The Story of the Atlantic TelegraphField, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
History
The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph
Field, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
Transatlantic cables
2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much after its
submersion in the cold deep water of the Atlantic, and that its
conducting power is considerably increased thereby.
3. That the steamship Great Eastern, from her size and constant
steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint
use of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an Atlantic
Cable in any weather.
4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made
to grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was caught by
the grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the
chain attached to it.
5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great
Eastern worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for
laying cables across the Atlantic.
6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for long
submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute
can be obtained through such a cable as the present Atlantic
between Ireland and Newfoundland, as the amount of slack
actually paid out did not exceed fourteen per cent, which would
have made the total cable laid between Valentia and Heart's
Content nineteen hundred miles.
7. That the present Atlantic Cable, though capable of bearing a
strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen
hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the
Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.
8. That there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the deep
water of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, and
that two buoys even when moored by a piece of the Atlantic
Cable itself, which had been previously lifted from the bottom,
have ridden out a gale.
9. That more than four nautical miles of the Atlantic Cable
have been recovered from a depth of over two miles, and that
the insulation of the gutta-percha-covered wire was in no way
whatever impaired by the depth of water or the strains to which
it had been subjected by lifting and passing through the
hauling-in apparatus.
10. That the cable of 1865, owing to the improvements
introduced into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core, was
more than one hundred times better insulated than cables made
in 1858, then considered perfect and still working.
11. That the electrical testing can be conducted with such
unerring accuracy as to enable the electricians to discover the
existence of a fault immediately after its production or
development, and very quickly to ascertain its position in the
cable.
12. That with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out
machinery, should a fault be discovered on board whilst laying
the cable, it is possible that it might be recovered before it
had reached the bottom of the Atlantic, and repaired at once.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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