IMPROVED MODE AND MEANS OF TRANSMITTING TELEGRAPHIC SIGNALS BY THE EMPLOYMENT OF TWO CURRENTS
Year: 1872

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Antoine Ray at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 11th May'
1872. A communication from abroad by Julien Jules Duchamp,
Licencié en droit (Master of Laws), at Saint Etienne, Department
of Loire (France).
I, ANTOINE RAY, of Castle School, Guildford, Surrey, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVED MODE AND MEANS
OF TRANSMITTING TELEGRAPHIC SIGNALS BY THE EMPLOYMENT OF TWO CURRENTS,”
to be as follows: :-
This application has for its object to claim for the profit of the applicant
the privilege of the adaptation to the telegraphic apparatus of two
currents, working as explained in this memorandum, to increase the
celerity and distinctness of the electric transmission. Franklin was
right: there is but one electricity. The discussion of that system will
take its place elsewhere. I will confine myself to indicate here shortly
the phenomena which are produced along the conductor wires during the
transmission of the telegraphic despatches. When we connect the pile
with the conductor it happens, 1°, concentration of the electric particles
contained in the wire, and in consequence condensation of those particles
:

page_text: towards the extremity of the wire; 2°, departure through the vacuum
caused near the pile of the particles thrown by the electro-mobile force
of the focus. When the current is broken the electric particles come from
the focus, continue one moment their course, thanks to the impulsion
which has been given to them and to their acquired celerity; but the
particles condensed at the extremity of the wire being no longer
maintained by the electro-mobile force by which they have been
repulsed, return to the pile and are distributed along the wire after
many undulations which cease only when the wire has recovered its
equilibrium, that is to say, its normal electric state. All those
phenomena quickly as they take place have notwithstanding a duration
so much more appreciable than the lines are longer. But it is in the
subterranean and submarine cables that these phenomena are perceptible,
on account of the condensations of the electricity of the ground or the
sea around and all along the cable, condensations acting in different
ways and which increase the resistance. Let us stop those movements of
flux and reflux, let us suppress all these resistances, and the electricity
might be transmitted instantaneously from one end of the line to the
other. This is the end which I have proposed to myself, and which I
expect to accomplish, thanks to a more rational interpretation of
electricity.
My system consists in throwing and maintaining on all the line a
constant current, the effects of which I neutralize at the receptor, and in.
increasing suddenly the intensity of that constant current by the
junction of a new current, so as to produce the required effect. The first
current has no other object but to keep the way free, to prevent the
phenomena of flux and reflux, all the resistances in a word which are
produced every time a current is thrown or broken. The second current
which I call interrupted current transmits alone the signals. To this
end the piles are disposed in such way (-or +), only we fix near the
positive pole of one of the clements (the practice will indicate which),
a second positive pole independent of the first and joined to the negativo
pole of the pile by a distinct conductor. That current diminishes
evidently while in action the intensity of the current of the entire pile.
Let this current be interrupted one moment, the principal current
during that time will have been increased by the smaller current,
hence the effects produced at pleasure upon the armature of tho
receptor; for we have taken care to suppress the effect of the constant.

page_text: current by placing under the pliable iron bars of the electro-magnet of
the receptor a magnet with opposed poles.
It is easy to understand that in those conditions the armature is not
attracted by the passage of the constant current into the helix, and may
be attracted only if the intensity of that current is increased by the
junction of the interrupted current. We can easily understand too that
with this system' not only the ordinary effects are produced but still are
produced much more quickly since all the resistances which opposed the
progress of the current have been removed.
We can arrange the piles in different ways; but whatever may be the
arrangement of the piles which I use for the transmission that I may
employ one pile only, in which I cause a feeble deviation at certain
moments, or that I may employ two piles, of which one, stronger, is used
to keep up the constant current, and of which the other, weaker, is used
to produce the broken current, my system always consists; 1°, to keep
up along the line during all the time of the transmission, as its name
indicates a constant current which has no other end but to annul all the
resistances, otherwise to suppress both the variable period and the return
current; 2°, to throw along this line, and in the same sense as the
constant current, a broken current, the function of which is to transmit
the signals; 3° to place under the pliable iron bars of the electro-magnet
of the receptor such a magnet as it might neutralize the magnetism
produced into the helix by the passage of the constant current.
In short I employ two currents acting in the same manner, and that
is which distinguishes my system from others systems, consisting, either
in the employment of one current or in acting upon a permanent charge
by means of currents acting in different manner; besides, my system
finds its application in all the apparatus known till this day, not only
it finds its application but it assures their acting and increases in a
considerable manner the celerity and at the same time the distinctness
of the transmission.