Part 5 (1/2)
Finally, after some weeks delay, it was decided to introduce what has become the most fa the wires on poles There is little need to follow the enterprise further Morse stayed with one instruton, and Vail carried another with him at the end of the line Already the type-and-rule and all the symbols and dictionaries had been discarded, and the dot-and-dash alphabet was substituted On April 23d, 1844, Vail substituted the earth for the reat step both in knowledge and in practice was taken
Within an incredibly brief space the Morse Electric Telegraph had spread all over the world No man's triumph was ever more complete He passed to those riches and honors that must have been to hiresses were like those of a monarch
He was made a member of almost all of the learned societies of the world, and on his breast glittered the reatness A congress of representatives of ten of the governments of Europe met in Paris in 1858, and it was unanimously decided that the sum of four hundred thousand francs--about a hundred thousand dollars--should be presented to him He died in New York in 1872
[Illustration: PROF HENRY'S ELECTROMAGNET AND ARMATURE]
Yet not a single feature of the invention of Morse, as forinal patent, is to be found araphy They had mostly been abandoned before the first line had been coements of his associate, Vail, were substituted Professor Joseph Henry had, in 1832, constructed an electronals were nals now are in the so-called Morse systenet on a pivot in its center as a co He wound a U-shaped piece of soft iron with insulated wire, and netized bar between the two legs of this electro-net by the current the end of the bar thus placed was attracted by one leg of thein a horizontal plane so that the opposite end of it struck a bell Thus was an electric telegraphall the conditions of such an one giving the signals by sound, as the --the essential [Footnote: The details of the construction of the raph line are not here stated There are none that change, in principle, the outline above given]
The Vail telegraphic alphabet had not been thought of Had such an idea been conceived previously a e could have been read as it is read now, and with the toy of Professor Henry which he abandoned without an idea of its utility or of the possibilities of any telegraph as we have long known them Morse knew these possibilities He was one of the innuht, one of the prophets who have been in the beginning without honor, not only in respect to their own country, but in respect to their times
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF TELEGRAPH SYSTEM]
CHAPTER II
THE OCEAN CABLE--The re departure froraphy, the rams_
About these ocean syste to lines on land, though they are intended to perform the same functions in the sauage, instantly and certainly, but under the sea
The marine cables are not simple wires There is in the center a strand of usually seven small copper wires, intended as the conductor of the current These, twisted loosely into a sutta-percha, which is, in turn, covered with jute
Outside of all there is an armor of wires, and the entire cable appears much like any other of the wire cables now in coes, and for many purposes In the shalloaters of bays and harbors, where anchors drag and the like occurrences take place, the arh more than twenty tons to the mile
There are peculiar difficulties encountered in sending row out of the same induction whose laws are indispensable in other cases The inner copper core sets up induction in the strands of the outer arain, a species of re-induction affecting the core, so that faint impulses may be received at the terminals that were never sent by the operators All of these difficulties combined result in what electricians terraphy that, like the unavoidable difficulties in all machines and devices, educatesIt is one of the natural features of all theof iard to ocean cables would be that very strong currents are used in sending i instrument is not the noisy ”sounder” of the land lines There was, until recently, a delicate needle which swung to and fro with the i to their nue according to the Vail dot-and-dash alphabet Noever, ain a faint wavy ink-line on a long, unwinding slip of paper, arded as the latest syste no relationshi+p to the art of Cad an expert and a special education to decipher it Those faint pulsations, from a hand three thousand ic incredible The necromancy and black art of all antiquity are childish by coive but faint indications of what they often are--the es of love and death; the dictations of statesmanshi+p; the heralds of peace or war; the orders for the disposition ofof the first ocean cable is worthy of the telling in any language, but should be especially interesting to the Airl It is a story of native enterprise and persistence; perhaps the raph was that laid by two lish Channel For this cable, a pioneer though crossing only a narroater, the conservative officials of the British governle copper wire covered with gutta-percha froland to the coast of France The first as soon broken, and a second wasof several strands, and this last was soon imitated in various short reaches of water in Europe
But the Atlantic had always been considered unfatho currents had invariably swept away the heaviest weights before they reached its bed Its great feature, so far as knoas that strange ocean river first noted and described by Franklin, and known to us as the Gulf Streaain turned the attention of a few men to the question of an Atlantic cable Lieutenant Berryman, of the Navy, made a survey of the bottom of the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland, and the wonderful discovery was made that the floor of the ocean was a vast plain, notfrom one continent to the other This plain is about four hundred , and there are no currents to disturb the mass of broken shells and unknown fishes that lie on its oozy surface It was naraphic Plateau,” with a view to its future use At either edge of this plateau huge h, rise out of the depths There are precipices of sheer descent dohich the cable now hangs The Azores and Bermudas are peaks of oceannorthward s and melts them, and deposits the shells, rocks and sand they carry on this plain When it was discovered the difficulty in the way of an Atlantic cable seeage in the enterprise began to bestir themselves
Of these the an life as a clerk in New York City When thirty-five years old he becaraph across Newfoundland, the purpose of which was to transht by a fast line of steamers intended to be established, and the idea is said to have occurred to hi a line not only so far, but across the sea In Nove a co to 350,000 pounds, was subscribed The governland and the United States promised a subsidy to the stockholders
The cable was ned by the United States, and the _Agaland, each attended by sara left the coast of Ireland, dropping her cable into the sea Even when it dropped suddenly down the steep escarph the carelessness of an assistant the cable parted That was the beginning of mishaps The task was not to be so easily done, and the enterprise was postponed until the following year
That next year was still more mened that the two vessels should meet in mid-ocean, unite the ends of the cable, and sail slowly to opposite shores There were fearful storamemnon_, overloaded with her half of the cable, was almost lost But finally the spot in the waste and middle of the Atlantic was reached, the sea was still, and the vessels stea into the sea their two halves of the second cable It parted again, and the two shi+ps returned to Ireland
In July they again met inthe splendid enterprise All faith was lost It was known, to journalism especially, that the cable would never be laid and that the enterprise was absurd But it was like the laying of the first land line There was a way to do it, existing in the brains and faith of h at first that as not known Froain sailed away, the _Niagara_ for Aamemnon_ for Valencia Bay This tiust 29th, 1858, the old world and the neere bound together for the first tihts of the other
The queen saluted America, and the president replied There were salutes of cannon and the ringing of bells But the rew indistinct day by day, and finally ceased The Atlantic cable had been laid, and--had failed
Eight years followed, and the cable lay forgotten at the bottoood will to men had so far failed to come and they were years of tumult and bitterness The Union of the United States was called upon to defend its integrity in a great war A bitter enraph, and all its persevering projectors, were alotten Electricians declared the project utterly ian, finally, to be denied that any es had ever crossed the Atlantic at all, and Field and his associates were discredited It was said that the current could not bea circuit New routes were spoken of--across Bering's Strait, and overland by way of Siberia--and an to be taken to carry this scheements, Field and his associates revived their co that science could then suggest to aid final success This new cable was more perfect than any of the former ones, and there was a mammoth side-wheel steamer known as the _Great Eastern_, unavailable as it proved for the ordinary uses of coh to carry the entire cable in her hold In July, 1865, the huge stea the endless coil into the sea The saed in this last attempt that had failed in all the previous ones It is one of the ust 6th a flaw occurred, and the cable was being drawn up for repairs The sound of the wheel suddenly stopped; the cable broke and sunk into the depths The _Great Eastern_ returned unsuccessful to her port
Field was present on board on this occasion, and had been present on several similar ones There was, so far as known, no record hts There were now five cables in the bed of the Atlantic, and each one had carried doith it a large suer suain in July, 1866, her tanks filled with new cable and Field once more on her decks It was the last, and the successful attempt The cable sank steadily and noiselessly into the sea, and on July 26th the steamer sailed into Trinity Bay The connection wasvillage, and one for this occasion admirably named
Then the lost cable of 1865 was found, raised and spliced
In these later tio and repair it Even if this were not true, the fact remains that this last cable, and that of 1865, have been carrying their es under the sea for nearly thirty years The lesson is that repeated failures do not mean _final_ failure There is often said to be a s They refuse to become slaves until they are once and for all utterly subdued, and then they are docile forever Yet the malice truly lies in the inaptitude and inexperience of men Had Field and his associates kno toas well as they did in the end, the first one laid would have been successful The years were passed in the invention ofthe construction of each successive cable Many have been laid since then, certainly and without failure Men have learned how [Footnote: At present the totalaltogether 200,000,000 The length of land wires throughout the world is over 2,000,000225,000,000 The capital invested in all lines, land and sea, is about 530,000,000]