Inventions in the centuryDoolittle, William H. (William Henry)
History
Inventions in the century
Doolittle, William H. (William Henry)
Inventions
The type-printing telegraph was coeval with the dial, and originated
with Morse and Vail as early as 1837. The printing of the characters is
effected in various ways; sometimes by clockwork mechanism and sometimes
by the direct action of an electromagnet. Wheatstone exhibited one in
1841. House of Vermont invented in 1845-1846 the first printing
telegraph that was brought into any extensive use in the United States.
Then followed that of David E. Hughes of Kentucky in 1855, aided by his
co-inventor George M. Phelps of Troy, New York, and which was
subsequently adopted by the French government, by the United Kingdom
Telegraph Co. of Great Britain, and by the American Telegraph Co in the
United States. The system was subsequently greatly improved by Hughes
and others. Alexander Bain of Edinburgh in 1845-46 originated the modern
automatic chemical telegraph. In this system a kind of punch was used to
perforate two rows of holes grouped to represent letters on a strip of
paper conducted over a metal cylinder and arranged so as to permit
spring levers to drop through the perforations and touch the cylinder,
thus forming an electrical contact; and a recording apparatus consisting
of a strip of paper carried through a chemical solution of an acid and
potash and over a metal roller, and underneath one or two styles, or
pens, which pens were connected by live wires with the poles of two
batteries at the sending station. The operation is such that colored
marks upon the paper were made by the pens corresponding precisely to
the perforations in the strip at the sending station. Siemens,
Wheatstone and others also improved this system; but none of these
systems have as yet replaced or equalled in extensive use the Morse key
and sounder system, and its great acoustic advantage of reading the
messages by the click of the instrument. The type-printing system,
however, has been recently greatly improved by the inventions of Howe,
C. L. Buckingham, Fiske and others in the United States. Special
contrivances and adaptations of the telegraph for printing stock reports
and for transmitting fire alarm, police, and emergency calls, have been
invented.
The erection of tall office and other buildings, some to the height of
more than twenty stories, made practicable by the invention of the
elevator system, has in turn brought out most ingenious devices for
operating and controlling the elevators to insure safety and at the same
time produce economy in the motive power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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