THE TELAUTOGRAPH.--This, the latest of modern miracles in the field of electricity, comes naturally after the telegraph and telephone, since it supplements them as a means of communication between individuals. It also is the invention of Prof. Elisha Gray, who seems to be as well the author of the name of his extraordinary achievement. It is not the first instrument of the kind attempted. The desire to find a means of writing at a distance is old. Bain, of Edinburgh, made a machine partially successful fifty years ago. Like the telegraph as intended by Morse, there was the interposition of typesetting before a message could be sent. It did not write, or follow the hand of the operator in writing, though it did reproduce at the other end of the circuit in facsimile the faces of the types that had been set by the sender. It was a process by electrolysis, well understood by all electricians. Several of this variety of writing telegraphs have been made, some of them almost successful, but all lacking the vital essential. [Footnote: The lack of _one vital essential_ has been fatal to hundreds of inventions. Inventors unconsciously follow paths made by predecessors. The entire class of transmitting instruments must dispense with tedious preliminaries, and must use _words_. Vail accomplished this in telegraphy. Bell and others in the telephone, and Gray has borne the same fact in mind in the present development of the telautograph.] In 1856 Casselli, of Florence, made a writing telegraph which had a pendulum arrangement weighing fourteen pounds. Only one was ever made, but it resulted in many new ideas all pertaining to the facsimile systems--the following of the faces of types--and all were finally abandoned. The invention of Gray is a departure. The sender of a message sits down at a small desk and takes up a pencil, writing with it on ordinary paper and in his usual manner. A pen at the other end of the circuit follows every movement of his hand. The result is an autograph letter a hundred miles or more away. A man in Chicago may write and sign a check payable in Indianapolis. Personal directions may be given authoritatively and privately. As in the case of the telephone, no intervening operator is necessary. No expertness is required. Even the use of the alphabet is not necessary. A drawing of any description, anything that can be traced with a pen or pencil, is copied precisely by the pen at the receiving desk. The possibilities of this instrument, the uses it may develop, are almost inconceivable. It might be imagined that the lines drawn would be continuous. On the contrary, when the pen is lifted by the writer at the sending desk it also lifts itself from the paper at that of the receiver.