The apparatus is represented in Fig. 2. It is based upon the simultaneous working of two pith-ball electrometers, combined with the synchronous running of two clock-work movements. At the two stations there were identical clocks for whose second hand there had been substituted a cardboard disk (Fig. 3), divided into twenty sectors. Each of these latter contained one figure, one letter, and a conventional word. Before each movable disk there was a screen, A (Fig. 2), containing an aperture through which only one sector could, be seen at a time. Finally, before each screen there was a pith-ball electrometer. The two electrometers were connected together by means of a conductor (C) passing under the earth, and which at either of its extremities could be put in communication with either an electric machine or the ground. A lever handle, J, interposed into the circuit a Volta's pistol, F, that served as a call. When one of the operators desired to send a dispatch to the other he connected the conductor with the machine, and, setting the latter in operation, discharged his correspondent's pistol as a signal. The call effected, the first operator continued to revolve the machine so that the balls of pith should diverge in the two electrometers. At the same time the two clocks were set running. When the sender saw the word "attention" pass before the slit in the screen he quickly discharged the line, the balls of the two electrometers approached each other, and, if the two clocks agreed perfectly, the correspondent necessarily saw in the aperture in his screen the same word, "attention." If not, he moved the screen in consequence, and the operation was performed over until he could send, in his turn, the word "ready." Afterward, the sender transmitted in the same way one of the three words, "letters," "figures," "dictionary," in order to indicate whether he wished to transmit letters or figures, or whether the letters received, instead of being taken in their true sense, were to be referred to a conventional vocabulary got up in advance. It was after such preliminaries that the actual transmission of the dispatch was begun. The pith balls, which were kept constantly apart, approached each other at the moment the letter to be transmitted passed before the aperture in the screen.