. > f THE Evan-ineenznrrn E BE ’ IN J THE YEAR RIGHT RIBING FOR THE WEEKLY EAZETTE AND Y. WEEKLY TRIBUNE. BOTH P APERS Sent to anv Address FOR One — Dllar! ADDRESS ALL ORDERS T0 GAZETTE. 110W ouasglrs TALK THE use BY THE HELIOGRAPH OF! SlGNALING cons. The Language of the Seas is Easily Learn ed by Marines, and the Vocabulary. Though Small, is Sufficient for Al Practical Purposesa ' The importance of the part whicl the signal staff play on board a. man of-war can not be overrated. It is thl ears and tongue of each ship; ant through it are conveyed the commandl and reports of the gravest as well al the most trivial import, from an invi tation to dinner to an order to flghl the enemy. The means and codes througl which messages are conveyed vary at the circumstances surrounding thl vessels differ. At the principal Naval depots and at the Navy schools 11 Annapolis and Newport the student: are carefully instructed in all thl branches of this important subject The instruction is usually given to th'. pupils in pairs. One man reads thn signals made by the instructor, whil the other writes them on the slate. The semaphore system of signalling is the easiest to learn. Every lette or sign is indicated by one or mor: arms of the semaphore held in posi tions which follow a regular sequenca and are readily remembered. Th1 difficulty begins when the signals ar. made rapidly; and it requires a grea deal of practice to “take in” a signa when the arms are moved quick]: from one position to another. This ll especially true when signs are em ployed which represent more than on letter. Sentences, which contain com binations of these letters, often com pletely nonpluss the learner, when ti the practiced eye they present no difli culties. Semaphore signals can b successfully made with the arms, whel the wooden apparatus is not at hand. and it is a common sight to see a1 officer or a seaman standing up in tho stern sheets of a boat oscillating ant waving his arms in a way to make thl uninitiated fancy he has gone starl mad. yen conveying a perfectly intel liglble meaning to the signalman 01 board the ship. The principal use 01 the semaphore is in What may he calls: “conversational" signalling; this purpose it is in almost constanl employment in a squadron of war. vessels. 41/: ‘1\\' l \\\\h\“ '1 \ . , JAM/v. M! . E) ”CPI-l A5 035 [A l / But the oldest and still the princi. pal medium of communication betweel war-ships are flags. They are alway: used for evolutionarv. routine, ant similar classes of sxsn 11s. The mas tei'y of the flag system of signalling i1 v'é‘ry difficult; for, with the letters 01 the alp‘li'abet and a complete set 0: numerals, a very great many combin- ations can be made, and these can b1 further varied by distinguishing pen name. The hoisting of the flags is, b} no-means, as simple a. matter as i1 looks. The required skill can only bi secured. by much practice. An expert signalman will run 'up a string of flag: in a few seconds, and have them at floating out clear; while a tyre woult get them hopelessly entangled an: wonder at the contrariness of the litth strips of hunting. When the hours of instruction arc over the men roll up the flags into new little bundles, in such a way that the: can be hoisted in that form and and denly set free by a sharp pull on an halliards; and woe to the student whc rolled them up if the flags do no. "break" properly when they are again unfurled. The heliograph affords a very prett: medium of signalling, but can only bI used when the sun is shining. It is 1 small circular mirror, mounted so that by a motion of the finger it can b1 made to flash the sun’s rays on a given point in the distance. The flash 0: this instrument can be seen for lift) miles; and, with the aid of a. telescope at a much greater distance. A: 'opaque substance is held before thl mirror at longer or shorter intervals.’ - thus changing the flashes into a sem- blance of dots and dashes, and enab- ling the Operator to use the MorSe tele graph alphabet in sending the mes sages.’ During the Apache campaigr in Arizona 9. message Was transmittec with the heliograph one hundred and eighty-three miles. , In time of war the lighthouses sit- uated along the Atlantic and Paciflt coasts could be-made to do invaluablc service as signalling stations. Theii watchful eyes could sweep the ocean and signal the approach of an enemy long before the sh1ps were visible fron the land. Take the lighthouse at Sanc‘ Key, Florida, for an illustration. This light is seven mlles'from Key West. Should there be trouble in the Gulf 0; Mexico or Cubaward. men stationet’ in tlle top of its tail tower could watcl the waters for twenty miles around; and, with the aid of a search light look far down toward Cuba, and send to the war department reports of the movements at the seat of trouble. An- other example of what can be done it. and fo. . furnished by the beacon at Cape; Cod, - where there is a signaldisplay station and telegraphic Connections with- Bose ton. Vessels passing Cape Cod signal their messages to the lighthouse, and wihin a minute the messages are in Baton. From these lighthouses, scat- tered at intervals all along our coasts, the movements of an hostile squadron approaching our shores. might be . watched almost continuously; and its doings signalled at once to the proper authorities. All that would be needed would be to equip them with DI‘OPBI‘ signalling apparatus, telescopes, etc. In this connection it will be interest- ing to note some of the ancient meth- 0115 of signalling. Beacon fires, built on the tops of high hills, mountains or towers have been used for long-dis— tance signalling from. time. imme- morial. The Bible refers to their use: and the most ancient historians write of them as being common long before Relays I their day.- of torch-holders l l ‘ I H I. / a, , ////%/l./// l r:- ./-‘ I l ' l in" K‘ 1 ,. ,\~ 1 ' "Oi ,,// ' I I1! Lil/MW m 1.27/1: (ASE OF THE HEIJOGI‘TAPH, (Il/ /// were also frequently employed for sig- nalling purposes. The use of mirrors to flash signals by means of sun rays dates back to the time of the Pharaohs. An alphabetical method of camp sig‘ nal was perfected by Polybius. The letters of the alphabet were arranged in five or six columns. The number of a letter in a column and the column were indicated by the number of torches held up. Another ingenious contrivance for night communications from afar was the clepsydra. This was a tall vessel containing water, which was let out slowly by a tap at the bottom. Divisions were marked .down the side, and on each division a sentence was inscribed. Each signall- ing point had one of these instruments; and on a light being shown by one station it was acknowledged by the other, and the tap at the bottom of each clepsydra pulled out. When the surface of the water had settled to the required Sentence, a second light was shown, the flow of water stopped, and the sentence at the surface of the wa— ter read on the other and correspond- ing clepsydra. A Once More the Airship. One more inventor has entered the field with an airship, and he is as sanguine of success as were all the others who have from time to timI fluttered into the air' with various con- trivances and came in‘gloriously to earth. He is M. C. McCarthy of Nichol- son, Wis, and he is now at work on which he claims to have invented, and which- he says no other airship man has ever tried to use. True, he has not yet built an airship, and, therefore, the success or failure of the principle is still something for‘the future to deter- mine, but on paper the plan looks just as feasible as do all the other airship plans that have been exploited in the past. For three years McCarthy, who is only 21 years old, has been interested in aerial navigation, and has made a he ”hit upon the idea of using an in- number of experiments along lines 01 his own, with varying success. At lasi verted propeller similar to the pro- peller of a steamer and having it driven by electricity. He describes the invention as follows: “Towering high above the car of the ship is a huge propeller, standing per. pendicularly and constructed the same as that of an ordinary steamer. When power is applied to this and it begins to revolve rapidly it acts on the air‘as a steamboat propeller does on the wa- ter, and the ship rises rapidly into the air to'any desired height. When the height is reached‘speed is slackened and the propeller revolves only fast enough to keep the ship suspended l. the air. “Reaching out from the car‘ of 11-1 ship are two smaller steering ro lers, and, besides being used for Ste 1 ing, they are capable of driving tl1= ship through the air at a high rate <.: speed. The edge of the car being cl: cular, they may be shifted to any p.. 'sitlon, thus making steering posslbir Power is transmitted to them by 31-1 Carthy's new acute angle ccupiin which is so constructed that it wort. at an angle and can be turned n times. It can scarcely be recognized .1 anything less than a new mechanic. principle. The power to be used in 11. new ship will be furnished by a StOl‘lg. battery.” Like all airship enthusiasts, McCar thy is sanguine that before the century closes, regular lines of alrshlps travel- crossing between this country am; Europe, carrying passengers, and Will be as common in the United States as railway t1 was now are. n .5 0‘ n he way of lighthouse sign‘allinge'is‘ 'plans for an airship on a principle twisted over on itself any number .- . , ing at a high rate of speed will be - h —-—‘——__— rim—11111111113, 1861:611. HOW'NEWSPAPEFES, OF THAT TlME TREATED STARTLING EVENTS. Old Way and Now—Three I-uzae Page Columns Told of the Fall of Sumter- — Facts of Momentous History-Making, EventsSecondaly to Editorialcnmmcui A war with a foreign power would tax the journalistic resources of Amer- ica, vast as they are. sible combination of brain, money and muscle that would not be brought into play. Hundreds of workers in all branches of the profession would be sent to the front. That paper which- fails to have its dispatch boat at the first naval combat will be counted 110 paper at all. Special wires willcarry the news of the fray to the dailies which own them. Every-known system of cornmunication will be brought into play.» Trained corps will demonstrate the possibilities of the heliog =>raph, the fin g s: stem and what not. The came out will reach its highest form of de- velopment. Snap-shooting a bursting shell or a crushed turret at the moment of its subsidence will become-a com- mon occurrence. » In this matter of news gathering things have changed mightily since the days of nearly forty years ago. There were daily papers—plenty of them~ when the cable of the Union snapped under the long strain, and the two sec- .tions of the country drifted apart. They had what they called the “magnetic telegraph,” too, but they were a little chary about using it. It cost money, There is no pos— . and the leased wire had not been in- ., vented. No correspondent sat on a stump with a. typewriter on his knees and clicked off beautiful stuff, while the bullets made sounds like Splitting silk in the air around :them, as Ste- phen Crane and Richard Harding Da- vis did for five or six weeks ‘in Greece last year. News in those days came by mail, and it was sent by correspondents who had. much reverence for the gen- eral commanding, and took what he said as matter inspired. They were not more anxious to be killed than are the correspondents of this day, and kept out of harm's way as much as possi- ble. It stands to reasonthat when a man is fifteen miles back of the zone of firelall day, and is then forced to get his information from a. flabbergasted General who is thinking only how best to preserve his own reputation and, save his head, the “news” he sends on to his paper is likely to be a. little off color. Any reader of the modern newspaper who desires. to have the strong contrast between the paper of ’605 and the paper of the ’90s brought to mind, has only to examine a war file of some one of the journals that are still nationally known. Take the New York Tribune, for instance, which at the outbreak of hostilities was one of the most prosper- ous and influential dailies in this coun- try. It has a. high-class editorial screamer as its Washington correspon- dent, and Horace Greeley as its editor. One would think that there fivas a. com- bination to make envious rivals shiver and turn pale. It did not. The rivals were no better and no worse than it. It used to subdivide its local inteui- gence into departments, headed re- spectively “Local Items" and “Brook. lyn Items." This was all the heading they get. It has not been many years since the word “item" has been used in a newspaper to describe a. news story. The Tribune published a detail- ed report of the proceedings of Con- gress, much the same as isnow given to its million ofrreaders by- that accur- ate and Sportive journal, the Congres- sional Record. Theuimportant nerve of eaoh issue was not printed upon the first page, but upon the fifth page, op- posite to .the editorial page. These were the days of “personal editors," when one man dominated the paper and the paper's constituency. It got brief tel- egrams from: Washington each day, which it printed, bear-ing the credit line, “By Magnetic Telegraph." The national capital was then boil- ing and bubbling like a. caldron. All men saw that the inevitable conflict , could not be‘ much longer postponed, and those who met :their neighbors in the inorning after a restless night look- ed at them with scared eyes and asked for intelligence that was dreaded. The Tribune had ample warning of the im- pending crash, and the preparations made to report the first overt act of war were on a scale commensurate with its standing and influence. It hired a man in Charleston to send it something in case the “rebels” succeed- ed in scaring up nerve enough to do anything. It may be said-that it was two years after this before the word “Cohfeder—aes" found its way into col— umns of the Tribune. . Sumter was attacked, and the Tri- bune man did himself and his paper proud. He sent a. total of three col— umns, which were printed, of course, on"the fifth page, under a “scare head,” a‘ single column in width and contain- ing- twenty-two black lines. On April 12, while the guns from the island bat- ' teries and the guns from the fort were roaring all day, he sent on seven dis- . general commanding! said, “and at » every. shot Jump . upon the ramparts and then lump down. cheering." The Tribune went to," its readers with the proud consciousness that it had done everything possible'to a great journal in covering-the Sumter affair, and doubtless its readers thought so, too. ' 0n the morning: of July 22, 1861, it plastered‘ itself with .glory an inch thick, and one can imagine without difficulty the smile that spread itself over the benigh features of “Uncle Horace” when he picked up the paper from his desk and saw that it had not been beaten upon the battle of Bull Run To this wrestle of the gods and Titans nearly a page is devoted—the fifth page, The, headlines are still one column wide, and,.in the light of these latter days. read queerly. Here are some of them: “Great Battle Fought,” “The Batteries of Bull's Run Cap—.- tured,” “Splendid Union Victory ” “A! Death Blow to Secession,” “Heroism of the Union Forces,” "They Know No Such- Word as Fail," “Not Over 50d Killed and Wounded,” “Forty Wagons loads of Dead Rebels.” Two days later the Tribune announced “The Battle Decisively Won." It did have some‘ 4 thing to say, however, of a, “panic among the teamsters.” It will be seen that the Bull Run man, like the Charleston man, rose to the occasion and demonstrated what a journalist can do when put to it. t The files of the New York dailies for the four years of the civil war are an object lesson in the evolution of the American newspaper. In that time they gradually grew out of their inef- ficiency, and grew used to war. Its cor- respondents learned that they would not be shot every time they got close enough to battle to hear the bullets sing overhead. They learned to es- tabllsh vlines of communication from the front to the rear and from the rear. to the nearest telegraph office, indepens den of the government lines. They, learned to judge of the progress of a fray by what they saw of the wound. ed streaming to the rear, of the ore dering forward of reserves, of the steady backward and forward move- ment of the lines, of the thousand things of a. battle-field that tell the story of victory or defeat as plainly as words. They became too wise for the His stereotyped reply, “We are winning all along the; line,” lost its force. They stopped aslé- ing him questions at all. He used to send for them and ask .them questions,; which they answered correctly or not. as they saw fit. The journalist was developing into the newspaper man and newspaper man was beginning to assert himself, to feel and to know that he was by far the most dangerous ani-. mal on the field, despite the men with' the guns. The consequence of this evolution .was that when Gettysburg was fought. nearly two years afterward, the head- lines of the Tribune on the morning after the third day of the gigantic struggle told the story of the result fairly well. The news had been moved to the first page by that time. Edi- torial paragraphs had become a sec-- ondary or tertiary feature of that and other papers. The “personal editor” at last had been brought into contact with men and events bigger than he. He might rise in his wrath and denounce some contemporary as a “horse thief and liar," and excite only a. fleeting smile of amusement. Probably the contemporary was so busy reading and. editing the news from the front that he did not see the denunciation. The headlines .-of--~he Tribune on- the fourth day when the guns of Gettysburg were hushed forever, said, among othei things: ”The Severest Action of the war," “14959.95. on Both, Sides Heavy." “Advantage on Our Side." That was the truth. everlaas we see. it to-day. Still, a. scant four columns were de‘ vOted to the'intelligence. -' The paper of this time which printedless than five pages about so enormous ‘a. conflict would consider itself. irretrievably dis- graced. If the‘ battle of Gettysburg or Shiloh or the Wildness or Hampton Roads were fought over again to—morrow, people would listen .to the roar of the guns in a. thousand theatres by holding telephone receivers to their ears. Next would come the cheers of the charging regiments, given in the squeaky tones of the phonograph. Lastly, every dime museum in the land Would coiri money by vitascope reproductions of the cap— ture of a battery. l The Pope’s Idea of Proportion. During a recent brief outing in the Vatican gardens Leo XIII. came across an assistant gardener who was digging the so-il.. . “My good man," he said to the gar- dener, “how much do ‘you lece-ivc a: day for your labor?” “Two hams your holiness," was the reply. The pontiff mused awhile. “And how many children have you?" “None, your holiness." “And does your wife also work for her livelihood ?" “Holy Father,” said the have never been married)” Once more the pontiff mused in re- labcrer. “1 patches of an average length of 100lflecfion, words, giving the progress of the en- gagement. He announced the occur- rence of the most momentous event in national history in [these words, “The ball has opened.” He ended one of his dispatches with the statement, “These are lively times here,” and another with the similar statement, “These are reviving times on the Palmetto coast. Evidently he de-- sired to give the paper its money’s worth, and he could not think of any- thing else to say. He paid, however, even at that early day, a compliment ' to the splendid gallantry of the Amer- ican fighter. whether he comes from the North er the South. “The soldiers’are perfectly, reckless of their lives," no “Then, my good man," he said, “I shall give instructions that from hence- forward, instead of two francs a day you will receive a franc and a half, and that half a franc will be added tolhe wages of some other workman who has a wife and family to support.”— Chicago Inter-Ocean. Willowy. “I don‘t‘say all women are alike." remarked Mr. Meekton, with a sigh. “but Elizabeth hasn’t changed__ much. BefOre we were married she. was .what they call a ‘willowy’ sort of girl. She is now a pronounced I- will owy' sort of a woman.” ~0hicago Tribune.
Norwalk Chronicler