Cables

Cables

Before the War a cable despatch of 1,000 words was unusually lengthy.

A few days ago The New York Times published the full text of Premier Poincarée’s reply to Lord Curzon’s note on reparations. The text as printed covered 13 columns of the newspaper (about 15,000 words). As it was transmitted in ” skeleton ” telegraphic code it consisted of 10,644 words.

The feat was performed in this manner: The French note was taken to the Paris office of the Times and translated into English — a process taking six hours. It was divided into 15 sections of 500 to 1,000 words each and transmitted over two cables directly into the New York office of the Times. It was just four hours and 15 minutes from the time the first sections of the report were filed at the Paris cable office until the entire text was complete in New York. And the text of the note was less than half of the cable dispatches which came into the Times’ office that night. Journalism progresses.