'Truths would you teach, to save a sinking land,All shun, none aid you, and few understand.'
'Truths would you teach, to save a sinking land,All shun, none aid you, and few understand.'
As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building-yard while my boat was in progress, I have often loitered, unknown, near the idle groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh rose at my expense, the dry jest, the wise calculation of losses and expenditure, the dull, but endless repetition of 'the Fulton Folly.' Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, or a warm wish, cross my path."
Let them laugh that win. The success which shortly attended Fulton's scheme turned the tables upon those who had mocked at him. TheClermontwas completed in August 1807, and the day arrived when the trial was to be made on the Hudson river. "To me," wrote Fulton, "it was a most trying and interesting occasion. I wanted some friends to go on board to witness the first successful trip. Many of them did me the favour to attend as a mark of personal respect; but it was manifest they did it with reluctance, fearing to bepartners of my mortification, and not of my triumph. The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the vessel to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, sad, and weary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given, and the boat moved on a short distance, and then stopped and became immovable. To the silence of the preceding moment now succeeded murmurs of discontent and agitation, and whispers and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated—'I told you so; it is a foolish scheme; I wish we were well out of it.' I elevated myself on a platform, and stated that I knew not what was the matter; but if they would be quiet, and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on or abandon the voyage. I went below, and discovered that a slight misadjustment was the cause. It was obviated. The boat went on; we left New York; we passed through the Highlands; we reached Albany! Yet even their imagination superseded the force of fact. It was doubted if it could be done again, or if it could be made, in any case, of any great value."
The simple-minded country folk on the banks of the Hudson were almost frightened out of their wits at the awful apparition which they saw gliding along the river, and which, especially when seen indistinctly looming through the night, looked to their bewilderedeyes, "a monster moving on the water, defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke." Pine-wood was used for fuel, and whenever the fire was stirred, a great burst of sparks issued from the chimney. "This uncommon light," says Colden, the biographer of Fulton, "first attracted the attention of the crews of other vessels. Notwithstanding the wind and tide were adverse to its approach, they saw with astonishment that it was rapidly coming towards them; and when it came so near that the noise of the machinery and paddles were heard, the crews in some instances shrunk beneath their decks from the terrific sight, and others left their vessels to go on shore; while others, again, prostrated themselves, and besought Providence to protect them from the approach of the horrible monster which was marching on the tides, and lighting its path by the fires which it vomited."
With the novelty of the spectacle its terror died away, and people soon got tired of rushing out to see the remarkable machine that had once seemed so miraculous to them. TheClermontsoon began to travel regularly as a passage-boat between Albany and New York, other steam-vessels were constructed on its model, and by degrees the steam marine of America grew into the host it is at present. Thirty years after the first experiment on the Hudson, it was calculated 1300 steamboats had been built in the States.
Fulton did not live long to enjoy his triumphs. He died in 1815, having been actively engaged in promoting steam navigation to his last hours.
The honour which in America attached to Fulton as the man who first brought the steamboat into use, and to the River Hudson as being the scene of the experiment, in our own country fell (in a somewhat less degree, being subsequent), to Henry Bell, and the River Clyde.
Brought up as a millwright, Bell, from want of funds to start in business, was obliged for many years to gain his living as a common carpenter in Glasgow, where he was noted among the trade as being very fond of "schemes," and suspected on that account by narrow-minded folk of being not very reliable in the lower branches of his craft. Scheme after scheme issued from his fertile mind; but he was rash and hasty in working them out, and few proved of much worth. Steam navigation being one of the vexed problems of the time, had every fascination for his peculiar genius; and he seems to have been brooding over it as the last century was closing, and the present opening upon the world. When Fulton visited Symington's invention, Bell appears to have accompanied him, and to have afterwards corresponded with him on the subject. "This," he says, "led me to think of the absurdity of writingmy opinions to other countries, and not putting it in practice myself in my own country; and from these considerations I was roused to set on foot a steamboat, for which I made a number of different models before I was satisfied." Having removed to the little village of Helensburgh, on the banks of the Clyde, and there established a hotel and bath-house, which his wife managed, he endeavoured to work the passage-boats by which visitors were brought to the place, by means of paddle-wheels worked by the hand, instead of oars; but the plan did not succeed very well, for the same reason that led to Mr. Miller's abandonment of it—the inefficiency of manual power, which could not be applied with sufficiently sustained and continuous force. He therefore gave it up, and turned his attention to the employment of steam power for the same purpose. Of course, he was laughed at for his pains; and Henry Bell's project for having steamers on the Clyde became a standing joke among the frequenters of the watering-place. Even after the permanent success of Fulton's scheme was known, people would not moderate their incredulity; but Bell's faith, which had never wavered, was now confirmed, and he set about the work with redoubled energy.
In 1811, Bell, having procured the necessary funds, had a steam-boat built of twenty-five tons and four horse power. He named it theComet, because a comet had just then appeared in thenorth-west of Scotland. TheCometbegan to run regularly between Glasgow and Helensburgh in January 1812, and continued to ply successfully during the summer of that year. At first, however, she brought rather loss than gain to her projector. People were shy of trusting themselves on board, and parties interested in the stage-coaches and sailing vessels, spread all sorts of absurd reports about her. It was not till she had gone for some time without accident, that tourists began to think they might as well save their money and their time by patronizing the new mode of conveyance. In the second year Bell took theCometoff the Clyde, and sent her on a tour round the open coasts of the three kingdoms. Before long the safety and utility of steam navigation was admitted on all hands, and numerous rival enterprises were on foot. In 1820 theCometwas lost between Glasgow and Fort William; and in the following year another of Bell's vessels was burnt to the water-edge—two misfortunes that carried £3000 out of his pocket. His rivals, with abundant capital, soon drove him out of the field, and Bell sank into poverty and neglect. A small annuity from the Clyde trustees, and a subscription among his friends, to keep him from starving, were all the rewards he ever received for his enterprise and perseverance. He died in 1830 in the sixty-fourth year of his age.
In the quarter of a century which elapsed between 1812, when theCometfirst began to churn the waters of the Clyde, and 1837, steam navigation progressed steadily and surely. At first, content with plying along rivers and quiet bays, steamers by-and-by ventured out upon the open sea. We owe the regular establishment of deep-sea packets to the courage and enterprise of Mr. David Napier of Glasgow, "who," says Mr. Scott Russell, "has effected more for the improvement of steam navigation than any other man." He was quick to appreciate the capabilities of steam-vessels, and saw that they were fit for something more than mere inland voyages. Before starting one of them upon the open sea, however, he carefully estimated the danger to be encountered and the difficulties to be overcome. He took passage at the worst season of the year in one of the sailing vessels which formerly plied between Glasgow and Belfast, and which often required a week to perform a journey that is now done by steam in a few hours.
Stationing himself on an elevated part of the deck, he kept a close watch on the movements of the vessel, observing the tossing to which she was subjected by the waves, the extent of the dip when she sank into a trough, the height of elevation when lifted on the summit of a wave, and calculating in his mindhow all this would tell on the paddle-wheels. Through the roughest of the storm, when the vessel was pitching worst, and the wind blowing at its fiercest, he kept his place on deck, regardless of the drenching spray and the blast that almost carried him off his legs. When at length he had satisfied himself by the observation of his own eyes and inquiries of the captain and crew, that there was nothing in the voyage which a steamer could not encounter, he retired contentedly to his cabin, leaving everybody astonished at his strange curiosity respecting the effect of rough weather on the ship.
Not long after David Napier started theRob Roysteam-packet between Greenock and Belfast, and afterwards between Dover and Calais. In the course of two or three years more he had established steam communication between Holyhead and Dublin, Liverpool and Greenock, and various other parts. The length of each unbroken passage was then considered the great difficulty; but as steamers got improved both in form and machinery, passages of greater length were successfully accomplished. Steamers traversed in all directions the German Ocean, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and, in short, all the waters on the eastern side of the Atlantic; and were in use upon all the rivers and lakes of any size in Europe.
At length, in 1836, the startling project was set on foot of superseding the far-famed New York andLiverpool packet ships by a fleet of steam-ships. Before this theSavannah, a steam vessel of 300 tons, had, in 1819, crossed from New York to Liverpool in twenty-six days, partly with sails and partly with steam; and another steam vessel had, in 1825, made the voyage from England to Calcutta; but one swallow does not make a summer, and many learned folks, on both sides of the Atlantic, shook their heads doubtfully at the daring scheme of regular steam communication across 13,000 miles of ocean. The experiment was to be made, however; and on the 4th April 1838, theSirius, of 700 tons and 320 horse power, sailed from Cork for the far West. Four days after theGreat Westernfollowed in her wake from Bristol.
Great was the excitement in New York as the time drew nigh when theSiriuswas considered due. For days together the Battery was crowded with anxious watchers, from the first breaking of the cold, grey dawn till night dropped its dark curtain on the scene. At that time a telescope was a thing to be begged, borrowed, or stolen,—to be got, somehow or other, if only for a minute,—and a man who possessed one was to be looked up to, made much of, and, if possible, coaxed out of the loan of it. All day long a hundred telescopes swept the sea. The ocean steamer was the great topic of the hour, and "any appearance of her?" the constant question when two people met. On St. George's day, the 23d April, adim, dusky speck on the far horizon grew under the eye of the thousands of breathless watchers into a long train of smoke, beneath which, as the hours wore on, appeared the black prow of a huge steam-boat. There she was, long looked for come at last; and with the American colours at the fore, and the flag of Old England rustling at the stern, theSiriusswept into the harbour amidst the cheers of the multitude, the ringing of the city bells, and the firing of salutes. The excitement reached its climax, and the shouting and firing grew deafening, when, some few hours later on the same auspicious day, theGreat Westerncame to anchor alongside of her rival.
Twenty-two years have passed since then, and the marvel of 1838 has become a mere everyday affair. There are some fourteen different lines of steamers, comprising more than fifty vessels, running between the United States and Europe, to say nothing of the magnificent steam fleets of the Peninsular and Oriental, the Royal West India, British and North American, Pacific, Australian, South Western, and other companies.
The employment of iron in the construction of ships, thus securing at once lightness and strength, and the invention of the screw propeller, in 1836, by Mr. J. P. Smith, a farmer at Hendon, by means of which a vessel can combine all the qualities of a first-rate sailing ship with the use of steam power, gave a great impulse to steam navigation, which isstill making steady and continuous progress. From one steam vessel in 1812 the number in the kingdom has risen successively to 20 in 1820, 824 in 1840, and over 2000 in 1860. During 1858, 153 steamers were built in the United Kingdom, of which 112 were of iron. It is interesting to observe the advance in size of the steam vessels from their first introduction on the Clyde.
In the interval between 1812 and 1870 the number of steamers in the United Kingdom has increased from one to nearly three thousand; and the ocean-going steamer of 1870 is nearly six times the length of that of 1825, and seventeen times the length of theComet, while the difference in tonnage is still greater. How Fulton or Bell would open their eyes at the sight of a vast moving city, such as the Big Ship, an eighth of a mile in length, propelled by both paddle-wheels and screw, each worked by four huge engines!
The multifarious use of iron in our day has given its name to the age. We have got far beyond the primitive applications of that metal—every day it is supplanting some other substance, and there is no saying where the wide-spread and varied service we exact from it will stop. The invention of the steam-engine, and the improvement of manufacturing machines, would be comparatively valueless, unless we had at command a cheap and abundant supply of iron for their construction. The land is covered with a net-work of iron rails, traversed by iron steeds—gulfs and valleys are spanned by iron arches and iron tubes—huge ships of iron ride upon the deep. Even stones and bricks are being discarded for this all-useful substance, and of iron we are building houses, palaces, theatres, churches, and spacious domes. There is no end to its uses.
And yet, it is only between seventy and eighty years ago since Britain, the richest of all countries in native ore, was dependent upon others for her supply of the manufactured metal. We wanted but little iron in those days, compared with the present demand, and yet that little we could not furnishourselves with. As much as a million and a half a-year went out of our pockets to purchase wrought iron from Sweden alone, and we were good customers to Russia as well. All the iron that our country could then produce was some 17,000 tons. The man who showed us how to turn our own ore to account, who rendered us independent of all other countries for our supply, and made us the great purveyors of wrought iron to the world, who opened up to us this great source of national wealth, was Henry Cort of Gosport.
The great difficulty which he solved was how to get wrought iron out of the crude iron as it came from the smelting furnace, without using charcoal. With but a small tract of country, densely peopled, we had but a scant supply of wood at our command. The great forests which once overspread the land were gradually vanishing, partly before the spread of population and the growth of towns, and partly from the inroads made on them by the demand for timber. Formerly, the first transformation of the ore into pig iron (the crude form of the manufactured metal) was effected by means of wood; and the consumption was so great that an Act was passed in 1581 restraining its use. Soon afterwards Lord Dudley discovered that coal would answer the purpose just as well, and obtained a patent of monopoly. He reaped but little profit from his invention, however, for his iron-works were destroyed by a mob; and it was not till acentury afterwards, when people got more alarmed at the growing scarcity of timber, and the increased demand for it, that the plan was generally adopted. This was one step in the right direction, but another yet remained to be made, for the manufacture was still hampered in our country by the want of wood for the second process—the conversion of crude into malleable iron, in which state alone it is fit for service.
About the year 1785, Henry Cort, iron-master, of Gosport, after many years of patient and wearisome research, of anxious thought, and indefatigable experiment, in which he spent a private fortune of some £20,000, perfected a couple of inventions of priceless value. The first was the process of converting pig iron into wrought iron by the flame of pit coal in a puddling furnace, thus dispensing with the use of charcoal,—the cost and scarcity of which had before formed such a dead weight on the trade, and placed us at such a disadvantage compared with Sweden and Russia. The second was a further process for drawing the iron into bars by means of grooved rollers. Till then, this operation had to be performed with hammer and anvil, and was very tedious and laborious. The new system not only reduced the cost and labour of producing iron to one-twentieth of what they were previously, but greatly improved the quality of the article produced.
It is not easy to estimate all that Henry Cort's inventions have done for this country. Without them we should have lost an overflowing and inexhaustible source of national wealth, and, moreover, large sums would have been taken out of the country in the purchase of wrought metal; we should never have been able to give full scope to the great mechanical inventions brought forth towards the close of the last, and the opening of the present century; we should have been debarred from taking rank as the great engineers and engine-makers for the rest of the world. The direct gain to this country from the inventions of Henry Cort, which enabled us to work up our own iron, has been calculated as equal by this time to not less than a hundred millions; and it is hardly possible to exaggerate the benefits which it has conferred. Lord Sheffield's prophecy, that the adoption of these processes would be worth more to Britain than a dozen colonies, may be said to have been fulfilled.
Like many another benefactor of his country, Cort got little good out of his invention for himself. He took out a patent for his process, and arranged with the leading iron-masters to accept a royalty of ten shillings a ton for the use of them. With a large fortune in prospect, his purse was just then exhausted by the expenses he had incurred in experiments and researches; and he had to look out for a capitalist to aid him in working the patent on his own account.As ill luck would have it, he entered into partnership with a certain Adam Jellicoe, then deputy-paymaster of the navy. Jellicoe was considered a man of substance, and a "thoroughly respectable" character. He was to advance the ready money, and to receive in return half of the profits of the trade, Cort assigning to him, by way of collateral security, his patent rights. For a year or two all went well. The patent was everywhere adopted, and Cort's own iron works drove a lucrative and growing trade. He seemed in a fair way of getting back the fortune he had spent in bringing out the inventions, doubled or trebled, as he well deserved. The respectable Jellicoe was seized with a mortal sickness: at his death his desk was filled by another, his books were examined, and it turned out that he had been robbing the government for many a year back, and was a large defaulter. Cort, of course, had nothing to do with this villany, but he had to pay the penalty of it. As Jellicoe's partner he was responsible, in those days of unlimited liability, for all Jellicoe's debts; but that was not the worst of it. The treasurer of the navy was not content to exact only the payment of Jellicoe's defalcations, as he had no doubt a right to do, but confiscated the whole of Cort's patent rights, business, and property, which would have paid the debt seven or eight times over, had it been fairly valued.
This incident has never been properly cleared up,but what glimpses of its secret passages have been obtained, seem to indicate clearly enough that poor Cort was the victim, not of one, but of two or more swindlers. To the day of his death he never could obtain a distinct account of the proceedings; and when, after his death, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the matter, the treasurer of the navy and his deputy took care, a week or two before the Commission met, to indemnify each other by a joint release, and to burn their accounts for upwards of a million and a half of public money, for the application of which they were responsible, as well as all papers relating to Cort's case. When the Commission met, and the treasurer and his deputy were called before it, they refused to answer questions which would criminate themselves.
His connection with Jellicoe was, of course, the ruin of Henry Cort. He had no means of re-establishing himself in business; he was robbed of all income from his patents; and he died ruined and broken-hearted ten years after, leaving a family of nine children, without a sixpence in the world. Four of these children now survive—old, infirm, and indigent—only saved from being dependent upon parish bounty by pensions, amounting in the aggregate to £90 per annum. Well may it be said, "There should be more gratitude in our Iron Age to the children ofHenry Cort."
"Speak the word and think the thought,Quick 'tis as with lightning caught—Over, under lands or seas,To the far antipodes;Here again, as soon as gone,Making all the earth as one;Moscow speaks at twelve o'clock,—London reads ere noon the shock."
"Speak the word and think the thought,Quick 'tis as with lightning caught—Over, under lands or seas,To the far antipodes;Here again, as soon as gone,Making all the earth as one;Moscow speaks at twelve o'clock,—London reads ere noon the shock."
Of all the marvels of our time, the most marvellous is the subjugation of the electric fluid, that potent elemental force,—twin brother of the fatal lightning,—to be our submissive courier, to bear our messages from land to land, and "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." The Prospero that tamed this Ariel was no individual genius, but "two single gentlemen rolled into one." The idea of employing the electric current for the conveyance of signals between distant points, can be traced pretty far back in date; but to Mr. Cooke and Professor Wheatstone is undoubtedly due the credit of having made the electric telegraph an actual and accomplished fact, and rendered it practicable for everyday uses.
Having served for a number of years as an officer in our Indian army, Mr. Cooke came back to Europe to recruit his health in the beginning of 1836, and took up his abode at Heidelberg. He found agreeable occupation for his leisure in the study of anatomy, and in the construction of anatomical models for his father's museum at Durham, where he was a professor in the university. Entirely self-taught in this delicate art, Mr. Cooke applied himself to it with characteristic ardour, and attained remarkable skill. One day he happened to witness some experiments which were made by Professor Möncke, to illustrate the feasibility of electric signalling. A current of electricity was passed through a long wire, and set a magnetic needle at the end quivering under its influence. The experiment was a very simple one, and not at all novel; but Cooke had never paid any attention to the subject before, and was much struck with what he saw. He became strongly impressed with the possibility of employing electricity in the transmission of telegraphic intelligence between distant places. From the day he witnessed the experiments in Professor Möncke's classroom, he forsook the dissecting knife, threw aside his modelling tools, and applied himself to the realization of his conception. With such ardour and devotion did he labour, and such skill and ingenuity did he bring to the work, that within three weeks he had constructed a telegraph with six wires, forming three complete metallic currents, and influencing three needles, by the varied inclination of which twenty-six different signals were designated. In that short time he had also invented the detector, bywhich injuries to the wires, whether from water, fracture, or contact with substances capable of diverting the current, were readily traced, and the alarum, by which notice is given at one end of the wire that a message is coming from the other. Both these contrivances were of the utmost value,—indeed, without them electric telegraphy would be impracticable,—and are still in use. Possessing more of a mechanical than a scientific genius, Mr. Cooke bestowed more of his time and ingenuity on the perfection of a telegraph to be worked by clock mechanism, set in action by the withdrawal of a detent by an electro magnet than in the completion of the electric telegraph pure and simple.
Soon after having invented his telegraph, he came over to London, and spent the rest of the year in making a variety of instruments, and in efforts to get his telegraph introduced on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. He found an obstacle to the complete success of his mechanical telegraph, in the difficulty of transmitting to a distance sufficient electric power to work the electro magnet upon which its action depended. A friend advised him to consult Professor Wheatstone, then known to be deeply engaged in electrical experiments, with a view to telegraphy; and accordingly, an interview between them took place in February 1837.
Mr. Charles Wheatstone, F.R.S., and Professor of Experimental Philosophy in King's College at the time of that interview, had made considerable advances in the scientific part of the enterprise. At the commencement of his career as a maker and seller of musical instruments in London, he was led to investigate the science of sound; and from his researches in that direction, he was led—much as Herschel was led—to devote himself to optics, and to study the philosophy of light. He was the first to point out the peculiarity of binocular vision, and to describe the stereoscope, which has since become so popular an instrument. Gradually, however, his thoughts and researches came to be steadfastly directed to the application of electricity to the communication of signals. In determining the rate at which the electric current travels through a wire he had laid down, he made an important stride towards the end in view. He proved by a series of most ingenious experiments, that one spark of electricity leaps on before another, and that its progress is a question of time. He found that electricity travels through acopperwire as fast as, if not faster, than light, that is, at the rate of 200,000 miles in a second; but through anironwire, electricity moves at the rate of only 15,400 miles in a second. In 1836 Mr. Wheatstone had begun experiments inthe vaults of King's College, with four miles of wire, properly insulated, and was working out the details of a telegraph, the scientific principles of which he had already laid down. He had discovered an original method of converting a few wires into a considerable number of circuits, so that the greatest number of signals could be transmitted by a limited number of wires, by the deflection of magnetic needles. Mr. Wheatstone, however, was somewhat backward in the mechanical parts of the scheme, and the meeting between him and Cooke was therefore of the greatest benefit to both, and an admirable illustration of the old proverb, that two heads are better than one. Had they never been brought together,—had they kept on working out their own ideas apart—each would, no doubt, have been able to produce an electric telegraph; but a great deal of time would have been lost, and their respective efforts less complete and valuable than the one they effected in conjunction. Cooke wanted sound, scientific knowledge; Wheatstone wanted mechanical ingenuity; and their union supplied mutual deficiencies. A partnership was immediately formed between them. Before their combined genius all difficulties vanished; and in the June of the same year they were able to take out a patent for a telegraph with five wires and five needles. Their respective shares in its invention are clearly marked out by Sir J. Brunel and Professor Daniell, who, as arbiters between the two upon that delicate question, gave the following award in 1841:—
"Whilst Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking, promising to be a work of national importance; and Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful researches had already prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application,—it is to the united labours of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance, that we must attribute the rapid progress which this important invention has made during the five years since they have been associated."
Shortly after the taking out of a patent, wires were laid down between Euston Square Terminus and Camden Town Station, on the North-Western Railway; and the new telegraph was subjected to trial. Late in the evening of the 25th July 1837, in a dingy little room in one of the Euston Square offices, Professor Wheatstone sat alone, with a hand on each handle of the signal instrument, and an anxious eye upon the dial, with its needles as yet in motionless repose. In another little room at the Camden Town Station, Mr. Cooke was seated in a similar position before the instrument at the other end of the wires, along with Mr., now Sir CharlesFox, Robert Stephenson, and some other gentlemen. It was a trying, agitating moment for the two inventors,—how Wheatstone's pulse must have throbbed, and his heart beat, as he jerked the handle, broke the electric current, and sent the needles quivering on the dial; in what suspense he must have spent the next few minutes, holding his breath as though to hear his fellow's voice, and almost afraid to look at the dial lest no answer should be made; with what a thrill of joy must each have seen the needles wag knowingly and spell out their precious message,—the "All's well; thank God," that flashed from heart to heart, along the line of senseless wire. "Never," said Wheatstone, "did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before, as when all alone in the still room I heard the needles click; and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention now proved to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute."
A few days before this trial of the telegraph in London, Steinheil, of Munich, is said to have had one of his own invention at work there; and it is a difficult question to decide whether he or Cooke and Wheatstone were the first inventors. It is, however, a question of no consequence, as each worked independently. Since the first English electric telegraph was patented, there have been a thousand and one other contrivances of a similar kind taken out; but it may be doubted whether, for practical purposes,the original apparatus, with the improvements which its own inventors have made on it, is not still the best of them all.
From being used merely to carry railway messages, the telegraph was brought into the service of the general public; the advantages of such almost instantaneous communication were readily appreciated; and eight years after Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone took out their patent, lines of telegraph to the extent of 500 miles were in operation in England upon the original plan. In 1855 telegraphic correspondence had become so general, that the Electric Telegraph Company was started to supply the demand. In that establishment the Needle Telegraph of Wheatstone and Cooke is the one generally used, with the Chemical Recording Telegraph of Bain for special occasions. By means of the latter, blue lines of various lengths, according to an alphabet, are drawn upon a ribbon of paper, and as many as 20,000 words can be sent in an hour, though the ordinary rate is 100 per minute. In the purchase of patent rights alone, the Company have spent £170,000, and they are every year adding to the length of their wires. In June 1850 they had 6730 miles of wires, and despatched 29,245 messages a year. In December 1853 they had 24,340 miles of wires, and despatched 212,440 messages a-year. Their lines now extend over a much larger mileage, and convey a greatly increased number of messages. TheMagnetic Telegraph Company have also a large extent of wires, and do a considerable business.
The land telegraph having had such success, the next step was to carry the wires across the deep, and link continent to continent,—an all-important step for an island kingdom such as ours, with its legion of distant colonies. The success of a submerged cable between Gosport and Portsmouth, and of one across the docks at Hull, proved the feasibility of a water telegraph, at least on a small scale, and it was not long before more ambitious attempts were made. On the 28th of August 1850, a cable, 30 miles long, in a gutta percha sheathing, was stretched at the bottom of the straits between Dover and Cape Grisnez, near Calais. Messages of congratulation sped along this wire between England and France; and although a ridge of rocks filed the cable asunder on the French coast, the suspension of communication was only temporary. The link has once more been established, and is in daily use. The first news sent by the wire to England was of the celebratedcoup d'etatof the 2d December, which cleared the way for Louis Napoleon's ascent of the throne. Numerous other cables have since been sunk beneath the waters; complete telegraphic communication has just been established between England and India, and will, no doubt, before long be extended to Australia.
The greatest enterprise of this kind, however, still remains unaccomplished—that is, the laying of the Atlantic cable. A company was started in 1856 to carry out this great enterprise, the governments of Great Britain and the United States engaging to assist them, not only with an annual subsidy of £10,000 a-year for twenty-five years, but to furnish the men and ships required for laying the cable from one side of the Atlantic to the other. The chief difficulty which engaged the attention of Mr. Wildman Whitehouse and the other agents of the notable enterprise was the enormous size of the cable which, it was thought, would be necessary. The general belief at that time was, that the greater the distance to be traversed, the larger must be the wire along which the electric current was to pass, and that the rate of speed would be in proportion to the size of the conductor. Mr. Whitehouse, however, thought it would be as well to begin by making sure that this was really the case, and that a monster cable was essential; and after some three thousand separate observations and experiments, was delighted to find that the difficulty which stared them in the face was imaginary. Instead of a large cable transmitting the current faster than a small one, he ascertained beyond a doubt, that the bigger the wire, the slower was the passage of the electricity. It would be needful, therefore, to make the cable only strong enough to stand the strain of its own weight, and heavy enough to sinkto the bottom. A single wire would have been quite sufficient, but a strand of seven wires of the finest copper was used for the cable, so that the fracture of one of them might not interfere with the communication,—as long as one wire was left intact the current would proceed. A triple coating of gutta percha, to keep the sea from sucking out the electricity, and a thick coating of iron wire, to sink the cable to the bottom and give it strength, were added to the copper rope, and then the cable was complete. No less than 325,000 miles of iron and copper wire were woven into this great cable,—as much as might be wound thirteen times round the globe; and its weight was about a ton per mile. The length of the cable was 18,947 miles—some 600 miles being allowed to come and go upon, in case of accidents.
The end of July 1857 was selected for the sailing of the ships that were to lay the cable, as fogs and gales were then out of season, and no icebergs to be met with. On the 8th of August, theAgamemnon(English) andNiagara(American), with four smaller steamers to attend them, and each with half of the mighty cable in her hold, got up their steam and left Valentia Harbour. One end of the cable was carried by a number of boats from theNiagaraon shore, where the Lord-Lieutenant was in waiting to receive it, and place it in contact with the batteries, which were arranged in a little tent upon thebeach. A slight accident to the cable for a little while delayed the departure of the ships; but by the 10th they had got 200 miles out to sea, and so far the cable had been laid successfully. Messages passed and repassed between the ships and the shore. The next day the engineer discovering that too much cable was being paid out, telegraphed to the people on board to put a greater grip on it; the operation was clumsily managed, and the cable snapped, sinking to a depth of 12,000 feet.
Not disheartened, however, the Company replaced the lost portion of the cable; the Government again furnished ships and men, and the cable was actually laid at the bottom of the Atlantic from Valentia Bay to Trinity Harbour.
Addresses of congratulation passed between the Queen and the President of the States, and numerous messages were transmitted. But gradually the signals grew fainter and more faint, till they ceased altogether. The cable was stricken dumb. A little to the north of the fiftieth parallel of latitude, at the bottom of the Atlantic, where the plateau is unbroken by any great depression, some 1500 miles of the disabled cable were lying, on a soft bed of mud, which was constantly thickening, at a depth of from 10,000 to 15,000 feet.
The importance of telegraphic communication between England and the United States was, however, so obvious that its projectors were not to bedaunted by the failure they had sustained. Nor was it altogether a failure. They had proved that a cablecouldbe laid, and messages flashed through it. What was wanted was evidently a stronger cable, which should be less liable to injury, and more perfect in its insulation of the telegraphic wires.
From 1858 to 1864, the Company were engaged in the difficult task of raising fresh funds, and in endeavouring to secure grants from the British and American Governments. Their men of science, meanwhile, were devising improvements in the form of cable, and contriving fresh apparatus to facilitate its submersion. Eventually the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, an union of the Gutta Percha Company with the celebrated firm of Glass and Elliott, constructed an entirely new cable, which was not only costlier, but thicker and stronger than the preceding one. The conductor, three hundred pounds per mile, and one-seventh of an inch thick, consisted of seven No. 18 copper wires, each one-twentieth of an inch in thickness. The core or heart of the cable, says a writer in "Chambers's Encyclopædia," was formed of four layers of gutta percha alternating with four of Chatterton's compound (a solution of gutta percha in Stockholm tar); the wire and conductor being seven hundred pounds per mile, and nine-twentieths of an inch thick. Outside this was a coating of hemp or jute yarn, saturated with a preservative composition; while the sheath consisted of ten iron wires, each previously covered with five tarred Manilla yarns. The whole cable was an inch and one eighth thick, weighed thirty-five and three-quarter hundredweights per mile, and was strong enough to endure a breaking strain of seven tons and three-quarters. During the various processes of manufacture, the electrical quality of the cable was tested to an unusual extent. The portions of finished core were tested by immersion in water at various temperatures; next submitted to a pressure of six hundred pounds to the square inch, to imitate the ocean pressure at so great depth; then the conducting power of the copper wire was tested by a galvanometer; and various experiments were also made on the insulating property of the gutta percha. The various pieces having been thus severely put to the proof, they were spliced end to end, and the joints or splicings tested. In a word, nothing was left undone that could insure the success or guarantee the stability of the new cable.
When completed, the cable measured two thousand three hundred miles, and weighed upwards of four thousand tons. It was felt that such a burden could only be intrusted to Brunel's "big ship," theGreat Eastern. For this purpose three huge iron tanks were built, in the fore, middle, and aft holds of the vessel, each from fifty to sixty feet in diameter, and each twenty and a half feet in depth;and in these the cable was deposited in three vast coils.
On the 23rd of July 1865, theGreat Easternleft Valentia, the submarine cable being joined end to end to a more massive shore cable, which was hauled up the cliff at Foilhummerum Bay, to a telegraph-house at the top. The electric condition of the cable was continually tested during the ship's voyage across the Atlantic; and more than once its efficiency was disturbed by fragments of wire piercing the gutta percha and destroying the insulation. At length on August 2nd, the cable snapped by overstraining, and the end sank to the bottom in two thousand fathoms water, at a distance of one thousand and sixty-four miles from the Irish coast. Attempts were made to recover it by dredging. A five-armed grapnel, suspended to the end of a stout iron-wire rope five miles long, was flung overboard; and when it reached the bottom, theGreat Easternsteamed to and fro in the direction where the lost cable was supposed to be lying; but failure followed upon failure, and the cable was never once hooked. There remained nothing to be done but for theGreat Easternto return to England with the news of her non-success, and leaving (including the failure of 1857-8) nearly four thousand tons of electric cable at the bottom of the ocean.
The promoters of ocean telegraphy, however, were determined to be resolute to the end. A new Company was formed, new capital was raised, and a third cable manufactured, differing in some respects from the former. The outside jacket was made of hemp instead of jute; the iron wires of the sheath were galvanized, and the Manilla hemp which covered them was not tarred. Chiefly through the absence of the tar, the weight of the cable was diminished five hundred pounds per mile; while its strength or breaking strain was increased. A sufficient quantity of this improved cable was made to cross the Atlantic, with all due allowance for slack; and also a sufficient quantity of the 1865 cable to remedy the disaster of that year.
On July 13th, 1866, theGreat Easternonce more set forth on her interesting voyage, accompanied by the steamersTerrible,Medway, andAlbany, to assist in the submersion of the cable, and to act as auxiliaries whenever needed. The line of route chosen lay about midway between those of the 1858 and 1865 cables, but at no great distance from either. TheGreat Easternexchanged telegrams almost continuously with Valentia as she steamed towards the American continent; and great were the congratulations when she safely arrived in the harbour of Heart's Content, Newfoundland, on the 27th.
Operations were next commenced to recover the end of the 1865 cable, and complete its submergence. TheAlbany,Medway, andTerriblewere despatchedon the 1st of August, to the point where, "deep down beneath the darkling waves," the cable was supposed to be lying, and on the 9th or 10th they were joined by theGreat Eastern, when grappling was commenced, and carried on through the remainder of the month. The cable was repeatedly caught, and raised to a greater or less height from the ocean bed; but something or other snapped or slipped every time, and down went the cable again. At last, after much trial of patience, the end of the cable was safely fished up on September 1st; and electric messages were at once sent through to Valentia, just as well as if the cable had not had twelve months' soaking in the Atlantic. An additional length having been spliced to it, the laying recommenced; and on the 8th the squadron entered Heart's Content, having thus succeeded in laying a second line of cable from Ireland to America.
The two cables, the old and the new, continued to work very smoothly during the winter of 1866 and 1867; but in May 1867, the new cable was damaged by an iceberg, which drifted across it at a distance of about three miles from the Newfoundland shore. The injury was soon repaired; but again, in July 1867, the same cable broke at about fifty miles from Newfoundland.
The earlier cable continued to work for several years, but both cables gave way towards the close of the autumn of 1870. No special inconvenience wasfelt, however, as two years ago a French line of cable was laid down between Europe and America; theGreat Easternbeing again employed, and the operations being conducted under the superintendence of English electricians. The two British cables will probably be repaired in the spring of the present year (1871).
Submarine cables have multiplied recently, and almost every ocean flows over the mysterious wires which flash intelligence beneath the rolling waters from point to point of the civilized world. By a telegraph-cable, which is partly submarine, the India Office in Westminster is united with the Governor-General and his Council at Calcutta. There is also communication between Singapore and Australia, and the network of ocean telegraphy is being so rapidly extended that, before long, the British Government in the metropolis will be enabled to convey its instructions in a few hours to the administrative authorities in every British colony. And thus the words which the poet puts into the mouth of "Puck" will be nearly realized in a sense the poet never dreamed of—"I'll put a girdle round about the world in forty minutes."