Part 39
In the ordinary course of events, then, the other lines at present in existence will gain strength; new companies will spring up, and the supply of a great public want will be thrown into the arena of competition. Would it not be wise for the legislature to consider the question of telegraphy in England before it is too late? We all know what the principle of reckless competition led us into in our railway system. For years opposing companies scrambled for the monopoly of certain districts, and the result was the intersection of the country with bad lines, and, in many cases, with useless double routes. Millions were spent in litigation; railway travelling became, as a natural consequence, dear; the property of the original shareholders rapidly deteriorated; and it has all ended in half a dozen powerful companies swallowing up the smaller ones; and that competition, in whose name so much was demanded, has turned out to be only "a delusion and a snare." The conveyance of intelligence cannot safely and conveniently be left in the hands of even one company without a strict Government supervision; much less can half a dozen systems be allowed to distract the land at their own will. Indeed, the question might with propriety be asked, Is not telegraphic communication as much a function of Government as the conveyance of letters? If the do-nothing principle is to be allowed to take its course, we shall have to go through a similar state of things to that which occurred only a few years since in the United States, when different competing lines refused to forward each other's messages, and the whole system of telegraphic communication was accordingly dislocated. Indeed, even with the most perfect accord between different companies, the dissimilarity of instruments used by them would prove a great practical evil--as great a one, if not greater, than the break of gauge in the railway system. Messages could not be passed from one line to another, and delays as vexatious as those which occur on the continental lines would take away much of the value of the invention. It seems to us, then, that even if Parliament should refuse to interfere with the principle of competition in the case of the telegraphic communication, it should, at least, provide for the use of the same kind of instruments, and make it a fineable offence for one line to refuse to forward the messages of another.
Having done so much towards completing our telegraphic organization at home, our engineers adventurously determined to carry the wires across to the continent, and thus destroy the last remnant of that isolation to which we were forced to submit on account of our insular position. As long back as the year 1840 we find, by the Minutes of Evidence in the Fifth Report upon Railways, wherein the subject of electric telegraphy was partially examined, that, whilst Mr. Wheatstone was under examination Sir John Guest asked, "Have you tried to pass the line through water?" to which he replied, "There would be no difficulty in doing so; but the experiment has not yet been tried." Again, on the chairman, Lord Seymour, asking, "Could you communicate from Dover to Calais in that way?" he replied, "I think it perfectly practicable." A couple of years later the professor, indeed, engaged, and had everything in readiness, to lay a line for the Government across Portsmouth Harbour; it was not executed, however, through circumstances over which he had no control, but which were quite irrespective of the perfect feasibility of the undertaking.
We question, however, whether it would have been possible to have accomplished the feat of crossing the Channel with the electric fire before this date, as the difficulty of insulating the wires, so as to prevent the water from carrying off the electricity, would, we imagine, have been insuperable, but for the happy discovery of gutta percha, which supplied the very tough, flexible, non-conducting material the electrician sought for. Thus it might be said that the instantaneous interchange of thought between distant nations awaited the discovery of a vegetable production in the dense forests of the Eastern Archipelago. The first application of this singular substance to the insulation of electric conducting wires was made in 1847, by Lieutenant Siémens, of the Prussian artillery, for a line to cross the Rhine at Cologne.
The first submarine wire laid down was that between Dover and Cape Gris-nez, in the vicinity of Calais, belonging to the Submarine Telegraph Company. This wire, thirty miles in length, was covered with gutta percha to the diameter of half an inch, and sunk (August, 1850), as it was paid out, by the addition of clumps of lead at every sixteenth of a mile. The whole was completed and a message sent between the two countries on the same day. In the course of a month, however, the cable broke, owing to its having fretted upon a sharp ridge of rocks about a mile from Cape Gris-nez. It was now determined to make a stronger and better-constructed cable, capable of resisting all friction in this part of the Channel. The form of cable adopted for this and all other submarine telegraphs now in existence seems to have been originally suggested by Messrs. Newall and Co., of Gateshead, the wellknown wire-rope manufacturers. Instead of one, four wires, insulated by the Gutta Percha Company, were twisted together into a strand, and next "served" or enveloped in spun-yarn. This core was then covered with ten iron galvanized wires five-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, welded into lengths of twenty-four miles, and forming a flexible kind of mail. The cable was manufactured in the short space of twenty-one days. It weighed 180 tons, and formed a coil in the hold of the old hulk that carried it of thirty feet in diameter outside, and fifteen feet inside, standing five feet high. All went well with the undertaking until about one-half had been "paid out," when, a gale arising, unfortunately the tug-boat that towed the hulk containing the rope broke away, and vessel, wire, and all, drifted, with a racing tide, full a mile up the Channel before it could be overtaken. The consequence was, that the cable was violently dragged out of its course in the middle of the straits. What was worse, a sharp "kink," or bend, also occurred near the Dover shore, which doubled the cable on itself, but luckily produced no serious damage. The "lie" of the submarine cable between Dover and the vicinity of Calais, at this present moment, is expressed in the following diagram:--
When the cable at length came near the French coast, it was found to be, in consequence of this unintentional _detour_, at least half a mile too short. This was remedied, however, by splicing on a fresh piece; and, on securing it at Saugat, the new place of landing, fixed upon on account of its sandy shore, it was found that the communication was good, and good it has remained ever since--a proof of the admirable manner in which the wires were insulated and the cable constructed. The placing of this successful cable was superintended by Mr. Wollaston, the Company's engineer, and by Mr. Crampton, the contractor. Mr. Wollaston, who is a nephew of the illustrious philosopher of the same name, and who also presided over the earlier attempt, will accordingly, in the annals of electricity, carry off the honours of having first laid down the ocean telegraph.
The same Company, not long afterwards, laid another cable across to Ostend. This established a connection with Europe through Belgium, and was planned to prevent this line of communication falling into the hands of another company, and was not, as was suspected at the time, a matter of political foresight on the part of the directors, to enable them to carry on their intercourse with the continent, in spite of France, supposing war should break out between the two countries. Who would have believed a short time since, in Belgium, that the day would come when it would be quicker to convey intelligence to France by way of England than directly across the frontiers? Yet such was actually the case; for, before the line was laid by land, it was a thing of very frequent occurrence for despatches from Ostend to cross the Channel to Dover by one cable, and to be immediately switched across to Calais by the other; thus paying us a momentary triangular visit underneath the rapid straits.
The notion, however, of preventing competition proved to be vain. A third cable was laid on the 30th May, 1853, between the English coast at Orfordness, near Ipswich, and the port of Schevening in Holland, and thence to the Hague. This cable is the longest at present in connection with this isle, extending 120 miles under the turbulent North Sea. It was, however, paid out during a violent gale of wind without the slightest accident, and affords the most direct means of communication with the north of Europe, and entirely commands the commercial traffic of the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Hague cable (or cables, for there are now many, consisting of a single wire conductor each, running side by side) is the property of the International Company, a branch of the Old Electric Telegraph, and its wires go direct to the Lothbury office.
Whilst England has moored her south-eastern shores to the continent by three cables, and put herself _en rapport_ with all its principal cities, her north-western extremity has been secured, after many failures, to the sister kingdom--the Electro-Magnetic Company having laid a submarine wire from Portpatrick and Donaghadee, in the neighbourhood of Belfast, and the British Electric Telegraph Company another between Portpatrick and Whitehead in Belfast Lough. England, as befits her, led the way in these adventures upon the sea with the electric fire, and the Danes, Dutch, Russians, and others, are now following in her track.
Will it be believed that in 1841, long after the electric telegraph was working in England, scientific men were seriously discussing in the French Chamber the propriety of establishing a night telegraph on the visual principle, and that when at length it was determined to call in the aid of electricity, instruments were ordered to be so constructed that signals could be given after the fashion of the old semaphore, in order that the officials might be spared the trouble of leaving their ancient ruts? The needles were accordingly displaced for a mimic post, to which moveable arms were attached and signs were transmitted by elevating or depressing them by electricity, instead of by hand. Of course this absurd system was after a while abolished, and the instrument now made use of is a modification of the dial telegraph constructed by Breguet. The first telegraph planted in France was constructed by Mr. Wheatstone, from Paris to Versailles, in 1842. The principal line is that running from Calais _viâ_ Paris to Marseilles, which puts the English Channel and the Mediterranean in communication, and transmits for us the more urgent items of the India and China mail.
Belgium and Switzerland are perhaps the best supplied of all the continental kingdoms with telegraphic communication. The Belgian lines were excellently planned and cheaply constructed, consequently their tariff is comparatively low, the average charge for a message being 3 francs 48 centimes, or about 2_s._ 10-1/2_d._ Of the nature of the messages sent we can form a very good idea by the following classification of a hundred dispatches:--
Government 2 Stock-jobbing 50 Commercial 31 Newspaper 4 Family affairs 13 ---- 100
A comparison of the average division of messages in every state would afford a very fair index of the nature of the occupations of their peoples. We have attempted to obtain materials for this purpose in vain; foreign governments, as well as English companies, being very jealous of giving any information relative to their messages. The history of the telegraph in Switzerland is an evidence of what patriotic feeling is capable of accomplishing. Although by far the best and most extensive, for a mountainous country, in the world, it was constructed by the spontaneous efforts of the people. The peasantry gave their free labour towards erecting the wires and poles, the landlords found the timber and gave the right of way over their lands, and the communes provided station room in the towns. Thus the telegraph was completed, so to speak, for nothing. The peculiarity of the Swiss telegraph is that, like the great wall of China, it proceeds totally regardless of the nature of the ground. It climbs the pass of the Simplon in proceeding from Geneva to Milan; it goes over St. Gothard in its way from Lucerne to Como: it mounts the Splugen, and again it goes from Feldkirch to Inspruck by the Arlberg pass, thus ascending the great chain of the Alps as though it were only a gentle hillside. The wires course along the lakes of Lucerne, Zug, Zurich, and Constance; sometimes they are nailed to precipices, sometimes they make short cuts over unfrequented spurs of the mountains, going every way, in short, that it is found most convenient to hang them. The completion of the telegraphic system of this little republic, which stands in the same relation to Southern as Belgium does to Northern Europe, was of great consequence, as it forms the keystone between France, Prussia, Austria, Piedmont, and Italy.
In Prussia the lines are insulated in gutta percha, and buried in the ground in leaden tubes, a very costly process, but with many great advantages, in freedom from injury and atmospheric influences, over the more usual method of suspending them in the air on poles. Upwards of 4,000 miles of wire have already been laid down in this kingdom. Although Austria only commenced operations in 1847, she already possesses 4,000 miles of telegraph, which puts the greater part of her extensive empire in communication with Vienna.
Whatever injury the Eastern war might have inflicted upon the world, it at least infused fresh vigour into the telegraphic system, as, independently of the lines planned to put Constantinople in communication with the Danubian frontier, Russia has been stimulated to complete a line between St. Petersburg and Helsingfors, in the Baltic, and a continuation of the line already extending from the capital to Moscow, down to Bucharest, Odessa, and Sebastopol. One feature distinguishes the management of continental telegraphs over those of England and America: they are all, with the exception of the short line between Hamburg and Cuxhaven, possessed and worked by the different governments, who seem afraid of the use they might be put to for political purposes, and accordingly exercise a strict surveillance over all messages sent, and rigidly interdict the use of a cipher.[39] The Anglo-Saxon race, however, has far surpassed any other in the energy with which it has woven the globe with telegraphic wires. The Americans in the West and the British in the East alike emulate each other in the magnitude of their undertakings of this nature. The United States, although she came into the field long after England--her first line from Washington to Baltimore not having been completed until 1844--has far outstripped the mother country in the length of her lines, which already extend over 16,729 miles. Every portion of the Union, with the exception of California and the upper portion of the Mississippi, is covered with a network of wire.
New York and New Orleans communicate with each other by a double route--one skirting the seacoast, the other taking an inland direction by Cincinnati. These lines alone, following the sinuosities of their routes, are upwards of 2,000 miles in length.
Other lines extend as far as Quebec, in Upper Canada, so that messages may be forwarded in the course of a couple of hours from the freezing north to the burning south. The great chain of lakes which form the northern boundary of the Union is put in communication with the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and the great valley traversed by the latter will, ere long, interchange messages with the Pacific coast,--Congress having under its consideration a plan to establish a telegraph across the continent to San Francisco, as the precursor of the proposed railroad.
This we suspect is the project of Mr. O'Reilly, the engineer who has already executed the boldest lines in America. In constructing such a line, man, not nature, is the great obstacle to be encountered. The implacable Indians inhabiting this portion of the States certainly would not pay any respect to the telegraphic wire; on the contrary, they would in all likelihood take it to bind on the heads of their scalping tomahawks. To provide against this contingency, it is proposed to station parties of twenty dragoons at stockades twenty miles apart, along the whole unprotected portion of the route; two or three of these soldiers are also to ride from post to post and carry a daily express letter across the continent.
When this project is executed, it is asserted that "European news may be published in six days on the American shores of the Pacific, on the shortened route between the old and new world." "The shortened route," it should be mentioned, lies between Cape Race, in Newfoundland, and Galway, in Ireland, a passage calculated to take, on the average, only five days.
It may be asked how is it that such lengths of wire, carried through thinly settled parts of the country, and sometimes through howling wildernesses, can pay? The only manner that we can account for it is the cheapness with which the telegraph is built in America, the average price being 150 dollars, or about 31_l._ a mile--less than a fourth part of the cost at which the early lines of the English Electric Telegraph Company were erected. Again, the low prices charged for the transmission of messages produce an amount of business which the lines running through thickly-inhabited England cannot boast. For instance, let us take the following advertised "specimen message," of the latter Company, and compare the price charged for it here, with what it could be sent for in America:--
"From To James Smith, S. R. Brown, London, Exchange, Liverpool.
"I will meet you at Birmingham to-morrow, 3 P.M. Don't fail me."
Now, the London charge for the above, if forwarded to Liverpool, would be 2s. 6d.; but the American tariff for the same, on the Louisville and Pittsburgh rail, would be only one cent a word, or sixpence halfpenny English. On very long distances our friends on the other side of the steam ferry have a still greater advantage over us: for instance, a message of ten words can be sent on O'Reilly's line, from New York to New Orleans, a distance of 2,000 miles, for sixty cents, or two and sixpence--not half the sum it would cost to send the same message from London to Edinburgh, about 500 miles. We give, as a curiosity, the scale of prices on this line:[40]--
Per word. 200 miles or under 1 cent. 500 " or over 300 miles 2 cents. 700 " " 500 " 3 " 1000 " " 700 " 4 " 1500 " " 1000 " 5 " 2000 " " 1500 " 6 "
These charges, it is true, are unusually low; but if they will pay one Company, why should they not another? There are as many as twenty Telegraph Companies in America, and consequently there is great competition, three or four competing lines in many cases running between the same towns. Great confusion has arisen from this competition, as we have before stated; but it cannot be doubted that prices have materially fallen in consequence. It is common to send a message 1,000 miles in the United States without its being read and repeated at intermediate stations; and brother Jonathan boasts that he can communicate in fine weather instantaneously between New York and New Orleans. This, if done at all, must be at the expense of enormous battery power, as 2,000 miles of No. 8 wire would expose a conducting surface of no less than 450,000 square feet to the air. The wires in America are all suspended upon poles, and those passing through the southern pine forests are in consequence particularly liable to injury from the falling of trees, and watchers are posted at every twenty miles' distance to patrol the line. The telegraph is rarely seen in America running beside the railway, for what reason we do not know; the consequence, however, is, that locomotion in the United States is vastly more dangerous than with us. A comparison of the casualties occurring on railroads in the two countries, in the year 1852, will show this at a glance; for in the State of New York alone, during that year, 228 persons were killed out of 7,440,053 travellers, whilst during the same period only 216 people perished in Great Britain out of a total number of 89,135,729 passengers: thus the average in America was 1 killed in 286,179, and in Great Britain 1 in 2,785,491! Of course property suffers in an equal degree with life on the American lines. The people of Boston, on the recommendation of Dr. Channing, have constructed a municipal telegraph, the many uses of which will be obvious. Mr. Alexander Jones, in his historical sketch of the electric telegraph in America, gives the following account of the application of the electric wire in cases of fire:--
"A central office or station is fixed upon, at which the main battery, with other instruments, is placed. From this two circuit-wires proceed, like those of the common telegraph wires, fastened to housetops or ingeniously insulated supports. One of the wires communicates from the main fire bell-tower to all the others, and connects each with machinery, which puts in motion the largest-sized hammer, and causes it to strike a large fire-bell the desired number of blows; the other wire proceeds on a still more circuitous route, and from one local street or ward signal-station to another. Each station is provided with a strong box and hinged door and lock. Inside of this box there is a connecting electro-magnet and connecting lever, an axle with a number of pins in it to correspond to the number of the station. The axle is turned by a short crank, and in its revolutions the pins break and close the circuit, by moving the end of the lever as often as there are pins or cogs, the result of which is communicated to the central station. If the alarm indicates a fire in the local district No. 3, the alarm can be instantly rung on all the bells in the city. If it is a subject requiring the speedy and efficient attention of the police, information by alarms can be given at each police-station, or the despatches can be recorded by instruments at each place. The local street alarm-boxes are placed in the charge of a person whose duty it is to give the alarm from the local to the central station, when called upon, or circumstances require him to do so."
Canada has also sketched out a plan of telegraphs, which every year will see filled up. Already she has lines connecting all her principal towns, and extending over nearly two thousand miles of country, all of which lock in with the American system.