Entries Tagged 'Same Today' ↓

There was begun in the last week or two a very thorough revision of the telegraphic cipher codes in use by people in this city doing business with european countries, says the New York Sun. The revision is in order to conform with a new regulation of the International Telegraph bureau, designed to put an end to the difficulties, disputes and inconveniences that have been connected with international telegraphing for very many years. The International Telegraph bureau is a telegraphic clearing-house and intelligence office located at Berne, Switzerland, of which all the governments of Europe, and all the important nations of the world, with the sole exception of the United States, are members. “Berne,” as the bureau is generally referred to, is the central information bureau of the telegraph service of the whole world. Any interruption to a cable or land line, the opening of a new line, or rearrangement and shortening of an old one; all delays to telegraphic communication, anywhere and from any cause, such as storms or earthquakes, or censorship on telegrams because of war or civil disturbances in Cuba or Armenia, or anywhere else; anything or everything that improves or disturbs the telegraph service in any part of the world, is at once reported from the affected locality directly to Berne, and the information is promptly sent out from there to the headquarters of every government and telegraph company, and so on to every telegraph office of importance in the world.

The bureau was first established as a result of an international telegraph convention held at St. Petersburg in 1875, to settle all matters of rules and regulations for the interchange of telegrams among the various countries; to collect and apportion the charges on international telegrams, according to the proportion of work done by each country, and generally to do the work of the telegraph companies and systems that the clearing-house does for the banks. Every five years a convention is held, at which all the governments are represented, and the rules to govern Berne are considered and revised and enacted.

There has always been difficulty between the telegraph service and its customers over the use of cipher words. Of course, where the cost of telegraphing runs to several dollars a word, every effort is made to be brief. Most elaborate and really wonderful codes have been constructed, some at a cost of thousands of dollars, by the aid of which one word is made to express a whole sentence, or paragraph, of commercial information. To such a science has this matter of codes been reduced that the bulk of telegrams passing between this country or England and distant places like China an Australia rarely consist of more than two or three words. Many hundred contain only one word, besides the name and address. And one word often sums up a whole day’s business. To insure accuracy and speed the convention decided many years ago that only legitimate words, belonging to one of eight languages, should be allowed in codes, and no word should contain more than ten letters. Arbitrary combinations of letters, such as xqp, or wzy, are only accepted on a basis of three letters to a word. While cable operators are not expected to know eight languages, yet there is something about legitimate words of a modern language that makes it easily recognized. It sounds all right on the Morse instrument and looks all right on the cable slip. A mutilated word is as readily distinguished and stopped. The sender of a foreign telegram of eight words may use a word each from English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Latin, but they must be good words and not over ten letters long. The receiving clerk in a cable office will almost infallibly spot an illegitimate word, and, as he is held responsible at the rate of several dollars a word for any wrong word he may pass, he lets very few indeed get by him.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, May, 1895[/tags]

A well-known artist of Syracuse, N. Y., is amusing a very few of his friends with an experience he had some days ago that has a tinge of the uncanny. It seems, says the Star, that the artist has a friend who is an undertaker and who at that time was badly in need of assistance. It seems that the undertaker had accidentally spilled a fluid upon the face of a body he was preparing for burial, and on account of his carelessness the fluid had acted upon the skin and turned it black in many places. The undertaker realized that something must be done, and that very soon. It would be out of the question for the family to learn of the accident. For a moment he was nonplussed, but his mind shortly turned to his artist friend, and he thought that he could relieve him. “It was at night when he called,” said the artist, in narrating the story, “and I had retired. At first it seemed impossible for me to attempt such a job as he laid before me, but his sad plight touched me, and I finally consented to do the best in my power. I went to the house with my box of paints. The undertaker entered the front door, but he feared that suspicion would be aroused if I was seen. According to arrangements I waited outside until he had reached the death chamber. Then he silently raised the window, and I crawled stealthily in. For more than an hour I labored silently upon the spotted face, carefully painting over the black places, and finishing the whole with that effect which betokens death. It was a ghastly job, and I never want another like it. After it was all over the body looked as lifelike as possible, and no one ever know that the face was entirely made up.”

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, July, 1895[/tags]

We have not any new kind of olives, but a new way of preparing them for use, that is, slicing them before they are bottled. Instead of paying for a lot of stones and serving the olives whole, now one may buy them all cut in rings, very pretty for garnishing dishes, very handy to help oneself to instead of a cold, slippery oval object sure to roll away unless very securely prodded with an olive fork; and it is very much more easily and gracefully eaten, since a ring may be severed, whereas a whole olive had to be lifted to the lips and nibbled, and then the stone discarded as deftly as possible. It is a wonder we have not had stoned olives before, since comparatively few have a chef at hand to stone them neatly, nor a cooking school teacher to impart the information. To be sure stuffed olives, the heart of pimentoes or celery, have been fads of fashion, but not everyone likes these combinations.

The dark, purple-red, ripe olives are softer in texture and much esteemed for the table as more easy of digestion than the green; in fact, they are given freely to children, who do not always chew their food properly, and to older folk who have not the best of grinders with which to divide the firm green olives into minute particles.

A blessing, indeed, in these rushing days is the sliced olive, a very handy adjunct to the salad garnishing, and eleventh hour entertaining, whether a mid-day luncheon or a mid-night supper.

A New England scientist says there’s going to be dickens to pay if the rest of the United States continues to cart away granite and marble from the land of the Pilgrims and Puritans. “It is not unlikely,” says he, “that the equilibrium of the earth is already considerably disturbed, and that we shall shortly feel a pronounced wobble. Of course, if there is to be a wobble anywhere we would prefer it in New England, but perhaps the outlook is not so desperate as at first glimpse. The summer rush of people to the White mountains, Bar Harbor, Newport, and a thousand other New England summer resorts must in a very great degree restore the weight which existed before there were quarries in New England. And there is another thing. It is computed that there were in the Western hemisphere, when Columbus set foot on it, not more than 1,000,000 human beings. There are now, at a very low estimate, 101,000,000. These 100,000,000 of additional persons have increased the weight of the western hemisphere some 5,000,000 of tons, in the roundest of round numbers. Surely there is an opportunity for a wobble in this state of affairs, and we ought to be conscious of it by this time. If there has been no wobble an explanation should be demanded. Some men of science should rise to tell us why we don’t wobble.” Nothing is more dreadful, says the Buffalo Courier, than the uncertainty when and where the commotion will begin. Probably only those who are holding to the car straps at the time will keep their feet.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, May, 1895[/tags]

The fact cannot be disputed that no single factor in modern life is doing so much to degenerate our young womanhood as this mad race on the part of girls, impelled by necessity or not, to go into the business world, says the Ladies’ Home Journal. These may sound like strong words to the ears of some, but to those who are really cognizant of the immensity of the evil results that are being wrought they will simply fit the case and not go beyond it. In altogether too many of our commercial and industrial establishments, stores and factories, the men into whose hands is given the power to employ and control girls are not fit, from a moral standpoint, to herd swine. And yet thousands of our young women are allowed to go from their homes to work under the influence of these men and in the atmosphere vitiated by them. And why? Simply because it is considered more “respectable” to be employed in an office, store or factory than to be engaged in domestic service. The very word “servant” has a taint about it that the majority of young women dislike and from which they flee. But what else are they in business establishments than servants, pure and simple? There can be no difference by an imaginary one. That is all. Far less leniency is shown in our business houses to women employes than is shown, as a rule, in our homes to domestic help–infinitely less.

A new phase of criminal hypnotism has come to the surface in a most sensational manner, and in a way to startle society in general. A Brockport (N. Y.) State Normal School girl is reported to have suddenly cried out in agony in church, that a certain young man had hypnotized her. The fact that the young woman who thus gave rise to a strange sensation and scandal is also reported to be a cousin of Miss Frances E. Willard¹ will also direct added public attention to her eccentric deed. Her remarkable accusation against a youth of good repute may be set down as a freak of simple hysteria, especially, as the young man enjoys the reputation of having dabbled in this modern black art of hypnotism. A knowledge of this amateur propensity of his may have easily wrought upon the perfervid imagination of an excitable miss.

Nevertheless, the serious question remains as to what this queer outburst may lead. The public imagination has itself been decidedly agitated recently by the many romantic and weird tales of hypnotic mystery and crime. There can be no doubt in the mind of the more than casual observer that the theory of crime through the agency of hypnotic suggestion is gaining ground in public sentiment, if not in the courts. Clark Bell’s paper on “Hypnotism and the Law,” read before a recent session of the Medico-Legal Society of America, reveals the fact that this belief of criminal hypnotism is entertained by a number of eminent physicians. It is but a step from the accusation after a crime to this Brockport phase of accusation before a crime. Is it possible that the close of the nineteenth century is to witness a hypnotism superstition It is the fashion to sneer at the old Puritans for their witchcraft delusion; but what record as regards superstitious beliefs is this generation to leave for the scrutiny of posterity?–Philadelphia Record.

1. I’m not sure what this has to with anything — perhaps the association with “an army of 250,000″?[back]

Brooklyn detectives say that Daniel Evans, 19 years old, with no home, is the greatest “fit fakir” they have met professionally in the course of a long and varied experience, says the New York Tribune. He has been pretending to “take fits,” they say, with a regularity and perfection that has gained him lots of money from sympathetic persons, but which at least led him to jail, where to-day he languishes under the supervision of a “minion of the law,” who nervously watches Daniel Evans in case he should “take a fit” there.

Evans is the young man who has been visiting hotels and churches, where he had fits and fits and fits. After one fit he would have a collection taken up for his benefit and then he would seek another field and have another fit. He worked this novel scheme in various places in New York city and Brooklyn; in the former city at the Fifth Avenue hotel, in the latter at the St. George hotel and at other places. After each simulated fit Evans would collect money to pay his fare to Fresno, Cal., “where his poor old father lived.” He did this at the St. George a few weeks ago. He went to the Grace Methodist Episcopal church, Seventh avenue and St. John’s place, and had a fit and a collection in the middle of the Sunday evening services.

Last Sunday night he went to the First Reformed church, Seventh avenue and Carroll street, and had a fit there. The Rev. Dr. James M. Farrar, however, thought that Evans was having fits for value received and that his schemes was a fradulent one to gain money and sympathy. So after Evans had called at the “Dutch Arms,” a club connected with the church, Dr. Farrar informed Detectives Reynolds and Weiser, who arrested Evans.

Elias B. Dunn, the weather observer at New York, has been studying atmospheric electricity for two years, says the Boston Transcript. The sergeant, as they used to call him; the farmer, as they call him now, said the other day that he will live to see the day when electricity collected from the atmosphere and stored by some means which an Edison or a Tesla will have to devise, will revolutionize the world. The prophet expects that cities will be lighted and heated by atmospheric electricity; that every train and car will be run lighted and heated by it; that coal will become a curiosity, that steam heating will be a granny talk to the children of the next generation; that the telegraph and telephone companies will lose their monopolies; that war will become a farce because a touch of electricity will make the British Grenadiers or the German Uhlans or the Scotch Highlanders sit down on the cold ground powerless. Even the dreams of communication with the inhabitants of Mars will become realities, and a man will be able to strike up electricity as he does a parlor match. There will be no more trolley strikes, because there will be no more trolleys. Mankind will tap the atmosphere for almost any convenience except food and clothing, and even the clothing will be woven and the food cooked by atmospheric electricity; street cleaning will be as easy as the magician’s “Presto! change!” and everybody will live comparatively happier ever after. Mr. Dunn is sure that his ideas are practical and probable. The atmosphere is his constant study, and, having introduced general humidity to the public as the principal element in uncomfortable days, he has determined that the potent element for good in the air we breathe shall no longer be wasted. Why, he said, the whole atmosphere is soaked with electricity.