The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-09-01
CHINESE TELEGRAPHY.
Numerals Flashed Over Wire and
Translated BY a Code.

Numerals Flashed Over n Wire and
Translated By Code.
According to the Statesrnan's Year Book,
all the principal cities of China are now
connected with one another and with
Picking, the capital. by telegraph. Re-
cent visitors to China say, however, that
telegraphing there is a laborlous and an
expensive process, and that the lines are
q charge upon the state treasury instead
of a source of revenue.
The dispatches are, OF course, sent in
Chinese, for not one in many thousands of
the natives knows any language except
his own. But the Chinese have no alpha
bet. Their literary characters, partly
many thousands. 1t is simply impossible
to invent Geographic signals that would
cover the written language. Here was an
obstacle in the way of using the telegraph
at all.
The difficulty was obviated by inventing
a telegraph signal for each of the cardinal
numbers, and so numbers or figures
might be telegraphed to any extent. Then
q code dictionary was prepared, IN which
each number from one up TO several thou
sands stood for a particular Chinese let
ter or telegraph. 1t is, in fact, cipher
system. The sender Of the message need
not bother himself about its meaning.
He may telegraph all day without the
slightest idea of the Information he is
sending, for he transmits only numerals.
1t is very different with his friend, the
his elbow, and after each message is re-
ceived he must translate it, writing each
literary character in place of the num-
eighth of the words in the written Ian
guage appear in the code, but there are
enough of them for all practical purposes.
But the Chinese system has its disad-
vantages. Men of ordinary education have
not sufficient acquaintance with the writ
ten language to be competent telegraph
receivers and the literal are not seeking
employment in telegraph offices any more
than our college professors are. So the
government recruits its employees with
much difficulty Besides, the patrons of
the telegraph are comparatively few in
number.
There are almost no Chinese who have
business relations all over the country as
is the case with many thousands of our
business men. The public is not invited to
buy stock in the Chinese telegraph lines
and II 1t was nobody at present would
buy with view to dividends. The re-
ceipts do not equal the expenses, and the
government makes up the deficit.
There is another great disadvantage of
the Chinese telegraph system. All over
the world the movements of railroad trains
are regulated by telegraph. The orders
received by the station agent are filed in
pam view OF the employees, and If 1t
need be the switchmen may take tenn
porary charge and carry out the instruc-
tons from the central office Railroads
have been introduced into China to
very small extent, and there is talk of
greatly extending the service. But how
about running the trains?
A writer in LIE Movement Colonial of
Paris says that if railroads are introduced
to any extent in Chica the personnel must
be exclusively European or American, or
recruited from the literary class. He says
the Chinese government will not take
foreigners into its service, and that the
educated men of China. who alone among
the people have sufficient knowledge of
the written language to be intrusted with
the actual running of trains, would re-
fuse most emphatically to be either train
hands or station agents
This is one of the many small stumbling
blocks in the way of Chinese progress,
but it is quite effective in its way.-New
York Sun.