The Battery and the Boiler | Page 9

work upon!" said Fred.
"Well then, work away," returned Bob; "suppose you give me a discourse on Cables. But, I say--be merciful. Don't overdo it, Frederick. Remember that my capacity is feeble."
"I'll be careful, Bob.--Well then, you must know that from the year 1840 submarine cables had been tried and laid, and worked with more or less success, in various parts of the world. Sir W. O'Shaughnessy, I believe, began it. Irishmen are frequently at the root of mischief! Anyhow, he, being Superintendent of Electric Telegraphs in India in 1839, hauled an insulated wire across the Hooghly at Calcutta, and produced what they call `electrical phenomena' at the other side of the river. In 1840 Mr Wheatstone brought before the House of Commons the project of a cable from Dover to Calais. In 1842 Professor Morse of America laid a cable in New York harbour, and another across the canal at Washington. He also suggested the possibility of laying a cable across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1846 Colonel Colt, of revolver notoriety, and Mr Robinson, laid a wire from New York to Brooklyn, and from Long Island to Correy Island. In 1849--"
"I say, Fred," interrupted Bob, with an anxious look, "you are a walking dictionary of dates. Haydn was nothing to you. But--couldn't you give it me without dates? I've got no head for dates; never could stomach them--except when fresh off the palm-tree. Don't you think that a lecture without dates would be pleasantly original as well as instructive?"
"No, Bob, I don't, and I won't be guilty of any such gross innovation on time-honoured custom. You must swallow my dates whether you like them or not. In 1849, I say, a Mr Walker--"
"Any relation to Hookey?"
"No, sir, none whatever--he laid a wire from Folkestone to a steamer two miles off the shore, and sent messages to it. At last, in 1851. Mr Brett laid down and successfully wrought the cable between Dover and Calais which had been suggested by Wheatstone eleven years before. It is true it did not work long, but this may be said to have been the beginning of submarine telegraphy, which, you see, like your own education, Bob, has been a thing of slow growth."
"Have you done with dates, now, my learned friend?" asked Bob, attempting to balance a ruler on the point of his nose.
"Not quite, my ignorant chum, but nearly. That same year--1851, remember--a Mr Frederick N. Gisborne, an English electrician, made the first attempt to connect Newfoundland with the American continent by cable. He also started a company to facilitate intercourse between America and ireland by means of steamers and telegraph-cables. Gisborne was very energetic and successful, but got into pecuniary difficulties, and went to New York to raise the wind. There he met with Cyrus Field, who took the matter up with tremendous enthusiasm. He expanded Gisborne's idea, and resolved to get up a company to connect Newfoundland with Ireland by electric cable. Field was rich and influential, and ultimately successful--"
"Ah! would that you and I were rich, Fred," interrupted Bob, as he let fall the ruler with a crash on the red-ink bottle, and overturned it; "but go on, Fred, I'm getting interested; pardon the interruption, and never mind the ink, I'll swab it up.--He was successful, was he?"
"Yes, he was; eminently so. He first of all roused his friends in the States, and got up, in 1856, the `New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company,' which carried a line of telegraph through the British Provinces, and across the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Saint John's, Newfoundland--more than 1000 miles--at a cost of about 500,000 pounds. Then he came over to England and roused the British Lion, with whose aid he started the `Atlantic Telegraph Company,' and fairly began the work, backed by such men as Brett, Bidden, Stephenson, Brunel, Glass, Eliot, Morse, Bright, Whitehouse, and a host of others. But all this was not done in a day. Cyrus Field laboured for years among preliminaries, and it was not until 1857 that a regular attempt was made to lay an Atlantic cable. It failed, because the cable broke and was lost. A second attempt was made in 1858, and was successful. In that year, my boy, Ireland and Newfoundland were married, and on the 5th of August the first electric message passed between the Old World and the New, through a small wire, over a distance of above 2000 miles. But the triumph of Field and his friends was short-lived, for, soon after, something went wrong with the cable, and on the 6th September it ceased to work."
"What a pity!" exclaimed Bob; "so it all went off in smoke."
"Not quite that, Bob. Before the cable struck work about 400 messages had been sent, which proved its value in a financial