[64] At a later period--after both the 1865 and 1866 cables were in working order--Mr. Collett sent a message from Newfoundland to Valentia with a battery composed of a copper percussion-cap and a small strip of zinc, which were excited by a drop of acidulated water--the bulk of a tear only. [65] This is situated on the opposite side of Trinity Bay to Bull Arm, where the 1858 cable had been landed, and not so far up. It was supposed to be even more protected than Bull Arm, from which it is some eighteen miles distant. [66] Submarine Telegraphs. [67] This is, of course, nowadays quite an ordinary occurrence, and by means of wireless telegraphy likely to become still more so. Then, however, it was a complete novelty. [68] Mr. Clark borrowed the thimble--which was a very small one--from Miss Fitzgerald, the daughter of the Knight of Kerry, living at Valentia. [69] Afterward the first Earl of Iddesleigh, G.C.B. [70] This enterprise, although mainly on behalf of France and the rest of the European continent, was principally advanced by financiers in England; the working of the cable was also chiefly under British direction and management. [71] Afterward, in 1873, merged with its cable into the Anglo-American Telegraph Company and its system. [72] This company had just had two fresh cables laid for them (1873 and 1874) by the Telegraph Construction Company with some of their usual staff. The laying of the 1874 Atlantic was the last piece of telegraph work performed by the Great Eastern. She has since been broken up, after being employed, among other things, as a sort of variety show. New cables were first rendered necessary--according to the joint-purse agreement previously referred to--by the final breakdown, after several repairs, of the 1866 cable in 1872. Later on (in 1877) the 1865 also succumbed, and another "Anglo" cable was laid by the same contractors in 1880. The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company laid this 1880 cable without any hitch or stoppage within the surprisingly short space of twelve days, the record up to date in Atlantic cable-laying. [73] Thus the Atlantic cable of to-day may be credited with an "output" of 100 words a minute as compared with a single word in the same period, such as was at first obtained in the pioneer days of one cable worked by one company. [74] Wireless telegraphy is at present a comparatively slow working affair; and if it is to successfully compete with our Atlantic cables, this means a great multiplication of transatlantic circuits all more or less close together, and, in consequence, all more or less liable to interfere with each other under existing conditions. Probably, however, any new company formed for the purposes of telegraphic communication between different countries would not confine itself--either in name or practise--to cables, but would also cultivate the "wireless" system of telegraphy.