What the Postal Telegraph is doing

What the Postal Telegraph Company Is Doing.

Notice has been given that the directors of the Postal Telegraph Company have ordered the distribution among the stockholders of 96,515 shares of the Postal Telegraph and Cable Company. This will be done in the proportion of one share of the latter company's stock to two shares of the other. The Postal Company has now in operation, it appears, from statements in the daily papers, a through line between New York and Chicago, consisting of two copper conductors with steel cores, each 500 pounds to the mile, and one steel cored copper wire of 200 pounds. Using the Grey harmonic system, one of these heavy wires has six instruments at each end, and twelve operators to each wire, and these are able to send messages between New York and Chicago — a distance as the line runs of 1,054 miles — without repeating. The company uses also the Leggo system, by which it claims to send over its lines automatically, 800 words per minute, for the greatest distance, without repeaters.

Between New York and Washington the company has run two 500-pound compound copper wires with steel core, and the whole line between the two cities will be completed and working in two weeks, with stations, to begin with, at Morristown, Clinton, Doylestown, Norristown, Conshocken [sic] Coshocton, Philadelphia, McCall's Ferry, Baltimore and Washington. The company will also probably work a through telephone line between New York and Washington, as the telephone has been proved entirely practicable for that and even greater distances, by means of the very heavy copper conductors used by this company. Between New York and Chicago the Postal Company has already telegraph offices at Middletown, Binghamton, Owego [sic] Oswego, Elmira, Jamestown, Salamanca, Olean, Warren, Cleveland, Wellington, Auburn, Indiana, Defiance, Fostoria, South Bend, Avilla and La Porte. A continuation of the postal lines between Chicago and St. Louis, with offices opened at Streator, Joliet, Pekin, Peoria, Springfield and Alton, will be completed in thirty days from now, as also a branch line from Fostoria to Toledo and another from Buffalo, by Olean, through the oil regions to Pittsburg. The company will traverse Allegheny City and Pittsburgh by means of a lead-covered underground cable. The aggregate of lines thus soon to be completed and in operation will be 2,800 miles long, and the company is pushing on vigorously with the intention to connect, by its heavy copper-covered wires, all the principal cities in the United States. A line from New York to Boston and through New England is now under contract, and a second line between New York and Chicago, by way of Harrisburg and Indianapolis, with a branch to Cincinnati, is to be built during the coming summer. The poles required to carry the heavy Postal wires are put up forty to the mile.