c methods are best adapted.
The general principle involved in automatic or rapid telegraphs, except
the photographic ones, is that of preparing the message in advance, for
dispatch, by perforating narrow strips of paper with holes--work which
can be done either by hand-punches or by typewriter apparatus. A certain
group of perforations corresponds to a Morse group of dots and dashes
for a letter of the alphabet. When the tape thus made ready is run
rapidly through a transmitting machine, electrical contact occurs
wherever there is a perforation, permitting the current from the battery
to flow into the line and thus transmit signals correspondingly. At
the distant end these signals are received sometimes on an ink-writing
recorder as dots and dashes, or even as typewriting letters; but in
many of the earlier systems, like that of Bain, the record at the higher
rates of speed was effected by chemical means, a tell-tale stain
being made on the travelling strip of paper by every spurt of incoming
current. Solutions of potassium iodide were frequently used for this
purpose, giving a sharp, blue record, but fading away too rapidly.

The Little system had perforating apparatus operated by electromagnets;
its transmitting machine was driven by a small electromagnetic motor;
and the record was made by electrochemical decomposition, the writing
member being a minute platinum roller instead of the more familiar iron
stylus. Moreover, a special type of wire had been put up for the single
circuit of two hundred and eighty miles between New York and Washington.
This is believed to have been the first "compound" wire made for
telegraphic or other signalling purposes, the object being to secure
greater lightness with textile strength and high conductivity. It had a
steel core, with a copper ribbon wound spirally around it, and tinned
to the core wire. But the results obtained were poor, and in their
necessity the parties in interest turned to Edison.

Mr. E. H. Johnson tells of the conditions: "Gen. W. J. Palmer and some
New York associates had taken up the Little automatic system and had
expended quite a sum in its development, when, thinking they had reduced
it to practice, they got Tom Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad to send
his superintendent of telegraph over to look into and report upon it. Of
course he turned it down. The syndicate was appalled at this report, and
in this extremity General Palmer thought of the man who had i