, 1880-07-03
REPORTING BY TELEPHONE.
From the Tinses.]

namely, which are continued after mtu-
night-has within the last few days been
brought into operation in the office of
The Times: and some account of the
method employed will probably be OF IN
terest to the public. There has for some
time been a tendency among the most pro.
minent public men to deliver their Parlla-
mentary speeches at very late hours, and
this, together with the despatch of the
first morning trains from the London ter
mini an hour earlier than formerly, has
placed great difficulty in the way of Par
1iamentary reporting. After about l
o'clock 10 the morning to produce in time
for the early edition q full report OF a
speech, however important it might be, be-
came q matter of extreme difficulty, and
after 2 the record of proceedings became
necessarily a mere abstract. The inevita-
bic curtailment of the reports has been
felt as a grievance by many members of
the House. and has been one cause of the
efforts recently made, by appointing Com
mittees and otherwise, to get q better
provision for the publication of the debates.
But these difficulties seem now to be in q
fair way to yield-suficiently at least for
ell practical purposes--to the increased
powers of work which have been afforded
by the judicious application Of modern
scientific inventions.
The first step in this direction must IN.
doubtedly be ascribed to the increased
rapidity Of setting up type, which has
been due to the employment of a machine
as o substitute for the manual labour of
the compositor. The most skilful work.
man, setting up type by hand, would not
exceed q general average OF about 40 lines
Der hour, or a hartman rate of so lines
per hour during periods of great pressure;
but the machine, in which the types are
brought down and placed in position by
striking upon keys something like those
of a piano or organ, enables a fair work.
man to attain an average speed Of 100 lines
an hour even when composing from manu-
script, which he has to read for himself:
and this speed can be doubled, or nearly
SO, when the operator is assisted by a
reader, and thus composes from dictation.
The original form of the machines ia use
at this Office was introduced here soon after
the Franco German war, and has ever since
been undergoing such notifications Of detail
as experience has from time to time sug-
gested, until it has now reached q state of
very great efficiency. 1t has for some time
been the custom to transmit the foreign
intelligence from Paris, Vienna, and Berlin
to this Office by means of Hughes's print
ing telegraph, and to dictate the contents
of the telegraphic slip to a %compositor at
the machine. By this combination re.
markable facilities in dealing with late
manuscript have been obtained, and it
has been possible to carry on the work of
type setting almost to the time of going to
press but the copy received from the
House was necessarily somewhat delayed
while the reporter transcribed his notes
and in transmission. The compositor was
compelled to lag behind the actual pro-
gress of the debate, aud precious time
thus lost at each step Of the process noun
ted up in the end to q considerable total.
At this stage in the history of the mat
ter the selephone was brought into actual
operation rs q means of verbal communi-
cation between distant points ; and the
conductors OF this journal, having obtained
permission from the Metropolitan Board of
Works to ley down the necessary wires in
the subway of the Embankment, FORM
ed Q new connection between the House of
Commons and the Office, and placed one of
Edison's loud-speaking telephones at
either end. The immediate result Of this
arrangement has been to bring the compo-