SEND LETTERS BY WIRE.
AN INVENTION THAT PROMISES
REVOLUTION IN TELEGRAPHY.
Service Between Kansas City and St.
Louis to Begin Today -- Cost
of Messages to Be Great-
ly Reduced.
The first annual banquet of the stockholders of the new Dean Rapid Telegraph Company was held last night at the Coates house. About 150 men and women were present to hear the remarkable plans, which the officers of the concern have outlined for the future.
At the banquet it was announced that the company will begin today a new departure from the established systems of sending messages by electricity. What will be called the "rapid letter service" will be begun between Kansas City and St. Louis.
By the use of this service letters of any length may be sent to St. Louis at the rate of 1/2 cent per word, with a minimum charge of 15 cents. These letters will be delivered to the person addressed within from one to three hours after they are writtten.
"By Robert L. Dean's invention we are able at present to send over 400 words a minute on our wires," said General Manager S. A. Akins in explaining the new company's system. "It is because of this that we are enabled to send messages across the state of Missouri at one-seventh of the rate charged by the companies which use the Morse code."
Mr. Akins explained the Dean system as a method by which the positive and negative electrical poles are each made to operate a key which prints according to a special alphabet. Tests have already been made between Kansas City and St. Louis and Joplin, which show the system is practicable.
"I expect our system to revolutionize the business of telegraphing when it is put on a commercial basis, and we are now beginning to put it on such a footing," said Mr. Akins. "The idea of the 'rapid letter service' is new, but I think it should soon become a favorite for important correspondence. A man can now write an important letter to St. Louis, taking space fully to explain all the detaiils of his subject, and get an answer in six hours."
Other speakers were Judge E. E. Aleshire, Charles T. Taylor, H. L. White, Bert C. Haldeman, and Robert T. Herrick. Several thousand dollars of stock was subscribed for after the banquet.
