The Story of the Atlantic Cable

The sad tale of disaster commenced to spread abroad immediately on the Niagara's arrival in Queenstown; and when Mr. Field hastened to London to meet the other directors of the...

A week later--i. e., on Thursday, June 10th--having taken in a fresh supply of coal, the expedition again left England "with fair skies and bright prospects." The barometer stan...

As has been shown in the introductory chapter, the efforts of the early projectors of submarine telegraphy were at first confined to connecting countries divided only by narrow...

_Landing the Cable at Valentia, Ireland._--The following day was occupied in landing the massive shore end, which--weighing nearly ten tons to the mile, as already described--wa...

That evening the four vessels lay together side by side, and there was such a stillness in the sea and air as would have seemed remarkable even on an inland lake. On the Atlanti...

As a part of the union between the old world and the new, there are altogether fifteen cables now working across the North Atlantic Ocean (see Fig. 45), such as are usually term...

_The Electric Telegraph._--The advances made in electric science are so bold and rapid that our still comparative ignorance of the precise nature of electricity must always seem...

The distance from Valentia, on the western Irish coast, to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland--the two landing-points selected[14]--being 1,640 nautical miles, it was estimated that a le...

_Continuity Tests during Laying._--As previously mentioned, two descriptions of instruments were used on board the ships for testing and working through while laying the cable....

In 1862 the Government was prevailed on to despatch H.M.S. Porcupine to further examine the ocean floor 300 miles out from the coasts of Ireland and Newfoundland, respectively.

_Prospects and Plans._--It now remained to find the end of the cable lost on August 2, 1865, situated about 604 miles from Newfoundland, to pick it up, splice on to the cable re...

By noon on the 30th, 265 nautical miles were laid between the ships; on the 31st, 540; on the 1st August, 884; on the 2d, 1,256; on the 4th, 1,854; on anchoring at six in the mo...

The results of the last expedition, disastrous as they were from a financial point of view, in no wise abated the courage of the promoters of the enterprise. During the heaviest...

This untoward interruption to the expedition was naturally a cause of great disappointment to all connected with the undertaking; for there was not enough cable left to complete...

The gradual failure of the 1858 cable after a short period of working, and the slow rate at which messages were capable of being transmitted, naturally deterred capitalists from...

Thus in 1869 France was put into direct telegraphic communication with America by means of a cable from Brest to the island of St. Pierre, and another from St. Pierre to Sydney,...

On the return of the 1866 Expedition a banquet was given to the cable-layers by the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, as soon as the Great Eastern was safely moored in the Mersey.

_The Red Sea Line._--Mr. Lionel Gisborne had obtained powers from the Turkish Government to carry a telegraph-line across Egypt and lay a cable down the Red Sea. The importance...

The great historical sea-line having collapsed, some of the foremost of the electrical profession were called in--first to determine the nature of the interruption with a view t...

The engineer-in-chief (Mr. Bright) arranged that this time an experimental expedition should be first made, during which a complete rehearsal was to be gone through of the vario...