Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/117

Rh important. The telephone has been introduced on a small scale into the British Museum, but is inadequate for the despatch of messages in writing, and consequently for the needs of the reading-room. A writing telegraph is required, and would probably be found in the Telautograph, an American invention which, for some reason, has not been properly brought before the public, but which has been tested with satisfactory results by the editor of this series. It consists of two machines connected together, a transmitter and a receiver; the message is written with a pencil in ordinary handwriting at the former, and appears simultaneously in facsimile at the latter. If transmitters were placed on the desks in the Museum reading-room, connected with receivers in the library, the ticket which the reader writes for his book would be conveyed to the proper quarter as fast as he wrote it, and all the delay incident to collecting the tickets in the reading-room and carrying them out would be saved.

Few adjuncts to a really first-class library, containing rare books and valuable manuscripts, could be more important than an efficient photographic department, where such treasures could be multiplied at a low charge for the public use. To their honour, the Delegates of the University Press have provided such an appendage to the Bodleian Library. A similar institution would be still more serviceable at the British Museum, but cannot be published without Government aid. Were this accorded, and the superintendence of a photographic department, both for the service of the public and