The Atlantic Telegraph (1865)Russell, William Howard, Sir
History
The Atlantic Telegraph (1865)
Russell, William Howard, Sir
Transatlantic cables
The Shareholders will have the opportunity of subscribing for this new
Preferential Stock, which is issued solely to protect their property.
Those proprietors who subscribe to it are manifestly not injured in any
way, as they absorb the whole profits of the Company. Those who do not
subscribe pay in effect a small premium to the subscriber who comes
forward to help them. It is considered by the Board that this is
infinitely preferable to winding-up the Company, whereby the
Shareholders would have the mortification of seeing the whole of their
property sacrificed, and of seeing an undertaking pass out of their
hands, when on the very eve of success, upon which so much attention has
been bestowed, and so much experience gained by the expenditure of their
own funds.
Such a sacrifice is totally unnecessary, for it can be ascertained by
any one who will take the trouble to make a small calculation, that if
each of the two proposed Cables can be worked at the very low rate of
only five words per minute upon each Cable for sixteen hours a day at
five shillings per word, which is believed to be a much lower rate than
the pressure of business would admit of in the first instance, the
traffic, after paying the dividend charges of 12, 8, and 4 per cent.
respectively, amounting together to 144,000_l._ upon the capital
comprised in those different stocks, and after adding thereto the very
large sum of 50,000_l._ a-year for working expenses, would leave an
enormous balance for paying further dividends or bonuses on the
Company’s total capital, both ordinary and preferential.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
in which occurs the following passages=> in which occur the following
passages {pg 7}
eight-eight in the United States=> eighty-eight in the United States {pg
11}
assumed tempeatures=> assumed temperatures {pg}
there, standing blank and mute=> There, standing blank and mute {pg 94}
S. CANNNNG.=> S. CANNNG. {pg 111}
Kuper=> Küper
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] “From Cape Freels, Newfoundland, to Erris Head, Ireland, the
distance is 1,611 miles; from Cape Charles, or Cape St. Lewis, Labrador,
to ditto, the distance is 1,601 miles.”
[2] Short-lived as was the former Cable, it had survived long enough to
prove its value in a financial point of view. Amongst 400 messages which
it had transmitted, was one that had been dispatched from London in the
morning and reached Halifax the same day, directing “that the 62nd
Regiment were not to return to England.” This timely warning saved the
country an expenditure of 50,000_l._
[3] Communicated to the _Mechanics’ Magazine_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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