The Story of the Atlantic TelegraphField, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
History
The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph
Field, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
Transatlantic cables
cheers, evidently none the worse for having been 'bottled up'
during the last three hours. Along the deck outside, over the
ship, throughout the ship, the pent-up enthusiasm overflowed;
and even before the test-room was cleared, the roaring bravos
of our guns drowned the huzzas of the crew, and the whiz of
rockets was heard rushing high into the clear morning sky to
greet our consort-ships with the glad intelligence."
While this scene is going on on board ship, we may turn to the other end
of the line. It may be well supposed that the result of this attempt was
watched with deep interest at Valentia. How they looked for the first
signal from the deep, and how the tidings came, is thus told in the
London Spectator:
"Night and day, for a whole year, an electrician has always
been on duty, watching the tiny ray of light through which
signals are given, and twice every day the whole length of
wire--one thousand two hundred and forty miles--has been tested
for conductivity and insulation.... The object of observing the
ray of light was of course not any expectation of a message,
but simply to keep an accurate record of the condition of the
wire. Sometimes, indeed, wild, incoherent messages from the
deep did come, but these were merely the results of magnetic
storms and earth-currents, which deflected the galvanometer
rapidly, and _spelt the most extraordinary words, and sometimes
even sentences of nonsense_. Suddenly, last Sunday morning, at
a quarter to six o'clock, while the light was being watched by
Mr. May,[B] he observed a peculiar indication about it, which
showed at once to his experienced eye that a message was at
hand. In a few minutes afterward the unsteady flickering was
changed to coherency, if we may use such a term, and at once
the cable began to speak, to transmit, that is, at regular
intervals, the appointed signals which indicated human purpose
and method at the other end, instead of the hurried signs,
broken speech, and inarticulate cries of the illiterate
Atlantic. After the long interval in which it had brought us
nothing but the moody and often delirious mutterings of the
sea, stammering over its alphabet in vain, the words 'Canning
to Glass' must have seemed like the first rational word uttered
by a high-fevered patient, when the ravings have ceased and his
consciousness returns."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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