The San Francisco call., 1897-03-10
THE ARMY TELEGRAPH.
The Same Wire Can Be Used for Tele.
phOning or TeIegraphing.

The Same Wire Can Be Used for Tele-
phoning or TeIegraphing.
The imperative need of the army of the
United States of electrical comm munication
has been strikingly demonstrated in the
great value which the present system has
proved itself to be within the last year,
says the New York Herald. There are
to-day 7S0 miles of permanent military
telegraph lines in this country, all oper-
ated by the Government Signal, Corps.
There has been notable advance in the
development of the com bined telegraph
and telephone apparatus in use. In fact.
it is now possible for an operator to carry
in his hand telegraph and telephone
Office CONT bined. While one soldier is tele-
graphing message in Morse character,
another soldier may talk over the same
wire telephonically with another station,
and each of the receiving operators will
hear only his own message.
A curious fact IN connection with the
Government telegraph lines is that it has
been found necessary to make the testing
boxes which are located about ten miles
apart, castiron and bullet-proo This is
because of the fondness of the cowpuncher
for shooting off the insulators and various
portions of the testboxes. Although such
incidents occur at very frequent intervals,
so carefully are the Government systems
in the West watched that Interruptions
are quickly repaired, so quickly that loss
OF time practically amounts to nothing.
Here is field also III which the bicycle
plays an important part for 1t is by aid of
the wheel that the breaks are so quickly
located and such good time made from
the stations 20 Them, far less than would
be the result even if the hneman rode a
horse.
While the permanent telegraph lines
under the control of the chief signal officer
of the army were originally constructed
purely for military services they subserve
large commercial interests. The tariff
charge for messages averages about fifteen
cents for ten words. The mum Der of mes
sages transmitted over the Government.
and other business, aggregated 81, $40, and
these figures only indicate the business
transacted on lines handling paid COM
mercial messages.
The number of messages affords but
slight idea of the amount of business
transacted. for the reason that a message
may contain only two words or, on the
other hand, it may contain several ham
dred. From q local and a military point
OF view the i'm portance of military lines
is very great. Not only do tney increase
and srbserve the economical interests of
the Govern ment, but they are of inestima-
BILE value to commercial interests.
The most notable advance made during
the year in military telegraph is the
com bined telegraph and telephone appa-
ratus referred to. The whole outfit weighs
sixteen pounds, including battery enough
to work over any field line which the corps
might be called on to operate. The i'm
portance of this means OF com mmunication
was practically demonstrated on the mill
tary cable between Angel Island and
Tiburon, CAL, when complete Interrupt
tion of communication by the grounding
of each of the three conductors of the able
was reported. This grounding was so
complete that a telegraph instrument
W ith battery was worked between any