The telegraph manual: a complete history and description of the semaphoric, electric and magnetic telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ancient and modern.

THE CHAPPE SIGNAL ALPHABET. 37
As the necessity of the telegraph requires a great portion of
the signals for the purposes of regulation and police of the line,
the rest of the signals being devoted exclusively to the transmission of dispatches, these two classes of signals, being perfectly distinct, cannot be placed in the same journal of business.
The signals formed on one. oblique are, therefore, devoted to
the administration of the line, and those on the other oblique
are devoted to the correspondence. There are thus 98 regulation signals, and 98 dispatch signals, which are all written on
horizontal and vertical lines, but written separately in the journal book, marked out for the registration of the respective services. The signals take their names
Fig'. 10.
when they are formed on the obliques, ig
as seen in fig. 10, and it is important \ \
to remark that the designation of a x x >
signal must commence always from <
the upper extremity of the regu-
lator. The signals are never written \ X. >
as in the table, fig. 10, but always \ > N,
on the horizontal lines, as in fig. 11, \
or in the vertical line, as in table, fig. \ N
12. The station master writes them " N \
as he sees them, but never until he is
sure they are correctly understood. It
now remains to be explained Fig. 11.
how the mechanism which
produces these signals is
operated. To one not fa-
miliar with signaling, Ithe / 7
process may seem surrounded with complications, and ~-~ 1 -' "-' v-7
tardiness of action. Such, v -,
however, is not the case; and _
a knowledge of the more Fig. 12.
modern electric needle system of telegraphing would 1] [ r I a J [ I
prove the error. But as to N T r
the rapidity in transmission, I i [ J _ j 1
the facts hereafter stated l CI rf 1
will more fully demonstrate
that the Chappe telegraph S J'L $1] ) (
is not a slow process of communicating intelligence, but that it has subserved well the
purposes contemplated by its patriotic and enthusiastic
founder.