COAT OF ARMS (in heraldry), the insignia borne by individuals, bearing relation either same as a garden roller, or the shaft of an unto their own acts or those of their ancestors. fluted column. In mechanics, this form is of -Crest, that portion of a coat of arms which great value and of extensive application. is placed on the wreath in the centre on the pos No. 39-Vol. II. (To be continued.) The Electric Telegraph. and arranged in reference to the wires that any defect can be immediately rectified. Each railway has a division to itself; and thus all risk of confusion is avoided. We shall probably convey a better idea of the process of transmitting messages and obtaining replies by describing the course which would be pursued in the case of an individual desiring to send a message to, and receive an counter above which Liverpool is inscribed, :| answer from, Liverpool. Proceeding to the the message is written on a printed form containing blank spaces to be filled up with a description of the subject to be transmitted. the station to which it is to be conveyed, and the bill of charge for the same, receipted by the clerk. This form is sent up by machinery to the apartment containing the Liverpool telegraph, and the clerks in charge of this immediately set the needles to work. As the words of the answer are read off, a clerk writes them on a form somewhat similar to the foregoing, but containing an entry of the time employed in transmitting the message. This is then sent below to the party waiting for the answer. THE progress which electricity has now made in effectually establishing an instantaneous means of communication between the most remote portions of this country cannot but be regarded with peculiar interest not merely by scientific individuals but by the community at large. We, therefore, as a pendant to the articles presented in our first volume on the subject of the electric telegraph, now present one, which we extract from a contemporary, on the method employed for transmitting messages, and the general arrangements adopted at the Central Telegraph Office in London. The offices are situated at the extremity of a court leading out of the north side of Lothbury, opposite the Bank of England. The façade has some architectural pretensions; and immediately over the entrance is an ornamented clock, illuminated at night, and moved by electricity. Entering, we pass into a large and lofty hall, with galleries running round supported by pillars. Here the first object that arrests attention is a map of England of We were fortunate in being present when colossal dimensions, placed on the wall oppo- two important messages were sent to the office site the entrance, and covered by a net-work for transmission. One was from Col. Maberly, of red lines showing the telegraphic communi- of the Post Office, desiring the agent at Livercation at present existing between the metro-pool to state whether the American mail had polis and different towns in the kingdom. Under the galleries at each end of the hall are two long counters, over which are the names of the various places to which messages can be sent. Behind the counter are stationed clerks whose business it is to receive the message, enter it in a form which will be presently described, and pass it to another set of clerks, who transmit it by machinery to the galleries above. Adjoining these are a series of rooms containing the electro-magnetic telegraphs of Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke. They are placed on desks, and before them are seated the clerks whose province it is to work the apparatus. Each apartment is provided with an electrical clock, showing true London railway time, which is observed throughout the departments. been detained-and if so, how long? This was. answered in seven minutes. The other was from an eminent mercantile house, anxious to know the description of goods in a vessel just arrived at Southampton. It was answered in eleven minutes. We were surprised on making inquiry to find that the charges are much more moderate than we were led to expect from statements in the public prints, which set forth that the transmission of a message cost £5. How exaggerated this is will be seen by the following charges, taken from the books of the company:-For a message not exceeding twenty words-to Berwick, 12s.; Birmingham, 6s. 6d. ; Bristol, 13s.; Edinburgh, 13s.; Gosport, 6s. 6d.; Liverpool, 8s. 6d.; Manchester, 8s. 6d.; Glasgow, 14s.; Southampton, 5s. 6d. ; The wires are brought into the underground Yarmouth, 7s. When it is borne in mind that portion of the building by means of nine tubes, the company have laid down 2,500 miles of each tube containing nine wires. They are wire, and have upwards of 1,000 men in their subdivided as follows:-Twenty-seven come employ, it cannot be said that the foregoing from the North-Western Railway, nine from scale of charges is exorbitant. There are at the Eastern Counties, nine from the South- present fifty-seven clerks employed in the deEastern, nine from the South-Western, nine partment of transmitting and receiving mesfrom the Strand Branch Office and Windsor, sages, independently of those occupied in nine from the Admiralty, and nine are spare to printing communications for the newspapers. meet casualties.-The Admiralty have now an This department is exceedingly interesting. uninterrupted communication between their It is carried on in a long room communicating offices in Whitehall and the Dockyards at with the west gallery. The appearance of the Portsmouth; for which accommodation they words as printed will be best understood by pay £1,200 a-year to the company.-On a level the annexed fac-simile, it being only necessary with the rooms in which the wires are received to say that the lines form the lettersare several long and narrow chambers devoted to the batteries. Of these there are 108-each battery consisting of twenty-four plates. Sand moistened by sulphuric acid and water is used as the exciting medium. The batteries thus charged are found to remain above a month in good working order. They are so numbered The alphabet used is as follows :—A - characters are read with the greatest ease by the parties concerned in the operation. It is carried on with wonderful celerity-1,000 letters being printed each minute at stations two hundred or more miles apart. Scientific Societies, &c. 66 HULL LITERARY SOCIETY. COLOUR IN DECORATION.-Mr. Lockwood lately read a paper on the Uses of Colour in Decorating.' He alluded to the remarks of Mr. Burge, Q.C., contained in a paper which that gentleman read some time since, on the utility of archæological pursuits, in reference to the restorations in Holy Trinity Church. in which he had stated that the objects of the We shall attempt to describe the process, but strongly recommend our readers to see it in action. A slip of paper about a quarter of an inch broad is punched with holes at distances corresponding to the dash lines shown above-these holes being the letters. Two cylinders-one, for example, in London, the other at Manchester-are connected in the usual manner by electricity. Supposing it to builders of Gothic architecture were to lead be desired by a party in London to print a the eye by columns, and lines unbroken by message at Manchester, the slip of paper colour, upwards towards heaven, and questionis placed over the cylinder in London, and ed the use of colours in these restorations. pressed upon it by means of a spring which Mr. Lockwood stated that, as the architect plays in the middle. Thus, when those por- employed in these restorations, he had merely tions of the paper which present no holes followed the traces which he had found existappear, the contact is broken; where the holes ing, although not to the extent in decoration are presented, contact is made; and, accord- and colour as they had previously existed. ingly, the current of electricity will be con- He directed attention to the use of gold and veyed or broken to the cylinder at Manchester colour on the floor, walls, ceilings, and pillars, precisely in the same ratio as it is received and mentioned the introduction of ornament from the cylinder in London. Over the cylin- and colour by the Saxons, for at the baptism der in Manchester is wound a sheet of paper of Edwin, King of the Saxons, in 726, the dipped in a solution of prussiate of potash and walls of the temporary building on the site of sulphuric acid, which enables it to receive, and the present York Minster were decorated with record by dark green lines, the strokes of hangings and paintings, brought from France, electricity given out by making and breaking Gaul, and Italy. He then went on to show contact with the cylinder at London. There are various ingenious mechanical arrangements connected with the process, which is the invention of Mr. Bain. It is intended to devote a portion of the building to the use of annual subscribers, who will be accommodated with a room furnished with newspapers and telegraphic despatches of the prices of railway shares, markets, &c. The subscribers will also have the exclusive use of a code of private signals, which will enable them to communicate with their correspondents by a species of short-hand known only to themselves. RULES FOR PAINTING ARMOUR.-It will be of use to note that, for general purposes, the body armour during four centuries may be thus simply classified : 12th century....Scale, ring, and mail, unmixed with plate. 13th century. .Mixed mail and plate, the 15th century....Era of complete plate. " that it was the constant practice to decorate the churches of that period with hangings of various colours, with paintings in tablets, and gave instances of presents of such works being made to different churches in England, by Alwin and others of that period. Mr. Lockwood noticed the effects of the Crusades, and the consequent employment of colour in every variety of tint for the purposes of decoration. He then traced the decline of the art to the period of Henry the Eighth, occasioned by the devastation and plundering of the churches and convents during the Reformation. IMPROVED CHIMNEY-SWEEPING MACHINE.A patent has recently been taken out for a new mode of facilitating the cleansing and sweeping chimneys and flues, effected by improvements in the machinery or apparatus employed for that purpose. The invention consists of an arrangement of brushes attached to a rod, by rods and levers in such manner that at any enlargement or contraction of the flue or chimney, the brushes are expanded or contracted at pleasure, by which every part of the interior of the chimney is acted upon by the brushes; these brushes being made circular, square, or other shape, to suit and conform to the shape of the sectional area of the chimney or flue. For the application of the apparatus to horizontal flues, it is mounted upon wheels, traversing upon the lower side of the flue, for the purpose of maintaining the rod to which the brushes are attached at or about the centre of the flue, and thereby enabling the brushes to act equally upon all sides of the flue or chimney, which renders the patentee's arrangement of apparatus an improvement in the hitherto imperfect mode of effecting the object in view. 10 20 30. 40 50 co Scale of Minutes. To form this scale, it is first necessary to ascertain the diameter of the column required, then take the entire width of the diameter and form a square; divide the base into six equal parts, to be called minutes (in order to prevent each minute being divided into ten parts); take ten equal divisions on the side, portions of which will give the parts, then draw the horizontal and perpendicular lines from side to side; afterwards draw the diagonal lines, as A K, taking care that the lines meet only at the extremities of the perpendicular; then the distance from A to a will give one part, from B to в two parts, from c to c three parts, and so on to K K, which is the width of ten parts. When a given distance is required-for example, say 20 min. 6 parts-take two divisions on the base line for the minutes, and add the width of the space between FF for the parts, it will then produce the width required, and so on for any other dimension. RICE GLUE.-Mix rice flower intimately with cold water, and gently simmer it over the fire, when it readily forms a delicate and durable cement, and only answering the purpose of common paste, but admirably adapted to join together paper, card, &c. When made! of the consistence of plastic clay, models, busts, basso relievos, &c., may be formed; and the articles when dry are very like white marble, and will take a high polish, being very durable. In this manner the Chinese and Japanese make many of their domestic idols. To INLAY MOTHER-OF-PEARL WORK.-In Birmingham (to save time), the fragments of pearl are cut into shapes with press-tools. Tortoise-shell is softened by soaking it in hot water-the design arranged, and placed between flat dies, under a heavy press, to remain till the shell is cold and dry. It is thus embedded in the shell. Those vivid colours on paper trays, &c., are fragments of the Aurora shell, pressed in the same way, while the paper is damp, when dry the design is painted, varnished, baked, and polished. |