Excerpt from "Unicode," The Universal Telegraphic Phrase-Book: A Code of Cypher Words for Commercial, Domestic, and Familiar Phrases in Ordinary Use in Inland and Foreign Telegrams, With a List of Prominent Commercial Firms Who Are Unicode Users

IN first introducing to the public the Unicode, by means of The Universal Telegraphic phrase-book, it is well to give a few preliminary explanations and directions.

All the great submarine Telegraph Companies, and almost all foreign countries and colonies, have adopted the word-tariff, or system of charging a certain Sum for each word, and Great Britain has practically done so. By the changes effected during the last Parliament. Every person who has heretofore sent telegraphic messages abroad has learned by experience the economy of con densation, and the advantage of the use of a Code known to both sender and receiver. By this means the substance of a message embracing a dozen ordinary words may be conveyed in a single code-word, with a fulness and clearness not to be otherwise attained unless at a prohibitive cost. The same effect is discovered in inland telegraphic communication under the new arrangements. The sixpenny telegram is found, except under special circumstances, to be a misnomer, the unavoidable length of the addresses (where the expense of registering a cypher has not been incurred by the Receiver), and the name of the Sender and Receiver absorbing so many of the twelve words as frequently to leave only two or three available for the text of the telegram. Attention is therefore naturally turned to condensation, and, as a necessary consequence, to coding.

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