IMPROVED APPARATUS FOR TRANSMITTING TELEGRAPHIC DESPATCHES
Year: 1860

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Gaetano Bonelli at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 2nd October
1860.
I, GAETANO BONELLI, of Milan, in the Kingdom of Sardinia, Engineer, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVED APPARATUS
FOR TRANSMITTING TELEGRAPHIC DESPATCHES," to be as follows:-
My Invention of improved apparatus for transmitting telegraphic despatches
has for its object to producd by electro-chemical agency the telegrams on
paper ready for transmission to the person addressed without the necessity of
taking down the despatch from signs or signals as is now generally the case.
This object has been attempted to be effected by what is known as the printing
telegraph, in which, by means of an ingenious but complicated apparatus,
letters and signs are printed on to paper.
Another mode of producing visible printed or written despatches is by the
employment of chemically prepared paper to receive the despatches which at
the sending station are written with insulating ink on a metallic sheet, and at
the receiving station the written words or marks are reproduced by causing
the electric current to act on the chemically prepared paper.
In order to effect this object the electric conductor at the first station is
passed over the printed sheets in straight lines, and the written despatch is
reproduced at the other station on the chemically prepared paper by the alternate
breaking and making the electric circuit as the conductor is drawn across the
metallized paper on which the despatch is written in insulating ink. As,

page_text: however, in order to produce a despatch, the electric conductor must be carried
over the writing several times, practical difficulties arise in reproducing the
writing with accuracy.
One of the principal objects of my Invention is to obviate this and other
difficulties, and this is effected by the use of a conductor composed of a number
of fine wires insulated and arranged, or combined together in the form of a
broad brush or comb, so that by passing this brush or comb over the writing,
the whole depth of the line will be reproduced at once, instead of it being
necessary to pass the electric current to and fro several times. I propose to
arrange these conducting wires in the form of a cable or rope, which
may be
buried in the earth, or if preferred, the conducting wires of my improved appa-
ratus may be connected with the same number of wires extended from post to
post along the line of transmission as is now the case. I also propose to set
up the despatches in ordinary typographical characters, and by passing my
improved conductor over the lines of the type, the counterpart impression of
the printing characters will be reproduced at the distant station on the pre-
pared paper in one operation, that is, by once passing the brush or comb over
the surface of the type.
Another part of the Invention consists in preparing the paper with a
chemical solution, upon which the current of induction will not interfere with
the proper action of the electric current on the chemically prepared paper.