The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

A mere layman, unversed in electrical science and technical terms, finds it extremely difficult to understand, except in the broadest outlines, the engineering work of the Post Office. The technicalities of the telegraph and the telephone are very difficult to explain, without the use of scientific terms. We sympathise with the lady who was being told by a member of the Ordnance Survey how marvellously accurate were the results achieved by his Department. He spoke with enthusiasm, and told her how they started with a measured base several miles in length on Salisbury Plain, how they triangulated over the whole of England and Scotland, and finally had a similar base in Ireland. They then compared the actual length of that base with the length it should have had according to their calculations, and in a most impressive manner the Ordnance Survey man informed his companion that there was found a difference between them of nine inches. The lady had listened with intentness, and with that appearance of understanding which is assumed so much more convincingly by a woman than by a man. “And did they have to do it all over again?” was the question she put to the engineering enthusiast! If we are conducted through the instrument rooms of the General Post Office, we want to ask heaps of questions, probably, but we are like folk who have learnt enough of a foreign language to ask a question but not enough to understand the answer.