Below is a short newspaper article from 1900 regarding the spread of telegraph technology. Since Chinese writing has no alphabet, the Chinese characters had to be encoded before they could be sent over the telegraph. This is how it was done originally.
The first telegraph line to be erected in China was in 1884, and the inhabitants of the
country looked on the enterprise with great displeasure, often digging up the poles and damaging or cutting the line wires. Two years later a line was carried from Peking to the Siberian frontier whence connection was made with the Russian system. The lines belong to the government and are used largely for governmental purposes, though they are available for private and commercial business. The apparatus and methods employed are most antique, and the operators are Chinese.
As the Chinese have no alphabet, each word being represented by a special sign, the message must be translated into numbers by the receiving clerk before it is sent. The table he employs for the purpose resembles a logarithmic table and contains 9,800
unnumbered signs. The table is most elaborate, and has been arranged by learned Chinese scholars, who have grouped the characters together according to their sound. In sending a message the writer inscribes it in Chinese characters on a blank, and it is
then converted into numbers, telegraphed, received and retranslated in to Chinese characters. It is possible to have 9,999 different words without using more than four figures, so that there is a practical advantage to the use of the table and system.
Washington, Aug. 15, 1900.
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