching days. The primary
sorting is done at some of the larger towns before the
bags are made up at the office of origin, and this mate-
rially facilitates the delivery.
The next process divides the letters into towns,
after which they are placed in bags, sealed up, and are
then ready for dispatch by the mail carts which are in
waiting, to take them to the railway stations. The
foreign letters and the parcels and newspapers are
dealt with in a precisely similar manner in different
parts of the building—the former being divided at the
first sorting into countries instead of towns—and one
room is reserved exclusively for official Government
correspondence.
The sorting of newspapers, &c., cannot, from the
very nature of the circumstances, be carried on so fast
as that of the letters, the packets being more bulky,
and more time being -taken up in turning them over
to look for the addresses. For this reason the " Book-
post" is generally a delivery later than the liter'
mail. One of the most remarkable features of this
department is the sohool of letter sorters. There,
in the slack hours, of the day, may be seen a
number of lads practising the art and mystery
of sorting, by the aid of "dummy"
, letters, and
learning the roads," "postal lines,' "towns," and
• metropolitan districts," as other-scholars learn their
multiplication table. A clever lad learns the prin-
.'elples of." primary sorting" in about three weeks.
Letters with imperfect or insufficient addresses
are placed by the sorters in -separate oompart-
ments- marked " Blind " and are then carried off
'to, another department, :where thirty or forty
officers are constantly employed in deciphering
or correcting the addiesses. Those which prove
31LautIttelligible are forwarded to the " Re-
_ 9iiiee4" ' 4:lklsiy ilettera, arrive with
or poetical addresses, and more with pict6rial
thArices ; these are all copied, the latter in facsimile by

-tcripeaf,

a staff of draughtsmen kept for the purpose, and care-
fully preserved in albums. Amongst these pictures
are some valuable designs by Cruikshank, Leech, and
other famous artists.
•

The " Returned Letter Office" in Moorgate-street is
to the outside public the most interesting of all the
Post Office Departments. The old name, "Dead Letter
Office," has had to be altered to the present appelation.
"Returned Letter Office," partly in consequence of
the fatuity of the publics who would insist upon
associating the title Dead " letter with the "land
of the leal." The Controller was inundated with
applications for information, respecting missing
relatives add communications Aldrpssed to dead f riends.
When the addressee of a letter is refiorted "dead" by
the postman to whom its deliv ,ry was entrusted, it is
returned to the sender by tne first pcit after its
arrival in the office. An insufficiently or incorrectly
addressed letter is left with the offi:ials for three
days, in order that every possible effort may be
made to complete or decipher the address. Letters
which bear on the outside any stamp or address by
which the sender can be known, are sent back at
once unopened, if the person to whom they are
addressed cannot be found. Not only is time saved
in these cases, and the secrecy of the contents pre-
served, but the Government is spared considerable
expense in -envelopes, and the t:me employed by the
clerks in addressing them (x eat trouble also is
cauged to the Poet-office by s,er ding packages in-
securely fastened in their covets. Last Christmas no
less than fifteen hundred pr3Bents broke loose
from their addresses, and bad t I e relegated to
the limbo of lost property. Such as ticl es are, how-
ever, carefully entered in a register, witii i uch particu-
lars as can be ascertained, or as may lead to their
identification and recovery by owners. Letters con-
taining articles of value, such as coati or jewellery,
are treated in the same u ay when neither sender nor
addressee can be found; but when the former is
known they are at once returned, a registration
fee of twopence being charged to defray expenses.
One room in the "Returned Letter Depart-
ment " is devoted to dealing with the noxious,
dangerous, or improper things which are sent
through the post. For the reception of these articles
i a large shelf s contrived outside the window, where-
they are placed and catalogued previous to being
destroyed. Amongst other things, we noticed the fol-
lowing, which we were informed fairly represented
one day's arrivals: indigo, fish in an offensive condi-
tion, scissors, ointment, cream cheese, tomatoes,
snakes, toads, a tin of live snails, live mice, and silk-
worms. . . . _ I

en

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It would be impossible to conceive a more perfect
organisation than that of the Postal System of the
United Kingdom, and a walk through the various De-
partmeuts of the Head Office is as interesting a day's
entertainment as London affords.