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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