IMPROVEMENTS IN ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHS
Year: 1864

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Harry Whiteside Cook at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 10th
September 1864.-A communication from abroad by Gaetano Bonelli, of
Turiu, in the Kingdom of Italy.
I, HARRY WHITESIDE COOK, of Angel Court, Throgmorton Street, in the
City of London, Gentleman, do hereby declare the nature of the said In-
vention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHS," to be as follows:-
This Invention of "Improvements in Electric Telegraphs" relates to that
description of apparatus in which visible signals are produced on prepared
paper by means of an electric current transmitted through a form of moveable
metallic types or characters which are connected with a conducting wire or
with the earth and passed under two teeth connected with different poles of
two batteries; the two remaining poles of the batteries being connected with
the earth if the type be connected with the line, or with the line if the type be
connected with the earth, and so arranged that when the type comes in contact
with either of the aforesaid teeth, a circuit is completed through the line which
at the receiving end is connected by means of the receiving instrument with
the earth.
The object of the present Invention is (always using one wire only) to
substitute a second line of dots for the dashes of the Morse system, and to
ensure greater rapidity and correctness in the transmission of the printed
symbols, also to effect an economy of space in the arrangement of these
symbols.

page_text: This object is effected, first, by the employment of a peculiar form of type,
and, secondly, by the adaptation to the transmitting apparatus of the two sets
of batteries above mentioned.
The types used for the purposes of the present Invention are provided at
one end or on the side with letters of the ordinary characters, and at the
other with the conventional symbol consisting of an arrangement of dots,
which it is intended to produce on the prepared paper at the receiving
station.
The types are set up with the ordinary characters uppermost, so that the
message may be read before the types are placed in the telegraphic apparatus,
and thereby all risk of mistakes may be prevented. The types are then turned
over, and the symbols will be transmitted by the telegraphic instrument.
The use of two batteries at the transmitting station renders possible the
production of two lines of dots at the receiving station in the following
manner: The arrangement of parts above described being made at the
transmitting station, the prepared paper at the other end is laid on an
insulated conductor and passed under two teeth, the one connected with tho
earth, and the other with the line. It will now be seen that if a point on the
transmitting type comes in contact with the tooth connected with one
battery, a positive current will be sent down one of the teeth resting on the
paper at the receiving station and up the other; but if the contact at the
transmitting station be made by means of a point coming into contact with
the tooth connected with the battery, a current will be sent in the opposito
direction, that is to say, down the tooth at the receiving end up which it
passed in the other case; and as only a positivo current passing down a tooth
into the paper will produce a mark, the dots will be produced by the one or
the other of these points according as the contact at the transmitting end
was made by a point in the line pasing under one tooth or in that passing
under the other; by this means the required symbol will always bo reproduced
at the receiving station.