"ملف VII\١. الاتصال التلغرافي بالكويت." [و‎‎٢‎٦‎٥] (٥٧٤/٥٥٩)

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right The balances were always troublesome ; a section would get stopped for a
few hours, but now the staff had been able to synchronise the speed of the cable all
the way through by a system of relays. By means of this system of relays, as the
message came into the station it was automatically shot through and given another
boost on the line. Another important thing about it was that if there was an
error in any signal it was corrected at the succeeding station, and went on correct;
so that if it left London right it must get to Bombay correct.
The time taken telegraphically was, of course, infinitesimal. One of the first
sections dealt with in that way was the one between London and Cape Town, and
one of the tests applied was to press a button in London, and arrange for a man
at the Cape Town end to press another button when he saw the signal come through,
and the reply had come back in i£ seconds. That was practically instantaneous,
allowing for the time taken by the man to respond to the signal, which might
take half a second.
Before such an audience as that he was tempted to say a few words about the
importance of an enterprise which perhaps was not quite fully appreciated.
In the war it would have been impossible to carry on without the telegraphs. He
had been at the Admiralty as Director of Operations, and the communications
received by cable were a very big factor in winning the war. Once a submarine
got in near Lisbon, and cut a cable. Another incident which came to his notice was
when he had been in command of the fleet which was trying to hunt down the
“ Emden.” The crew of the “ Emden ” had landed at Cocos and smashed up
everything, but luckily the staff had buried all the spare instruments in the
sand, and as soon as the enemy went away the staff dug them up and restored
communication in a few hours. Then again in the Falkland Island the Pacific
cable was cut. Unfortunately the staff, though they had buried the instruments
in the sand, put up a placard in the office to say where they were, which was
rather silly, and therefore the enemy knew exactly where to find them.
The lecturer had mentioned the number of free messages that were carried.
He might add that the Eastern Telegraph Company carried millions of words
free for the soldiers of the Empire, and they were only too proud and thankful
to be able to do it.
Mr. H. L. M. Tritton (Chairman, Indo-European Telegraph Company, Ltd.,)
said Mr. Simpson had truly remarked that his Department was not very much
in the public eye, but for all that it, filled a role which was very important both
from a strategic and from a commercial point of view. The lecturer had referred to
the difficulties and dangers which were so successfully surmounted in the early
days, and that audience could not but be struck by the indomitable courage of those
pioneer officers of the Department. The foundations of that great undertaking
were indeed well and truly laid, and the same spirit which animated those pioneers
was very evident in their successors to-day. As Chairman of the Indo-European
Telegraph Company he wished to emphasise the close working which existed
between the Company and the Department, and also the Eastern Company, as
Admiral Grant had just explained. As had already been pointed out, since 1870
the Indo-European Telegraph Company had worked in the closest co-operation
with the Department, and, as a result, direct communication was obtained between
London and Teheran and Teheran and Karachi, and he might add that for about
the last twenty years instantaneous communication by means of the Company’s
and the Department’s lines had been achieved over a distance of 5,300 miles between
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