ONE of the most beautiful of modern inventions—it remains to be seen whether it is as useful as it is beautiful—the instrument devised by Mr. John Robertson for the transmission of writing by electricity, may now be seen at work at the American exhibition. Out of the top of a box, which is about the size of an ordinary dispatch box, protrudes what has the appearance of a stylographic pen. This, however, is not a pen but the handle of the “transmitter,” and its lower end is fixed to a light brass perpendicular bar. Any motion given by the hand—you hold it just like a pen—to the handle of the transmitter is communicated by this bar to two series of carbon disks contained within the box, and, after various adventures among magnets, etc., is carried again to the top of the box, where it is reproduced exactly by a small ink-holding pen, whose point rests on a white paper tape. A clock-work apparatus pulls this tape along at a gentle pace; and after a little practice you find that it is quite easy to move the handle of the transmitter so that the pen shall write legibly on the moving tape. Now, whatever is written on the tape before you is written simultaneously a mile off, or it may be fifty miles off, on a similar tape, by a similar instrument at the other end of the wire. The instrument is very compact, and apparently efficient, and, as it is quite silent, there seems no reason why a reporter sitting in the House of Commons should not straightway write off his report of a debate to be instantaneously read off in Printing House Square or Northumberland Street. A name will be wanted for his machine. Perhaps the “wire writer” will do.—Pall Mall Gazette.