The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-05-21

would only be saving of labor of about 1s 9d. (43 cents) per column, or a saving of only 15s. or 20s (s3.65 to s4s7 per night even for large news papers.
 This would hardly be sufficient to in- duce newspapers to start automatic typesetting by telegraph, but the pos sible saving of time Is a more impor- tant feature The saving of few min utes is vital to newspapers at certain hours, and this may ultimately lead to automatic .typesetting by telegraph. but there are many obstacles in the way. One Is the necessity for press messages being revised. puctuated. corrected. ana often cut down before being set up in type. The Murray Is the only automat- ic apparatus making provision for this difficulty by allowing the editorial corrections to be carried out by the compositor while the type is being au- tomatically set.
 All that can be said about automatic typesetting by telegraph is that 1t Is possibility of the future, and that If 1t is done at all 1t will have to be done on the lines of the Murray apparatus. be- cause the Murray system alone Is prac- tical, both from the newspaper and from the telegraphic point of view.
 When a message arrives st the re- ceiving station it Is represented by a number of holes punched in the tape which operate special keys on the type- writer, pulling the typewriter carriage back when necessary. and working 1t as if by human hands. In the same way a linotype machine Is worked. A press message Is sent off in the usual way, and by means of the Murray ap- paratus 1t is immediately set. up in type at the other end.
 Any person." says MT. Murray, "who has had occasion, to- examine the rec ords of patents connected with teles- raphy must have been astonished at the number. Qf printing telegraphs, invented during the past sixty years. In the United States alone over four hundred printing telegraph patents have been issued since the invention of the elec- tric telegraph. In hardly any other field of human endeavor has so much labor resulted in so little return.
 There are many reasons for this want of success. but they are all based on the extreme complexity of the con ditions to be fulfilled and the absence of any technical literature explaining what these conditions are. With one or two exceptions, telegraph engineers, realizing the difficulties of the sub- ject have let 1t alone, and printing telegraph inventors have in most cases been outsiders. The complexities cul- minate In the printing telegraph, be- cause in that case the problem is to set type at distance" fss.a .2t
 The type may be fixed on the circum- ference of a wheel or may exist as separate type on the ends of type bars, as in most typewriters, or as loose type in a typesetting machine; but in all cases the problem Is to set type-that is to say. bring a particular type to a particular printing point in the short est possible time, and in the case of the printing. telegraph to do that at a dis tance over a single telegraph wire.
 It may be pointed out in passing that all telegraph systems. from the Morse key upward are printing telegraphs more or less developed, and that com pletely developed telegraph system must be printing telegraph. Telegra- phy Is one of the few branches of hu- man activity In which the tendency to substitute machinery for human skill has not yet made much progress. but the advantages to be gained are con- siderable, and there is every indication that the era of fully developed ma chine telegraphy has now arrived.