Sir William Thomson, the greatest physicist of the age, and the highest
authority on electrical science, theoretical and applied, was born at
Belfast on June 25, 1824. His father, Dr. James Thomson, the son of a
Scots-Irish farmer, showed a bent for scholarship when a boy, and became
a pupil teacher in a small school near Ballynahinch, in County Down.
With his summer earnings he educated himself at Glasgow University
during winter. Appointed head master of a school in connection with the
Royal Academical Institute, he subsequently obtained the professorship
of mathematics in that academy. In 1832 he was called to the chair of
mathematics in the University of Glasgow, where he achieved a reputation
by his text-books on arithmetic and mathematics.
William began his course at the same college in his eleventh year, and
was petted by the older students for his extraordinary quickness in
solving the problems of his father's class. It was quite plain that his
genius lay in the direction of mathematics; and on finishing at Glasgow
he was sent to the higher mathematical school of St. Peter's College,
Cambridge. In 1845 he graduated as second wrangler, but won the Smith
prize. This 'consolation stakes' is regarded as a better test of
originality than the tripos. The first, or senior, wrangler probably
beat him by a facility in applying well-known rules, and a readiness
in writing. One of the examiners is said to have declared that he was
unworthy to cut Thomson's pencils. It is certain that while the victor
has been forgotten, the vanquished has created a world-wide renown.
While at Cambridge he took an active part in the field sports and
athletics of the University. He won the Silver Sculls, and rowed in the
winning boat of the Oxford and Cambridge race. He also took a lively
interest in the classics, in music, and in general literature; but the
real love, the central passion of his intellectual life, was the pursuit
of science. The study of mathematics, physics, and in particular, of
electricity, had captivated his imagination, and soon engrossed all the
teeming faculties of his mind. At the age of seventeen, when ordinary
lads are fond of games, and the cleverer sort are content to learn
without attempting to originate, young Thomson had begun to make
investigations. The CAMBRIDGE MATHEMATICAL JOURNAL of 1842 contains
a paper by him--'On the uniform motion of heat in homogeneous solid
bodies, and its connection with the mathematical theory of electricity.'
In this he demonstrated the identity of the laws governing the
distribution of electric or magnetic force in general, with the laws
governing the distribution of the lines of the motion of heat in certain
special cases. The paper was followed by others on the mathematical
theory of electricity; and in 1845 he gave the first mathematical
development of Faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place
through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some
incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an hypothesis
of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems
of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces of
electricity at rest.
On gaining a fellowship at his college, he spent some time in the
laboratory of the celebrated Regnault, at Paris; but in 1846 he was
appointed to the chair of natural philosophy in the University of
Glasgow. It was due to the brilliant promise he displayed, as much as
to the influence of his father, that at the age of twenty-two he found
himself wearing the gown of a learned professor in one of the oldest
Universities in the country, and lecturing to the class of which he was
a freshman but a few years before.
Thomson became a man of public note in connection with the laying of the
first Atlantic cable. After Cooke and Wheatstone had introduced their
working telegraph in 1839; the idea of a submarine line across the
Atlantic Ocean began to dawn on the minds of men as a possible triumph
of the future. Morse proclaimed his faith in it as early as the year
1840, and in 1842 he submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and
india-rubber, in the water of New York harbour, and telegraphed through
it. The following autumn Wheatstone performed a similar experiment in
the Bay of Swansea. A good insulator to cover the wire and prevent the
electricity from leaking into the water was requisite for the success
of a long submarine line. India-rubber had been tried by Jacobi, the
Russian electrician, as far back as 1811. He laid a wire insulated with
rubber across the Neva at St. Petersburg, and succeeded in firing a mine
by an electric spark sent through it; but india-rubber, although it is
now used to a considerable extent, was not easy to manipulate in those
days. Luckily another gum which could be melted by heat, and readily
applied to the wire, made its appearance. Gutta-percha, the adhesive
juice of the ISONANDRA GUTTA tree, was introduced to Europe in 1842
by Dr. Montgomerie, a Scotch surveyor in the service of the East India
Company. Twenty years before he had seen whips made of it in Singapore,
and believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical
apparatus. Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered its merits as an
insulator, and in 1845 the latter suggested that it should be employed
to cover the wire which it was proposed to lay from Dover to Calais. It
was tried on a wire laid across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne. In
1849 Mr. C. V. Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway Company,
submerged a wire coated with it, or, as it is technically called, a
gutta-percha core, along the coast off Dover.
The following year Mr. John Watkins Brett laid the first line across the
Channel. It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without
any other protection. The core was payed out from a reel mounted behind
the funnel of a steam tug, the Goliath, and sunk by means of lead
weights attached to it every sixteenth of a mile. She left Dover about
ten o'clock on the morning of August 28, 1850, with some thirty men on
board and a day's provisions. The route she was to follow was marked by
a line of buoys and flags. By eight o'clock in the evening she arrived
at Cape Grisnez, and came to anchor near the shore. Mr. Brett watched
the operations through a glass at Dover. 'The declining sun,' he says,
'enabled me to discern the moving shadow of the steamer's smoke on the
white cliff; thus indicating her progress. At length the shadow ceased
to move. The vessel had evidently come to an anchor. We gave them
half an hour to convey the end of the wire to shore and attach the
type-printing instrument, and then I sent the first electrical message
across the Channel. This was reserved for Louis Napoleon.' According to
Mr. F. C. Webb, however, the first of the signals were a mere jumble of
letters, which were torn up. He saved a specimen of the slip on which
they were printed, and it was afterwards presented to the Duke of
Wellington.
Next morning this pioneer line was broken down at a point about 200
Yards from Cape Grisnez, and it turned out that a Boulogne fisherman
had raised it on his trawl and cut a piece away, thinking he had found a
rare species of tangle with gold in its heart. This misfortune suggested
the propriety of arming the core against mechanical injury by sheathing
it in a cable of hemp and iron wires. The experiment served to keep
alive the concession, and the next year, on November 13, 1851, a
protected core or true cable was laid from a Government hulk, the
Blazer, which was towed across the Channel.
Next year Great Britain and Ireland were linked together. In May, 1853,
England was joined to Holland by a cable across the North Sea, from
Orfordness to the Hague. It was laid by the Monarch, a paddle steamer
which had been fitted for the work. During the night she met with such
heavy weather that the engineer was lashed near the brakes; and the
electrician, Mr. Latimer Clark, sent the continuity signals by jerking
a needle instrument with a string. These and other efforts in the
Mediterranean and elsewhere were the harbingers of the memorable
enterprise which bound the Old World and the New.
Bishop Mullock, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland, was
lying becalmed in his yacht one day in sight of Cape Breton Island, and
began to dream of a plan for uniting his savage diocese to the mainland
by a line of telegraph through the forest from St. John's to Cape Ray,
and cables across the mouth of the St. Lawrence from Cape Ray to Nova
Scotia. St. John's was an Atlantic port, and it seemed to him that the
passage of news between America and Europe could thus be shortened by
forty-eight hours. On returning to St. John's he published his idea in
the COURIER by a letter dated November 8, 1850.
About the same time a similar plan occurred to Mr. F. N. Gisborne, a
telegraph engineer in Nova Scotia. In the spring of 1851 he procured a
grant from the Legislature of Newfoundland, resigned his situation in
Nova Scotia, and having formed a company, began the construction of the
land line. But in 1853 his bills were dishonoured by the company, he was
arrested for debt, and stripped of all his fortune. The following year,
however, he was introduced to Mr. Cyrus Field, of New York, a wealthy
merchant, who had just returned from a six months' tour in South
America. Mr. Field invited Mr. Gisborne to his house in order to discuss
the project. When his visitor was gone, Mr. Field began to turn over a
terrestrial globe which stood in his library, and it flashed upon him
that the telegraph to Newfoundland might be extended across the Atlantic
Ocean. The idea fired him with enthusiasm. It seemed worthy of a man's
ambition, and although he had retired from business to spend his days
in peace, he resolved to dedicate his time, his energies, and fortune to
the accomplishment of this grand enterprise.
A presentiment of success may have inspired him; but he was ignorant
alike of submarine cables and the deep sea. Was it possible to submerge
the cable in the Atlantic, and would it be safe at the bottom? Again,
would the messages travel through the line fast enough to make it pay!
On the first question he consulted Lieutenant Maury, the great authority
on mareography. Maury told him that according to recent soundings by
Lieutenant Berryman, of the United States brig Dolphin, the bottom
between Ireland and Newfoundland was a plateau covered with microscopic
shells at a depth not over 2000 fathoms, and seemed to have been made
for the very purpose of receiving the cable. He left the question of
finding a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough,
and a ship big enough,' to lay a line some sixteen hundred miles in
length to other minds. As to the line itself, Mr. Field consulted
Professor Morse, who assured him that it was quite possible to make and
lay a cable of that length. He at once adopted the scheme of Gisborne as
a preliminary step to the vaster undertaking, and promoted the New
York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, to establish a line
of telegraph between America and Europe. Professor Morse was appointed
electrician to the company.
The first thing to be done was to finish the line between St. John's and
Nova Scotia, and in 1855 an attempt was made to lay a cable across the
Gulf of the St. Lawrence, It was payed out from a barque in tow of a
steamer; but when half was laid a gale rose, and to keep the barque from
sinking the line was cut away. Next summer a steamboat was fitted
out for the purpose, and the cable was submerged. St. John's was now
connected with New York by a thousand miles of land and submarine
telegraph.
Mr. Field then directed his efforts to the completion of the
trans-oceanic section. He induced the American Government to despatch
Lieutenant Berryman, in the Arctic, and the British Admiralty to send
Lieutenant: Dayman, in the Cyclops, to make a special survey along the
proposed route of the cable. These soundings revealed the existence of a
submarine hill dividing the 'telegraph plateau' from the shoal water on
the coast of Ireland, but its slope was gradual and easy.
Till now the enterprise had been purely American, and the funds provided
by American capitalists, with the exception of a few shares held by Mr.
J. W. Brett. But seeing that the cable was to land on British soil, it
was fitting that the work should be international, and that the British
people should be asked to contribute towards the manufacture and
submersion of the cable. Mr. Field therefore proceeded to London, and
with the assistance of Mr. Brett the Atlantic Telegraph Company was
floated. Mr. Field himself supplied a quarter of the needed capital; and
we may add that Lady Byron, and Mr. Thackeray, the novelist, were among
the shareholders.
The design of the cable was a subject of experiment by Professor
Morse and others. It was known that the conductor should be of copper,
possessing a high conductivity for the electric current, and that its
insulating jacket of gutta-percha should offer a great resistance to
the leakage of the current. Moreover, experience had shown that the
protecting sheath or armour of the core should be light and flexible as
well as strong, in order to resist external violence and allow it to be
lifted for repair. There was another consideration, however, which at
this time was rather a puzzle. As early as 1823 Mr. (afterwards Sir)
Francis Ronalds had observed that electric signals were retarded in
passing through an insulated wire or core laid under ground, and the
same effect was noticeable on cores immersed in water, and particularly
on the lengthy cable between England and the Hague. Faraday showed that
it was caused by induction between the electricity in the wire and the
earth or water surrounding it. A core, in fact, is an attenuated Leyden
jar; the wire of the core, its insulating jacket, and the soil or water
around it stand respectively for the inner tinfoil, the glass, and the
outer tinfoil of the jar. When the wire is charged from a battery, the
electricity induces an opposite charge in the water as it travels
along, and as the two charges attract each other, the exciting charge is
restrained. The speed of a signal through the conductor of a submarine
cable is thus diminished by a drag of its own making. The nature of
the phenomenon was clear, but the laws which governed it were still a
mystery. It became a serious question whether, on a long cable such as
that required for the Atlantic, the signals might not be so sluggish
that the work would hardly pay. Faraday had said to Mr. Field that a
signal would take 'about a second,' and the American was satisfied; but
Professor Thomson enunciated the law of retardation, and cleared up the
whole matter. He showed that the velocity of a signal through a given
core was inversely proportional to the square of the length of the
core. That is to say, in any particular cable the speed of a signal is
diminished to one-fourth if the length is doubled, to one-ninth if it
is trebled, to one-sixteenth if it is quadrupled, and so on. It was
now possible to calculate the time taken by a signal in traversing the
proposed Atlantic line to a minute fraction of a second, and to design
the proper core for a cable of any given length.
The accuracy of Thomson's law was disputed in 1856 by Dr. Edward O.
Wildman Whitehouse, the electrician of the Atlantic Telegraph Company,
who had misinterpreted the results of his own experiments. Thomson
disposed of his contention in a letter to the ATHENAEUM, and the
directors of the company saw that he was a man to enlist in their
adventure. It is not enough to say the young Glasgow professor threw
himself heart and soul into their work. He descended in their midst
like the very genius of electricity, and helped them out of all their
difficulties. In 1857 he published in the ENGINEER the whole theory of
the mechanical forces involved in the laying of a submarine cable, and
showed that when the line is running out of the ship at a constant speed
in a uniform depth of water, it sinks in a slant or straight incline
from the point where it enters the water to that where it touches the
bottom.
To these gifts of theory, electrical and mechanical, Thomson added a
practical boon in the shape of the reflecting galvanometer, or mirror
instrument. This measurer of the current was infinitely more sensitive
than any which preceded it, and enables the electrician to detect
the slightest flaw in the core of a cable during its manufacture and
submersion. Moreover, it proved the best apparatus for receiving the
messages through a long cable. The Morse and other instruments, however
suitable for land lines and short cables, were all but useless on the
Atlantic line, owing to the retardation of the signals; but the mirror
instrument sprang out of Thomson's study of this phenomenon, and was
designed to match it. Hence this instrument, through being the fittest
for the purpose, drove the others from the field, and allowed the first
Atlantic cables to be worked on a profitable basis.
The cable consisted of a strand of seven copper wires, one weighing
107 pounds a nautical mile or knot, covered with three coats of
gutta-percha, weighing 261 pounds a knot, and wound with tarred hemp,
over which a sheath of eighteen strands, each of seven iron wires,
was laid in a close spiral. It weighed nearly a ton to the mile, was
flexible as a rope, and able to withstand a pull of several tons. It
was made conjointly by Messrs. Glass, Elliot & Co., of Greenwich, and
Messrs. R. S. Newall & Co., of Liverpool.
The British Government promised Mr. Field a subsidy of L1,400 a year,
and the loan of ships to lay the cable. He solicited an equal help from
Congress, but a large number of the senators, actuated by a national
jealousy of England, and looking to the fact that both ends of the line
were to lie in British territory, opposed the grant. It appeared to
these far-sighted politicians that England, the hereditary foe, was
'literally crawling under the sea to get some advantage over the United
States.' The Bill was only passed by a majority of a single vote. In
the House of Representatives it encountered a similar hostility, but was
ultimately signed by President Pierce.
The Agamemnon, a British man-of-war fitted out for the purpose, took
in the section made at Greenwich, and the Niagara, an American warship,
that made at Liverpool. The vessels and their consorts met in the bay of
Valentia Island, on the south-west coast of Ireland, where on August 5,
1857, the shore end of the cable was landed from the Niagara. It was a
memorable scene. The ships in the bay were dressed in bunting, and
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland stood on the beach, attended by his
following, to receive the end from the American sailors. Visitors in
holiday attire collected in groups to watch the operations, and eagerly
joined with his excellency in helping to pull the wire ashore. When
it was landed, the Reverend Mr. Day, of Kenmore, offered up a prayer,
asking the Almighty to prosper the undertaking, Next day the expedition
sailed; but ere the Niagara had proceeded five miles on her way the
shore-end parted, and the repairing of it delayed the start for another
day.
At first the Niagara went slowly ahead to avoid a mishap, but as the
cable ran out easily she increased her speed. The night fell, but hardly
a soul slept. The utmost vigilance was maintained throughout the vessel.
Apart from the noise of the paying-out machinery, there was an awful
stillness on board. Men walked about with a muffled step, or spoke in
whispers, as if they were afraid the sound of their voices would break
the slender line. It seemed as though a great and valued friend lay at
the point of death.
The submarine hill, with its dangerous slope, was passed in safety,
and the 'telegraph plateau,' nearly two miles deep, was reached, when
suddenly the signals from Ireland, which told that the conductor
was intact, stopped altogether. Professor Morse and De Sauty, the
electricians, failed to restore the communication, and the engineers
were preparing to cut the cable, when quite as suddenly the signals
returned, and every face grew bright. A weather-beaten old sailor said,
'I have watched nearly every mile of it as it came over the side, and
I would have given fifty dollars, poor man as I am, to have saved it,
although I don't expect to make anything by it when it is laid down.'
But the joy was short-lived. The line was running out at the rate of
six miles an hour, while the vessel was only making four. To check this
waste of cable the engineer tightened the brakes; but as the stern of
the ship rose on the swell, the cable parted under the heavy strain, and
the end was lost in the sea.
The bad news ran like a flash of lightning through all the ships, and
produced a feeling of sorrow and dismay.
No attempt was made to grapple the line in such deep water, and the
expedition returned to England. It was too late to try again that
year, but the following summer the Agamemnon and Niagara, after an
experimental trip to the Bay of Biscay, sailed from Plymouth on June
10 with a full supply of cable, better gear than before, and a riper
experience of the work. They were to meet in the middle of the Atlantic,
where the two halves of the cable on board of each were to be spliced
together, and while the Agamemnon payed out eastwards to Valentia Island
the Niagara was to pay out westward to Newfoundland. On her way to the
rendezvous the Agamemnon encountered a terrific gale, which lasted for a
week, and nearly proved her destruction.
On Saturday, the 26th, the middle splice was effected and the bight
dropped into the deep. The two ships got under weigh, but had not
proceeded three miles when the cable broke in the paying-out machinery
of the Niagara. Another splice, followed by a fresh start, was made
during the same afternoon; but when some fifty miles were payed out
of each vessel, the current which kept up communication between them
suddenly failed owing to the cable having snapped in the sea. Once more
the middle splice was made and lowered, and the ships parted company a
third time. For a day or two all went well; over two hundred miles of
cable ran smoothly out of each vessel, and the anxious chiefs began to
indulge in hopes of ultimate success, when the cable broke about twenty
feet behind the stern of the Agamemnon.
The expedition returned to Queenstown, and a consultation took place.
Mr. Field, and Professor Thomson, who was on board the Agamemnon, were
in favour of another trial, and it was decided to make one without
delay. The vessels left the Cove of Cork on July 17; but on this
occasion there was no public enthusiasm, and even those on board felt
as if they were going on another wild goose chase. The Agamemnon was now
almost becalmed on her way to the rendezvous; but the middle splice was
finished by 12.30 p.m. on July 29, 1858, and immediately dropped into
the sea. The ships thereupon started, and increased their distance,
while the cable ran easily out of them. Some alarm was caused by the
stoppage of the continuity signals, but after a time they reappeared.
The Niagara deviated from the great arc of a circle on which the cable
was to be laid, and the error was traced to the iron of the cable
influencing her compass. Hence the Gorgon, one of her consorts, was
ordered to go ahead and lead the way. The Niagara passed several
icebergs, but none injured the cable, and on August 4 she arrived in
Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. At 6. a.m. next morning the shore end was
landed into the telegraph-house which had been built for its reception.
Captain Hudson, of the Niagara, then read prayers, and at one p.m.
H.M.S. Gorgon fired a salute of twenty-one guns.
The Agamemnon made an equally successful run. About six o'clock on the
first evening a huge whale was seen approaching on the starboard bow,
and as he sported in the waves, rolling and lashing them into foam,
the onlookers began to fear that he might endanger the line. Their
excitement became intense as the monster heaved astern, nearer and
nearer to the cable, until his body grazed it where it sank into the
water; but happily no harm was done. Damaged portions of the cable had
to be removed in paying-out, and the stoppage of the continuity signals
raised other alarms on board. Strong head winds kept the Agamemnon back,
and two American ships which got into her course had to be warned off
by firing guns. The signals from the Niagara became very weak, but on
Professor Thomson asking the electricians on board of her to increase
their battery power, they improved at once. At length, on Thursday,
August, 5, the Agamemnon, with her consort, the Valorous, arrived at
Valentia Island, and the shore end was landed into the cable-house at
Knightstown by 3 p.m., and a royal salute announced the completion of
the work.
The news was received at first with some incredulity, but on being
confirmed it caused a universal joy. On August 16 Queen Victoria sent a
telegram of congratulation to President Buchanan through the line, and
expressed a hope that it would prove 'an additional link between
the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and
reciprocal esteem.' The President responded that, '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, civilisation, liberty, and law
throughout the world.'
These messages were the signal for a fresh outburst of enthusiasm. Next
morning a grand salute of 100 guns resounded in New York, the streets
were decorated with flags, the bells of the churches rung, and at night
the city was illuminated.
The Atlantic cable was a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons
and a prodigious quantity of doggerel. Among the happier lines were
these:--
''Tis done! the angry sea consents,
The nations stand no more apart;
With clasped hands the continents
Feel throbbings of each other's heart.
Speed! speed the cable! let it run
A loving girdle round the earth,
Till all the nations 'neath the sun
Shall be as brothers of one hearth.
As brothers pledging, hand in hand,
One freedom for the world abroad,
One commerce over every land,
One language, and one God.'
The rejoicing reached a climax in September, when a public service was
held in Trinity Church, and Mr. Field, the hero of the hour, as head and
mainspring of the expedition, received an ovation in the Crystal Palace
at New York. The mayor presented him with a golden casket as a souvenir
of 'the grandest enterprise of our day and generation.' The band played
'God save the Queen,' and the whole audience rose to their feet. In
the evening there was a magnificent torchlight procession of the city
firemen.
That very day the cable breathed its last. Its insulation had been
failing for some days, and the only signals which could be read were
those given by the mirror galvanometer.[It is said to have broken down
while Newfoundland was vainly attempting to inform Valentia that it was
sending with THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE CELLS!] The reaction at this news
was tremendous. Some writers even hinted that the line was a mere hoax,
and others pronounced it a stock exchange speculation. Sensible men
doubted whether the cable had ever 'spoken;' but in addition to the
royal despatch, items of daily news had passed through the wire; for
instance, the announcement of a collision between two ships, the Arabia
and the Europa, off Cape Race, Newfoundland, and an order from London,
countermanding the departure of a regiment in Canada for the seat of the
Indian Mutiny, which had come to an end.
Mr. Field was by no means daunted at the failure. He was even more eager
to renew the work, since he had come so near to success. But the public
had lost confidence in the scheme, and all his efforts to revive the
company were futile. It was not until 1864 that with the assistance of
Mr. Thomas (afterwards Lord) Brassey, and Mr. (now Sir) John Fender,
that he succeeded in raising the necessary capital. The Glass, Elliot,
and Gutta-Percha Companies were united to form the well-known Telegraph
Construction and Maintenance Company, which undertook to manufacture and
lay the new cable.
Much experience had been gained in the meanwhile. Long cables had been
submerged in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The Board of Trade
in 1859 had appointed a committee of experts, including Professor
Wheatstone, to investigate the whole subject, and the results were
published in a Blue-book. Profiting by these aids, an improved type of
cable was designed. The core consisted of a strand of seven very
pure copper wires weighing 300 lbs. a knot, coated with Chatterton's
compound, which is impervious to water, then covered with four layers of
gutta-percha alternating with four thin layers of the compound cementing
the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to 400 lbs. per
knot. This core was served with hemp saturated in a preservative
solution, and on the hemp as a padding were spirally wound eighteen
single wires of soft steel, each covered with fine strands of Manilla
yam steeped in the preservative. The weight of the new cable was
35.75 cwt. per knot, or nearly twice the weight of the old, and it was
stronger in proportion.
Ten years before, Mr. Marc Isambard Brunel, the architect of the Great
Eastern, had taken Mr. Field to Blackwall, where the leviathan was
lying, and said to him, 'There is the ship to lay the Atlantic cable.'
She was now purchased to fulfil the mission. Her immense hull was fitted
with three iron tanks for the reception of 2,300 miles of cable, and
her decks furnished with the paying-out gear. Captain (now Sir) James
Anderson, of the Cunard steamer China, a thorough seaman, was appointed
to the command, with Captain Moriarty, R.N., as chief navigating
officer. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Canning was engineer for the
contractors, the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, and Mr.
de Sauty their electrician; Professor Thomson and Mr. Cromwell Fleetwood
Varley were the electricians for the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The
Press was ably represented by Dr. W. H. Russell, correspondent of the
TIMES. The Great Eastern took on board seven or eight thousand tons of
coal to feed her fires, a prodigious quantity of stores, and a multitude
of live stock which turned her decks into a farmyard. Her crew all told
numbered 500 men.
At noon on Saturday, July 15, 1865, the Great Eastern left the Nore for
Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, where the shore end was laid by the
Caroline.
At 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, July 23, amidst the firing of cannon and the
cheers of the telegraph fleet, she started on her voyage at a speed of
about four knots an hour. The weather was fine, and all went well until
next morning early, when the boom of a gun signalled that a fault had
broken out in the cable. It turned out that a splinter of iron wire had
penetrated the core. More faults of the kind were discovered, and as
they always happened in the same watch, there was a suspicion of foul
play. In repairing one of these on July 31, after 1,062 miles had been
payed out, the cable snapped near the stern of the ship, and the end was
lost. 'All is over,' quietly observed Mr. Canning; and though spirited
attempts were made to grapple the sunken line in two miles of water,
they failed to recover it.
The Great Eastern steamed back to England, where the indomitable Mr.
Field issued another prospectus, and formed the Anglo-American Telegraph
Company, with a capital of L600,000, to lay a new cable and complete
the broken one. On July 7, 1866, the William Cory laid the shore end
at Valentia, and on Friday, July 13, about 3 p.m., the Great Eastern
started paying-out once more. [Friday is regarded as an unlucky, and
Sunday as a lucky day by sailors. The Great Eastern started on Sunday
before and failed; she succeeded now. Columbus sailed on a Friday, and
discovered America on a Friday.] A private service of prayer was held
at Valentia by invitation of two directors of the company, but otherwise
there was no celebration of the event. Professor Thomson was on board;
but Dr. W. H. Russell had gone to the seat of the Austro-Prussian war,
from which telegrams were received through the cable.
The 'big ship' was attended by three consorts, the Terrible, to act as
a spy on the starboard how, and warn other vessels off the course, the
Medway on the port, and the Albany on the starboard quarter, to drop
or pick up buoys, and make themselves generally useful. Despite the
fickleness of the weather, and a 'foul flake,' or clogging of the line
as it ran out of the tank, there was no interruption of the work. The
'old coffee mill,' as the sailors dubbed the paying-out gear, kept
grinding away. 'I believe we shall do it this time, Jack,' said one of
the crew to his mate.
On the evening of Friday, July 27, the expedition made the entrance of
Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, in a thick fog, and next morning the Great
Eastern cast her anchor at Heart's Content. Flags were flying from the
little church and the telegraph station on shore. The Great Eastern was
dressed, three cheers were given, and a salute was fired. At 9 a.m. a
message from England cited these words from a leading article in the
current TIMES: 'It is a great work, a glory to our age and nation,
and the men who have achieved it deserve to be honoured among the
benefactors of their race.' 'Treaty of peace signed between Prussia and
Austria.' The shore end was landed during the day by the Medway; and
Captain Anderson, with the officers of the telegraph fleet, went in a
body to the church to return thanks for the success of the expedition.
Congratulations poured in, and friendly telegrams were again exchanged
between Her Majesty and the United States. The great work had been
finally accomplished, and the two worlds were lastingly united.
On August 9 the Great Eastern put to sea again in order to grapple
the lost cable of 1865, and complete it to Newfoundland. Arriving in
mid-ocean she proceeded to fish for the submerged line in two thousand
fathoms of water, and after repeated failures, involving thirty casts of
the grapnel, she hooked and raised it to surface, then spliced it to
the fresh cable in her hold, and payed out to Heart's Content, where
she arrived on Saturday, September 7. There were now two fibres of
intelligence between the two hemispheres.
On his return home, Professor Thomson was among those who received
the honour of knighthood for their services in connection with the
enterprise. He deserved it. By his theory and apparatus he probably did
more than any other man, with the exception of Mr. Field, to further the
Atlantic telegraph. We owe it to his admirable inventions, the mirror
instrument of 1857 and the siphon recorder of 1869, that messages
through long cables are so cheap and fast, and, as a consequence, that
ocean telegraphy is now so common. Hence some account of these two
instruments will not be out of place.
Sir William Thomson's siphon recorder, in all its present completeness,
must take rank as a masterpiece of invention. As used in the recording
or writing in permanent characters of the messages sent through
long submarine cables, it is the acknowledged chief of 'receiving
instruments,' as those apparatus are called which interpret the
electrical condition of the telegraph wire into intelligible signals.
Like other mechanical creations, no doubt its growth in idea and
translation into material fact was a step-by-step process of evolution,
culminating at last in its great fitness and beauty.
The marvellous development of telegraphy within the last generation has
called into existence a great variety of receiving instruments, each
admirable in its way. The Hughes, or the Stock Exchange instruments, for
instance, print the message in Roman characters; the sounders strike it
out on stops or bells of different tone; the needle instruments indicate
it by oscillations of their needles; the Morse daubs it in ink on paper,
or embosses it by a hard style; while Bain's electro-chemical receiver
stains it on chemically prepared paper. The Meyer-Baudot and the
Quadruple receive four messages at once and record them separately;
while the harmonic telegraph of Elisha Gray can receive as many as
eight simultaneously, by means of notes excited by the current in eight
separate tuning forks.
But all these instruments have one great drawback for delicate work,
and, however suitable they may be for land lines, they are next to
useless for long cables. They require a certain definite strength of
current to work them, whatever it may be, and in general it is
very considerable. Most of the moving parts of the mechanism are
comparatively heavy, and unless the current is of the proper strength to
move them, the instrument is dumb, while in Bain's the solution requires
a certain power of current to decompose it and leave the stain.
In overland lines the current traverses the wire suddenly, like a
bullet, and at its full strength, so that if the current be sufficiently
strong these instruments will be worked at once, and no time will be
lost. But it is quite different on submarine cables. There the current
is slow and varying. It travels along the copper wire in the form of
a wave or undulation, and is received feebly at first, then gradually
rising to its maximum strength, and finally dying away again as slowly
as it rose. In the French Atlantic cable no current can be detected
by the most delicate galvanoscope at America for the first tenth of
a second after it has been put on at Brest; and it takes about half
a second for the received current to reach its maximum value. This
is owing to the phenomenon of induction, very important in submarine
cables, but almost entirely absent in land lines. In submarine cables,
as is well known, the copper wire which conveys the current is insulated
from the sea-water by an envelope, usually of gutta-percha. Now the
electricity sent into this wire INDUCES electricity of an opposite kind
to itself in the sea-water outside, and the attraction set up between
these two kinds 'holds back' the current in the wire, and retards its
passage to the receiving station.
It follows, that with a receiving instrument set to indicate a
particular strength of current, the rate of signalling would be very
slow on long cables compared to land lines; and that a different form
of instrument is required for cable work. This fact stood greatly in
the way of early cable enterprise. Sir William (then Professor)
Thomson first solved the difficulty by his invention of the 'mirror
galvanometer,' and rendered at the same time the first Atlantic cable
company a commercial success. The merit of this receiving instrument
is, that it indicates with extreme sensibility all the variations of
the current in the cable, so that, instead of having to wait until
each signal wave sent into the cable has travelled to the receiving end
before sending another, a series of waves may be sent after each other
in rapid succession. These waves, encroaching upon each other, will
coalesce at their bases; but if the crests remain separate, the delicate
decipherer at the other end will take cognisance of them and make them
known to the eye as the distinct signals of the message.
The mirror galvanometer is at once beautifully simple and exquisitely
scientific. It consists of a very long fine coil of silk-covered copper
wire, and in the heart of the coil, within a little air-chamber, a small
round mirror, having four tiny magnets cemented to its back, is hung, by
a single fibre of floss silk no thicker than a spider's line. The mirror
is of film glass silvered, the magnets of hair-spring, and both together
sometimes weigh only one-tenth of a grain. A beam of light is thrown
from a lamp upon the mirror, and reflected by it upon a white screen or
scale a few feet distant, where it forms a bright spot of light.
When there is no current on the instrument, the spot of light remains
stationary at the zero position on the screen; but the instant a
current traverses the long wire of the coil, the suspended magnets twist
themselves horizontally out of their former position, the mirror is of
course inclined with them, and the beam of light is deflected along the
screen to one side or the other, according to the nature of the current.
If a POSITIVE current--that is to say, a current from the copper pole
of the battery--gives a deflection to the RIGHT of zero, a NEGATIVE
current, or a current from the zinc pole of the battery, will give a
deflection to the left of zero, and VICE VERSA.
The air in the little chamber surrounding the mirror is compressed at
will, so as to act like a cushion, and 'deaden' the movements of the
mirror. The needle is thus prevented from idly swinging about at each
deflection, and the separate signals are rendered abrupt and 'dead
beat,' as it is called.
At a receiving station the current coming in from the cable has simply
to be passed through the coil of the 'speaker' before it is sent into
the ground, and the wandering light spot on the screen faithfully
represents all its variations to the clerk, who, looking on, interprets
these, and cries out the message word by word.
The small weight of the mirror and magnets which form the moving part of
this instrument, and the range to which the minute motions of the mirror
can be magnified on the screen by the reflected beam of light,
which acts as a long impalpable hand or pointer, render the mirror
galvanometer marvellously sensitive to the current, especially when
compared with other forms of receiving instruments. Messages have been
sent from England to America through one Atlantic cable and back
again to England through another, and there received on the mirror
galvanometer, the electric current used being that from a toy battery
made out of a lady's silver thimble, a grain of zinc, and a drop of
acidulated water.
The practical advantage of this extreme delicacy is, that the signal
waves of the current may follow each other so closely as almost entirely
to coalesce, leaving only a very slight rise and fall of their crests,
like ripples on the surface of a flowing stream, and yet the light spot
will respond to each. The main flow of the current will of course shift
the zero of the spot, but over and above this change of place the spot
will follow the momentary fluctuations of the current which form the
individual signals of the message. What with this shifting of the zero
and the very slight rise and fall in the current produced by rapid
signalling, the ordinary land line instruments are quite unserviceable
for work upon long cables.
The mirror instrument has this drawback, however--it does not 'record'
the message. There is a great practical advantage in a receiving
instrument which records its messages; errors are avoided and time
saved. It was to supply such a desideratum for cable work that Sir
William Thomson invented the siphon recorder, his second important
contribution to the province of practical telegraphy. He aimed at giving
a GRAPHIC representation of the varying strength of the current, just as
the mirror galvanometer gives a visual one. The difficulty of producing
such a recorder was, as he himself says, due to a difficulty in
obtaining marks from a very light body in rapid motion, without
impeding that motion. The moving body must be quite free to follow the
undulations of the current, and at the same time must record its motions
by some indelible mark. As early as 1859, Sir William sent out to
the Red Sea cable a piece of apparatus with this intent. The marker
consisted of a light platinum wire, constantly emitting sparks from a
Rhumkorff coil, so as to perforate a line on a strip of moving
paper; and it was so connected to the movable needle of a species of
galvanometer as to imitate the motions of the needle. But before it
reached the Red Sea the cable had broken down, and the instrument was
returned dismantled, to be superseded at length by the siphon recorder,
in which the marking point is a fine glass siphon emitting ink, and the
moving body a light coil of wire hung between the poles of a magnet.
The principle of the siphon recorder is exactly the inverse of the
mirror galvanometer. In the latter we have a small magnet suspended in
the centre of a large coil of wire--the wire enclosing the magnet, which
is free to rotate round its own axis. In the former we have a small coil
suspended between the poles of a large magnet--the magnet enclosing the
coil, which is also free to rotate round its own axis. When a current
passes through this coil, so suspended in the highly magnetic space
between the poles of the magnet, the coil itself experiences a
mechanical force, causing it to take up a particular position, which
varies with the nature of the current, and the siphon which is attached
to it faithfully figures its motion on the running paper.
The point of the siphon does not touch the paper, although it is
very close. It would impede the motion of the coil if it did. But the
'capillary attraction' of so fine a tube will not permit the ink to flow
freely of itself, so the inventor, true to his instincts, again called
in the aid of electricity, and electrified the ink. The siphon and
reservoir are together supported by an EBONITE bracket, separate from
the rest of the instrument, and INSULATED from it; that is to say,
electricity cannot escape from them to the instrument. The ink may,
therefore, be electrified to an exalted state, or high POTENTIAL as it
is called, while the body of the instrument, including the paper and
metal writing-tablet, are in connection with the earth, and at low
potential, or none at all, for the potential of the earth is in general
taken as zero.
The ink, for example, is like a highly-charged thunder-cloud supported
over the earth's surface. Now the tendency of a charged body is to move
from a place of higher to a place of lower potential, and consequently
the ink tends to flow downwards to the writing-tablet. The only avenue
of escape for it is by the fine glass siphon, and through this it rushes
accordingly and discharges itself in a rain upon the paper. The natural
repulsion between its like electrified particles causes the shower to
issue in spray. As the paper moves over the pulleys a delicate hair line
is marked, straight when the siphon is stationary, but curved when the
siphon is pulled from side to side by the oscillations of the signal
coil.
It is to the mouse-mill that me must look both for the electricity which
is used to electrify the ink and for the motive power which drives
the paper. This unique and interesting little motor owes its somewhat
epigrammatic title to the resemblance of the drum to one of those
sparred wheels turned by white mice, and to the amusing fact of its
capacity for performing work having been originally computed in terms of
a 'mouse-power.' The mill is turned by a stream of electricity flowing
from the battery above described, and is, in fact, an electro-magnetic
engine worked by the current.
The alphabet of signals employed is the 'Morse code,' so generally
in vogue throughout the world. In the Morse code the letters of the
alphabet are represented by combinations of two distinct elementary
signals, technically called 'dots' and 'dashes,' from the fact that the
Morse recorder actually marks the message in long and short lines,
or dots and dashes. In the siphon recorder script dots and dashes are
represented by curves of opposite flexure. The condensers are merely
used to sharpen the action of the current, and render the signals more
concise and distinct on long cables. On short cables, say under three
hundred miles long, they are rarely, if ever, used.
The speed of signalling by the siphon recorder is of course regulated by
the length of cable through which it is worked. The instrument itself
is capable of a wide range of speed. The best operators cannot send over
thirty-five words per minute by hand, but a hundred and twenty words
or more per minute can be transmitted by an automatic sender, and the
recorder has been found on land lines and short cables to write off the
message at this incredible speed. When we consider that every word
is, on the average, composed of fifteen separate waves, we may better
appreciate the rapidity with which the siphon can move. On an ordinary
cable of about a thousand miles long, the working speed is about twenty
words per minute. On the French Atlantic it is usually about thirteen,
although as many as seventeen have sometimes been sent.
The 'duplex' system, or method of telegraphing in opposite directions
at once through the same wire, has of late years been applied, in
connection with the recorder, to all the long cables of that most
enterprising of telegraph companies--the Eastern--so that both stations
may 'speak' to each other simultaneously. Thus the carrying capacity of
the wire is in practice nearly doubled, and recorders are busy writing
at both ends of the cable at once, as if the messages came up out of the
sea itself.
We have thus far followed out the recorder in its practical application
to submarine telegraphy. Let us now regard it for a moment in its more
philosophic aspect. We are at once struck with its self-dependence as a
machine, and even its resemblance in some respects to a living creature.
All its activity depends on the galvanic current. From three separate
sources invisible currents are led to its principal parts, and are at
once physically changed. That entering the mouse-mill becomes transmuted
in part into the mechanical motion of the revolving drum, and part into
electricity of a more intense nature--into mimic lightning, in fact,
with its accompaniments of heat and sound. That entering the signal
magnet expends part of its force in the magnetism of the core. That
entering the signal coil, which may be taken as the brain of the
instrument, appears to us as INTELLIGENCE.
The recorder is now in use in all four quarters of the globe, from
Northern Europe to Southern Brazil, from China to New England. Many and
complete are the adjustments for rendering it serviceable under a wide
range of electrical conditions and climatic changes. The siphon is,
of course, in a mechanical sense, the most delicate part, but, in an
electrical sense, the mouse-mill proves the most susceptible. It is
essential for the fine marking of the siphon that the ink should neither
be too strongly nor too feebly electrified. When the atmosphere is
moderately humid, a proper supply of electricity is generated by the
mouse-mill, the paper is sufficiently moist, and the ink flows freely.
But an excess of moisture in the air diminishes the available supply of
EXALTED electricity. In fact, the damp depositing on the parts leads the
electricity away, and the ink tends to clog in the siphon. On the other
hand, drought not only supercharges the ink, but dries the paper so much
that it INSULATES the siphon point from the metal tablet and the earth.
There is then an insufficient escape for the electricity of the ink to
earth; the ink ceases to flow down the siphon; the siphon itself becomes
highly electrified and agitated with vibrations of its own; the line
becomes spluttered and uncertain.
Various devices are employed at different stations to cure these local
complaints. The electrician soon learns to diagnose and prescribe for
this, his most valuable charge. At Aden, where they suffer much from
humidity, the mouse-mill is or has been surrounded with burning carbon.
At Malta a gas flame was used for the same purpose. At Suez, where
they suffer from drought, a cloud of steam was kept rising round the
instrument, saturating the air and paper. At more temperate places the
ordinary means of drying the air by taking advantage of the absorbing
power of sulphuric acid for moisture prevailed. At Marseilles the
recorder acted in some respects like a barometer. Marseilles is subject
to sudden incursions of dry northerly winds, termed the MISTRAL.
The recorder never failed to indicate the mistral when it blew, and
sometimes even to predict it by many hours. Before the storm was itself
felt, the delicate glass pen became agitated and disturbed, the frail
blue line broken and irregular. The electrician knew that the mistral
would blow before long, and, as it rarely blows for less than three days
at a time, that rather rude wind, so dreaded by the Marseillaise, was
doubly dreaded by him.
The recorder was first used experimentally at St. Pierre, on the French
Atlantic cable, in 1869. This was numbered 0, as we were told by Mr.
White of Glasgow, the maker, whose skill has contributed not a little
to the success of the recorder. No. 1 was first used practically on the
Falmouth and Gibraltar cable of the Eastern Telegraph Company in July,
1870. No. 1 was also exhibited at Mr. (now Sir John) Pender's telegraph
soiree in 1870. On that occasion, memorable even beyond telegraphic
circles, 'three hundred of the notabilities of rank and fashion gathered
together at Mr. Pender's house in Arlington Street, Piccadilly, to
celebrate the completion of submarine communication between London and
Bombay by the successful laying of the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta and
the British Indian cable lines.' Mr. Pender's house was literally
turned outside in; the front door was removed, the courtyard temporarily
covered with an iron roof and the whole decorated in the grandest
style. Over the gateway was a gallery filled with the band of the Scots
Fusilier Guards; and over the portico of the house door hung the grapnel
which brought up the 1865 cable, made resplendent to the eye by a
coating of gold leaf. A handsome staircase, newly erected, permitted
the guests to pass from the reception-room to the drawing-room. In the
grounds at the back of the house stood the royal tent, where the Prince
of Wales and a select party, including the Duke of Cambridge and Lady
Mayo, wife of the Viceroy of India at that time, were entertained at
supper. Into this tent were brought wires from India, America, Egypt,
and other places, and Lady Mayo sent off a message to India about
half-past eleven, and had received a reply before twelve, telling her
that her husband and sons were quite well at five o'clock the next
morning. The recorder, which was shown in operation, naturally stood in
the place of honour, and attracted great attention.
The minor features of the recorder have been simplified by other
inventors of late; for example, magnets of steel have been substituted
for the electro-magnets which influence the swinging coil; and the ink,
instead of being electrified by the mouse-mill, is shed on the paper by
a rapid vibration of the siphon point.
To introduce his apparatus for signalling on long submarine cables, Sir
William Thomson entered into a partnership with Mr. C. F. Varley, who
first applied condensers to sharpen the signals, and Professor Fleeming
Jenkin, of Edinburgh University. In conjunction with the latter, he also
devised an 'automatic curb sender,' or key, for sending messages on a
cable, as the well-known Wheatstone transmitter sends them on a land
line.
In both instruments the signals are sent by means of a perforated ribbon
of paper; but the cable sender was the more complicated, because the
cable signals are formed by both positive and negative currents, and not
merely by a single current, whether positive or negative. Moreover, to
curb the prolongation of the signals due to induction, each signal was
made by two opposite currents in succession--a positive followed by a
negative, or a negative followed by a positive, as the case might
be. The after-current had the effect of curbing its precursor. This
self-acting cable key was brought out in 1876, and tried on the lines of
the Eastern Telegraph Company.
Sir William Thomson took part in the laying of the French Atlantic
cable of 1869, and with Professor Jenkin was engineer of the Western and
Brazilian and Platino-Brazilian cables. He was present at the laying of
the Para to Pernambuco section of the Brazilian coast cables in 1873,
and introduced his method of deep-sea sounding, in which a steel
pianoforte wire replaces the ordinary land line. The wire glides so
easily to the bottom that 'flying soundings' can be taken while the ship
is going at full speed. A pressure-gauge to register the depth of the
sinker has been added by Sir William.
About the same time he revived the Sumner method of finding a ship's
place at sea, and calculated a set of tables for its ready application.
His most important aid to the mariner is, however, the adjustable
compass, which he brought out soon afterwards. It is a great improvement
on the older instrument, being steadier, less hampered by friction,
and the deviation due to the ship's own magnetism can be corrected by
movable masses of iron at the binnacle.
Sir William is himself a skilful navigator, and delights to cruise in
his fine yacht, the Lalla Rookh, among the Western Islands, or up
the Mediterranean, or across the Atlantic to Madeira and America. His
interest in all things relating to the sea perhaps arose, or at any rate
was fostered, by his experiences on the Agamemnon and the Great Eastern.
Babbage was among the first to suggest that a lighthouse might be made
to signal a distinctive number by occultations of its light; but Sir
William pointed out the merits of the Morse telegraphic code for the
purpose, and urged that the signals should consist of short and long
flashes of the light to represent the dots and dashes.
Sir William has done more than any other electrician to introduce
accurate methods and apparatus for measuring electricity. As early as
1845 his mind was attracted to this subject. He pointed out that the
experimental results of William Snow Harris were in accordance with the
laws of Coulomb.
In the Memoirs of the Roman Academy of Sciences for 1857 he published a
description of his new divided ring electrometer, which is based on
the old electroscope of Bohnenberger and since then he has introduced
a chain or series of beautiful and effective instruments, including the
quadrant electrometer, which cover the entire field of electrostatic
measurement. His delicate mirror galvanometer has also been the
forerunner of a later circle of equally precise apparatus for the
measurement of current or dynamic electricity.
To give even a brief account of all his physical researches would
require a separate volume; and many of them are too abstruse or
mathematical for the general reader. His varied services have been
acknowledged by numerous distinctions, including the highest honour a
British man of science can obtain--the Presidency of the Royal Society
of London, to which he was elected at the end of last year.
Sir William Thomson has been all his life a firm believer in the truth
of Christianity, and his great scientific attainments add weight to the
following words, spoken by him when in the chair at the annual meeting
of the Christian Evidence Society, May 23, 1889:--'I have long felt that
there was a general impression in the non-scientific world, that the
scientific world believes Science has discovered ways of explaining all
the facts of Nature without adopting any definite belief in a Creator. I
have never doubted that that impression was utterly groundless. It seems
to me that when a scientific man says--as it has been said from time to
time--that there is no God, he does not express his own ideas clearly.
He is, perhaps, struggling with difficulties; but when he says he does
not believe in a creative power, I am convinced he does not faithfully
express what is in his own mind, He does not fully express his own
ideas. He is out of his depth.
'We are all out of our depth when we approach the subject of life. The
scientific man, in looking at a piece of dead matter, thinking over the
results of certain combinations which he can impose upon it, is himself
a living miracle, proving that there is something beyond that mass of
dead matter of which he is thinking. His very thought is in itself a
contradiction to the idea that there is nothing in existence but dead
matter. Science can do little positively towards the objects of this
society. But it can do something, and that something is vital and
fundamental. It is to show that what we see in the world of dead matter
and of life around us is not a result of the fortuitous concourse of
atoms.
'I may refer to that old, but never uninteresting subject of the
miracles of geology. Physical science does something for us here. St.
Peter speaks of scoffers who said that "all things continue as they were
from the beginning of the creation;" but the apostle affirms himself
that "all these things shall be dissolved." It seems to me that even
physical science absolutely demonstrates the scientific truth of these
words. We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever
as they have done for the last six thousand years. In science, as in
morals and politics, there is absolutely no periodicity. One thing we
may prophesy of the future for certain--it will be unlike the past.
Everything is in a state of evolution and progress. The science of dead
matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my
life, is, I may say, strenuous on this point, that THE AGE OF THE EARTH
IS DEFINITE. We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more,
or less, but me say it is NOT INDEFINITE. And we can say very definitely
that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years.
Here, then, we are brought face to face with the most wonderful of all
miracles, the commencement of life on this earth. This earth, certainly
a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot globe; all
scientific men of the present day agree that life came upon this earth
somehow. If some form or some part of the life at present existing came
to this earth, carried on some moss-grown stone perhaps broken away from
mountains in other worlds; even if some part of the life had come in
that way--for there is nothing too far-fetched in the idea, and probably
some such action as that did take place, since meteors do come every day
to the earth from other parts of the universe;--still, that does not
in the slightest degree diminish the wonder, the tremendous miracle, we
have in the commencement of life in this world.'