THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
DIFFICULTIES OF LAYING--CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES BETWEEN QUEEN
VICTORIA AND PRESIDENT BUCHANAN--THE SIPHON RECORDER--STATISTICS.
Among the applications of the telegraph which deserve special mention
for magnitude and importance is the Atlantic Cable. For boldness of
conception, tireless persistence in execution, and value of results,
this engineering feat, though nearly a half century old, still
challenges the admiration of the world, and marks the beginning of one
of the great epochs of the Nineteenth Century. It was not so brilliant
in substantive invention, as it added but little to the telegraph as
already known, beyond the means for insulating the wires within a gutta
percha cable, but it was one of the greatest of all engineering works.
It was chiefly the result of the energy and public spirit of Mr. Cyrus
W. Field, an eminent American citizen. Three times was its laying
attempted before success crowned the work. The first expedition sailed
August 7, 1857, and consisted of a fleet of eight vessels, four American
and four English, starting from Valentia on the Irish coast. On August
11 the cable parted, and 344 miles of the cable were lost in water two
miles deep. In 1858 a renewal of the effort to lay the cable was made.
Improvements were added in the paying out machinery, and a different
manner of coiling the enormous load of cable on the vessels was resorted
to, and provisions also were made to protect the propeller from contact
with the cable. On June 10 the telegraphic fleet steamed out of Plymouth
harbor. It consisted of the U. S. frigate “Niagara,” with the
paddle-wheel steamer “Valorous” as a tender, and the British frigate
“Agamemnon,” with the paddle-wheel steamer “Gorgon” as a tender. After
three days at sea, terrible gales were encountered and much damage
resulted. The vessels were to proceed to midocean, and the portions of
the cable carried by the “Niagara” and “Agamemnon” were to be spliced,
and the two vessels were then to sail in opposite directions to their
respective coasts. The first splice was made on the 26th of June. After
paying out two and a half miles each, the cable parted. Again meeting
and splicing, forty miles each were paid out, and the cable again
parted. On the 28th another splicing was effected, and 150 miles each
were paid out, and again the cable parted, and the expedition had to be
abandoned. After much financial embarrassment and adverse criticism, the
courageous and public-spirited directors who had control of the
enterprise dispatched another expedition, which sailed July 17, 1858.
The two vessels, “Niagara” and “Agamemnon,” with their tenders,
proceeded to midocean, and following the same method of connecting the
ends of their respective cable sections, they sailed in opposite
directions. On August 5, 1858, Mr. Cyrus Field announced by telegram
from Trinity Bay, on the coast of Newfoundland, that Trinity Bay in
America, and Valentia in Ireland, 2,134 miles apart, had been connected,
and the great Atlantic cable was an established fact.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--ORIGINAL ATLANTIC CABLE, FULL SIZE.
Consists of seven copper wires (4) to form the conductor, a wrapping (3)
of thread, soaked in tallow and pitch, several layers (2) of gutta
percha, all surrounded by a protecting coat of mail (1) of twisted
wires.]
On August 16, 1858, the first message came over from Queen Victoria to
President Buchanan of the United States, as follows:
“_To the President of the United States, Washington:_
“The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the
successful completion of this great international work, in which
the Queen has taken the deepest interest.
“The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in
fervently hoping that the Electric Cable which now connects Great
Britain with the United States will prove an additional link
between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common
interest and reciprocal esteem.
“The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the
President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the
United States.”
to which the President replied as follows:
“WASHINGTON CITY, Aug. 16, 1858.
“_To Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain:_
“The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of Her
Majesty, the Queen, on the success of the great international
enterprise accomplished by the science, skill, and indomitable
energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious,
because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror
on the field of battle.
“May the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to
be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred
nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse
religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In
this view will not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite
in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its
communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of
destination, even in the midst of hostilities?
(Signed)
“JAMES BUCHANAN.”
Great rejoicing on both sides of the ocean followed, and the public
print was filled with accounts of the enterprise. The following
selection from the _Atlantic Monthly_ of October, 1858, is an apostrophe
in lofty sentiments of verse, which to-day stirs the Twentieth Century
heart as a joyous prophecy fulfilled:
Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,
Ye bosky shores untrod,
Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped sea
And hear the voice of God!
From world to world His couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.
What saith the herald of the Lord?
“The world’s long strife is done!
Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Her continents are one.
“And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be;
The hands of human brotherhood
Shall clasp beneath the sea.
“Through Orient seas, o’er Afric’s plain,
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.
“From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead.
“Earth, gray with age, shall hear the strain
Which o’er her childhood rolled;
For her the morning stars again
Shall sing their song of old.
“For, lo! the fall of Ocean’s wall,
Space mocked and Time outrun!
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!”
O, reverently and thankfully
The mighty wonder own!
The deaf can hear, the blind may see,
The work is God’s alone.
Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach!
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each!
Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean’s carrier dove,
Thy errands to and fro!
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of Earth’s accord,
The funeral shroud of war!
The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee,
The Christ is whispering, “Peace!”
After a few months of working, the cable became inoperative, but its
success was a demonstrated fact, and in 1866 a new cable was laid by the
aid of that monster steamer “The Great Eastern,” since which time the
cable has become one of the great factors of modern civilization.
Probably the most important of the inventions relating to submarine
telegraphs is the siphon recorder, invented by Sir William Thompson, now
Lord Kelvin (U. S. Pat. No. 156,897, Nov. 17, 1874). It is called a
siphon recorder because the record is made by a little glass siphon down
which a flow of ink is maintained like a fountain pen. This siphon is
vibrated by the electric impulses to produce on the paper strip a zigzag
line, whose varying contour is made to represent letters. In the
illustration, Fig. 15, _m_ is an ink well, _o_ a strip of paper, and _n_
the ink siphon, one end of which is bent and dips down into the ink
well, and the other end of which traces the record on the moving paper
strip _o_. The siphon is sustained on a vertical axis _l_, and its
lateral vibration is effected as follows: A light rectangular coil _b
b_, of exceedingly fine insulated wire, is suspended between the poles N
S of a powerful electro-magnet energized by a local battery. In the
coil _b b_ is a stationary soft iron core _a_, magnetized by the poles N
S. The coil _b b_ is suspended upon a vertical axis consisting of a fine
wire _f f_, and the delicate electrical impulses over the submarine
cable enter the coil _b b_ through the axial wire _f f_ as a conductor,
and cause a greater or less oscillation of the coil _b b_ between the
poles N S of the electro-magnet. The coil _b b_ is connected by a thread
_k_ to the siphon, and pulls the siphon in one direction, while the
siphon is pulled in the opposite direction by a helical spring attached
to an arm on the siphon axis _l_. The jagged lines seen in Fig. 16 spell
the words “siphon recorder.”
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--SIPHON RECORDER.]
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--SIPHON RECORDER MESSAGE.]
To-day there lie in submerged silence, but pulsating with the life of
the world, no less than 1,500 submarine telegraphs. Their aggregate
length is 170,000 miles; their total estimated cost is $250,000,000, and
the number of messages annually transmitted over them is 6,000,000.
Thirteen cables work daily across the Atlantic, and an additional one is
being laid from Germany. Messages now go across the Atlantic and are
received on the siphon recorder at the rate of fifty words a minute,
and at a cost of twenty-five cents a word. Our guns may thunder in the
Philippines, and the news by cable, traveling faster than the earth on
its axis, may reach the Western Hemisphere under the paradoxical
condition of several hours earlier than it occurred. Cablegrams to
Manila cost $2.38 a word, and the cable tolls for our War Department
alone are costing at the rate of $325,000 a year. The logical outcome is
a Pacific cable, a bill for which, connecting San Francisco and
Honolulu, has already passed the United States Senate.
Messages from the Executive Mansion at Washington to the battlefield at
Santiago were sent and responses received within twelve minutes, while a
message dispatched from the House of Representatives in Washington to
the House of Parliament in London, in the chess match of 1898, was
transmitted and a reply received in thirteen and one-half seconds.
To-day the cable with the still small voice, more divine than human,
speaks with one accent to all the nations of the earth. Differing though
they may in tongue and skin, in thought and religion, in physical
development and clime, the telegraph speaks to them all alike, and by
all is understood. Truly it fulfils the prophecy so gracefully expressed
in the verses quoted, and has become the common bond of union among the
nations of the earth.