Connecticut western news., 1889-07-24
FAST MAILS

FAST MAILS Letters to be Carried Hundreds
 of Miles in an Hour.
 A System Which May Revolu.
 tionize the Postal Service.
 A Boston correspondent of the New Orleans Picayune says: Within twelvemonth from the present date mails will be carried from Boston to New York city in sixty minutes. So say the capitalists who are making arrangements for the establishment of transport line, on the so-called ''portelectric system," for the conveyance of letters and pack ages between the metropolis and the modern Athens. Even the least san- guine packers of the enterprise are con fident that, if the expected public SUD- port is given to the scheme, not more than two years will be required at most for the establishment of the necessary plant in running order, to bring the two centers of population within an hours distance by post. The said plant will resemble, as to its most essential part, little ele- vated railway, supported on a single line of tall iron uprights and stretching from the postofice here to that on the island of Manhattan. Along the track on top runs small car laden with mail freight, which at certain intervals dur ing its transit is seen to go under queer looking box shaped arches. These box like arrangements contain each one coil of wire, passing beneath the rail below and around over the arch, so that the moving mail carriage runs, as it were, through succession of coiled wire hoops. And these latter communi. cate the motive power to the vehicle. Such hoop of magnetized coiled wire is called ''helix," and possesses this peculiar property, that if a bar of iron or steel be placed with one end near the center of the coil, the bar will be drawn into that center. Place a number of similar coils in row and start an electric current through them, then apply the bar to the first coil, and by cutting off and letting on the circuit at the proper intervals, so as to disen- gage the bar from the attraction of one coil in time u have it drawn on by the next, the bar may be made to move con tinuously through the hoops. In this way it is that the little mail car of mag netized steel is caused to pass along its rails through successive coils of boxcd- in wire, the latter being magnetized by current from a dynamo, which the car itself shuts off and turns on automati- cally as it proceeds. The speed to be attained by the car in this manner is almost in- calculable. As is recognized in mechan- ics, constant propelling force is pro- ductive of nearly infinite velocity, ob- structed only be the resistance of fric- tion. In this system the only friction comes from the air and the slight con- l tact of the car with the rails. Two hundred and fifty miles an hour is not thought to be an overestimate of the speed easily to be compassed by the portelectric post-dispatch. At the starting point the wire coils will have to bc close together and on up grades but elsewhere, and especially on down grades, they may be few and far be- tween, the motive power needed being slight. Six stations, placed at inter7 vals between here and New York, will supply the requisite currents from dyna- mos.
 Many experts think that the system is destined to revolutionize the postal ser 1 vice in this country. For instance, it is expected that instead of mails hours apart between Boston and New York, carriages will be sent over the tracks from either end of the line at i've min ute intervals, thus rendering unnecessary the waiting for mails to close, and giving people in one city an opportunity to read their letters two hours after they are written in the other. Once prove the notion success here and il will be quickly adopted everywhere. By applying it on large scale, too, who knows that it may not serve for the transportation of passengers some day' At the rate of 250 miles an hour one could put girdle around the earth in four days! Truly, it is wonderful century we live in.