The Press., 1892-04-21
INCREASED SERVICE.
HOW THE TYPEWRITER HAS AF-
 FEcTED TELEGRAPHY.

Backed by an Extensive Code, the Tele-
 graphic Service of the Various Big . Press Associations Has Been Revolu-
 tionized by the Machine.
 By far the most important and valu- able improvement in the efhciency of the electric telegraph ill the past three or four years has been broughteabout by the introduction into telegraph work of machine that has absolutely nothing electrical about 1.-the typewriter. It has become absolutely indispensable in several of the more important branches of the telegraph service, necessity to the complement of every first. class op- orator, and soon it's lively batter will be the unvarying accompaniment to the brisk clicking of the sounder in every telegraph office in the land.
 The most striking example of the value of the typewriter in telegraphy is afforded by the press service. In this branch it has entirely superseded the pen and stylus throughout the whole country, and no operator is eligible for position on a United Press or Asso- ciated Press circuit, or practically on any press wire, unless he is a typewriter expert. He simply could not do the work. The typewriter was first intro duced into the office of the Associated Press as an experiment about, seven years ago, and for the last two years it has been used exclusively in all offices of the United Press and tine Associated Press.
 The United Press has six circuits run. ming out of New York, reaching all the principal points as far west as St. Paul and south to New Orleans. The number of offices on a circuit varies from eight to twenty. The Associated Press serves practically the same points by substan- tially similar circuits. Over these wires the special dispatches from the various points are received, and the main volume of news collected in New York, the great collecting and distributing point. is sent out for service to the newspapers in the associations. Before the introduction of the typewriter the might report" aver aged about 5000 words on each wire, and the whole days work amounted to about 18, 900 words. Now the night re- port runs to about IA, GOO words and the whole day service averages about 30 OO0 words
 BENEFITS THE OPERATOR
 A first class operator can send about forty words minute, continuously and well, but experience has shown that it is very difficult for a man to write with pen or stylus more than thirty or thirty five words a minute, steadily and con &o1 ,1>o,. oG service of the press associations in New York requires from twenty to thirty copies to be taken of every dispatch. In other cities the number varies from four or five copies upward. They were formerly made with an iron or agate stylus on tissue paper interleaved with carbonated sheets. The labor of pressing through so many thiclSnessos of paper in order to make a legible copy on, each is enormous.
 The strain, muscular and mental, of writing thirty-fye words minute in this manner for eight or nine hours nightly, following the dictation of a sender who could always greatly excel the writer in speed, has been responsible for the nervous and physical breakdown of hundreds of operators. On the type writer speed of seventy worlds min ute is easily acquired and maintained. and with slight notifications in the ma. chine thirty copies and more can be taken with as much ease as one. There is no cramp and little. fatigue in the op- eration of the typewriter, for eight fin gers do what was the work of two, o1 practically eight motions take the place of one.
 With the introduction of the type writer the sending operator dropped away in the rear Then the practice of abbreviating came into use, and the sender in his effort to keep up to the machine clipped his words and dropped out their vowels. Walter P. Phillips, general manager of the United Press.