Iowa voter. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1867-1874, 1873-09-25
Our telegraph System.

out with its double tracks, its functions
and busy stations, its depots and engine
houses, and then people and vivify the
picture with its swarming ind hurrying
life, and its gliding trains, ever making
up, traversing the field, breaking and
forming new combinations necessarily,
succeeding, passing, and crossing each
other, and when we add the bands of pio-
neers, surveyors, engineers, laborers and
construction trains which form the fringe
Of this network, constantly extending its
meshes in every direction, and adding new
intricacies to its most crowded PARASITIC
mind is almost bewildered with the
thought of such an immense labyrinth,
such complex organization.
If we could rise above the surface of the
earth and take in the whole country at a
bird's-eye view, with visual power to dis
Germ all the details, the net work of the
telegraph would be still more curious to
look upon. We should see a web spun of
100000 miles of wire spread over the face
of the country like a cobweb on the grass,
its threads connecting every important
center of population, festooning every
great postroad, and marking as with
silver lining the black track of every rail
road. We should observe men, like spi-
ders, busily spinning out these lines in
every direction, at the rate of five
miles an hour for every working hour in
the year. If we should trace these threads
back from the circumference we should
find them converging from every direction
certain central knots like Chicago, st.
Louis, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Washington
and many Others of equal importance, and
thence running in great strands, doubling
and multiplying in number as they APP
proach the center, but so arranged as to
bind every city and town to all its neigh
bors, near and far. If the eye, seeking to
analyze this labyrinth, should pursue the
converging lines, ii would at last follow
great band of more than $50 wires, from
every point of the compass, running into
one great center in the city of New York,
i'm the main office of the Western Union
Telegraph Company. Other minor CEN
tiers would appear, but this one would i'm
mediately be recognized as the great core
or heart of the system.
If, now. such an observer could be
gifted with IA magic power of vision,
which man has not yet dreamed of attain
ing, so as to be enabled to see that unseen
and silent force we call electricity, and
discern its instantaneous actions and re-
actions from point to point over this be-
graph would present spectacle far more
amazing than that of the railroad system.
As the morning sun sends the hour of
nine across the continent, the offices are
| filled with operators, an army of nearly
| 10000 persons, engaged in the various
functions involved in the service. The
batteries, which we may imagine to have
been mostly slumbcring during the night
all awake to their work, and the culver
ings and scintilations of electric action
along the wires would show the whole
network to be now alive. On the great
trunk lines the last of the nightwork is
| finished, the morning orders are calculated,
| and around the circuit flash the humor-
| Gus salutations which the operators ex-
change with their unseen fellows, who
seem to be concealed at their elbow, but
who are in reality hundreds or thousands
of miles away. Ten O'Clock finds the
offices full of business. Outward bound
messages pour in to be dispatched, and
messages received are licked off by the
! talking armature, To be written out and
sent off for delivery. BY eleven o'clock
the press news begins to crowd upon the
operators, and then for two or three hours
the excitement is at its height. Every
one must be at his post, every faculty
| alert and attention incessant. The zinc
| in the batteries burns iiercely under the
corroding acid, the mysterious current"
which becomes more wonderful the more
conscious we become of human ignor-
ance respecting it, leaps TO its work.
Every available circuit on the great lines
is pressed to its utmost. The operators
KEYS dance their tattoos, to which the dis
tant receiving instruments instantly re-
tt,n ell aht
transient motion. The whole network of
wires, and the submarine cables which
connect it with other equally active sys-
TENS on the other side of the globe, are
all quivering from end To end with signals
Of human intelligence.
After two O'Clock signs of relaxation
appear. The press messages diminish;
messages that have been waiting to take
their turn are cleared off At four the
heavy business of the day in many offices
is about over, The great lines are still
crowded, and their work runs on into the
evening. At last the business of night
work begins, and the press messages from
Washington, and the business and social
messages that are taken at halfpricc, in
consideration of their being allowed to be
sent at leisure, to be delivered next morn
ing, are transmitted between the great
cities north, south, east and west.
Every phase Of the mental activity OF
the country is more or less represented in
this great system. The fluctuations in
the markets; the price Of stocks; the pre-
MUM on gold the starting OF railroad
;rains the sailing of ships; the arrival of
passengers orders for merchandise and
manufactures Of every kind; bargains
offered and bargains closed; sermons, lee
lures, and political speeches; fires, sick
ness, and death; weather reports; the APP
pearance of the grasshopper and the wee
vii; the transmission Of money; the
congratulations of friends-everything,
from the announcement Of a new plan
down to an inquiry for lost carpet
bag, has its turn in passing the wires.
The telegraph has now become so true
a representative of our life that it would
hardly be necessary to read the messages
in order to find an indication of the state
Of the country. The mere degree OF ac-
tivity in the business uses Of the telegraph
in any given direction affords an index of
the prosperity of the section of country
served thereby Mr.. Orion, the President
of the Western Union COMPANY. gave a