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d six hundred words were transmitted by the House printing instruments on a single wire after half past seven o'clock. A telegraphic message was recently received in London from India in eight hours and a half. This message was forwarded by the Indo-European Telegraph Company, _via_ Kurrachee and the Persian Gulf, crossing one half of Asia and the whole of Europe. During the late Rebellion in this country the telegraph was extensively employed both by the Government and the Insurgents. In the course of the past year, there have been in the service of the Government thirty field-trains, distributed as follows:--In the Army of the Potomac, five; in the Department of the Cumberland, five; in the Department of the Gulf, three; in the Department of North Carolina and Virginia, three; in the Department of the South, two; in the Department of the Tennessee, six; in the Department of the Ohio, two; at the Signal Camp of Instruction, Georgetown, D. C., three; at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, one. Of these trains, some were equipped with five, and others with ten miles of insulated wire. There were carried in the trains lances for setting up the wire, when necessary,--reels, portable by hand, carrying wire made purposely flexible for this particular use,--and various minor appliances, which experience has proved useful. A military organization was directed for each train. In duty of this kind, the construction of the trains, the equipment to be carried by them, and the military organization to be provided for their use, to enable them to be most rapidly and anywhere brought into action, are the subjects for study: the particular instrument to be equipped is a secondary consideration. The soldiers drilled to the duty of construction acquire in a short time a remarkable skill in the rapid extension of these lines. As was anticipated, they have proved valuable auxiliaries to the services of the corps, and have sometimes rendered them available when they would have been otherwise useless. The greatest distance at which the instruments are reported to have worked is twenty miles. The average distances at which they are used are from five to eight miles. The average speed of the most rapid construction is reported to be at the rate of a slow walk. At the first Battle of Fredericksburg field-trains were for the first time in the history of the war used on the battle-field, under the fire of the enemy
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