have referred, and to publish in support of AS AN USEFUL UNDERTAKING, Mr. Cooke sucits statements a volume of documents, illus- ceeded, in 1846, in establishing the ELECTRIC trated by numerous plates. TELEGRAPH COMPANY, of which he is now Mr. Cooke was fortunate in obtaining the Ricardo, M.P., by whose zeal and sagacity this Company has attained its present gigantic magnitude. By the outlay of three quar ters of a million of money, this Company has covered England and Scotland with a com Having been the first individual who in-one of the principal Directors. troduced the Electric Telegraph into England,--having been the first constructor of a co-operation of such a man as Mr. Lewis working telegraph and various pieces of valuable telegraphic apparatus, invented by himself, having availed himself of Mr. Wheatstone's talents for completing the particular telegraph patented by Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone, having paid Mr. Wheat-plete net-work of telegraphs, extending along stone £30,000 for his interest in the joint 5480 miles of railway lines, and employing patent, having established beyond the no less than 24,000 miles of wire.* power of challenge his claim to "stand alone lowing balance sheet, shewing the state of as the gentleman to whom this country is in- accounts of the 30th of June 1852, and the debted for having PRACTICALLY INTRODUCED 30th of June 1854, will give the reader an idea AND CARRIED OUT THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH of the nature and extent of the establishment. The fol This is exclusive of wires used by the Railway Companies for their own purposes. These companies have wires of their own, with a license from the Telegraph Company to use them. The average number of messages sent | pared with the needle instrument, with two monthly during the last quarter, was 58,650, advantages; first that it requires only one and the average time occupied by a message line of wire; and, secondly, that it writes its in transmission was, on important circuits, one minute. This work is performed by a numerous staff, which, exclusive of the principal officers, are as follows: own despatch. With the needle instrument two copies of each despatch must be made, one to be delivered as addressed, and the other to be retained by the office. In using Bain's method, that which is written in telegraphic cipher by the instrument, is retained by the office, so that the time of one clerk is saved." The following is the tariff of the Com The For the accomodation of the clerks and messengers at the metropolitan station at Luthbury, the Company have established a lodging-house, under the personal supervision of the directors, where the health and general welfare of their servants are liberally provided for. Although the Company has expended large sums of money in purchasing the patents of various new and ingenious telegraphs, yet the double needle telegraph is the one principally used. Mr. Bain's telegraph is used on certain lines, such as between London and Liverpool. "This," as Dr. Lardner observes, "is attended, as com * The employment of female clerks at the Lon don, Liverpool, and Manchester stations, is a step in social reform, which might be advantageously adopted in various other professions. 1 2000000 The central station of the Electric Telegraph Company is in Founder's Court, Lothbury, behind the Bank, from which above 200 wires proceed to seventeen branch stations, including the eight railway stations in London and its vicinity. In addition to this arrangement for transmitting despatches to different parts of the city, there is a very interesting one for the benefit of Members of Parliament, and of the different clubs in the Metropolis. From the octagon hall in the House of Parliament, a wire passes to the telegraph station of St. James' Street, which is near the West End Club, and by means of it reporters are employed by the Company to transmit an abstract of the proceedings of both Houses. This abstract, a charta volans, is immediately printed, and with the additions constantly made to it, is sent every half hour to the Italian Opera and all the principal Clubs at the west end. The following sheet, which we have obtained from the of the House of Commons on the Foreign Company, is a fac-simile of the proceedings Enlistment Bill, the House of Lords having adjourned at an early hour: THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH COMPANY. (INCORPORATED 1846.) HOUSE OF COMMONS, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22ND, 1854. By means of these flying sheets, the provinces. It is erected on the dome of the members of both Houses who frequent the Charing-Cross station, at the height of 110 Opera or the Clubs know the precise time feet above the level of the Thames. It contheir presence is wanted for a division, or sists of a long quadrangular pillar of wood, when any of the great speakers are speaking 38 feet high and 4 in circumference. The or about to speak. upper part of the pillar which rises above In conjunction with the Astronomer-Royal the dome, passes through the centre of a and the South-Eastern Railway Company, large ball, which falls every day at one the Electric Telegraph Company have, at o'clock, simultaneously with the similar the expense of £1000, completed a chrono- ball on the top of the Greenwich Observametrical apparatus, for the transmission of tory, thus indicating the time to every lomean Greenwich time to London and the cality from which it is seen. The ball is nearly 6 feet in diameter. It is formed of as to form a submarine cable. This cable zinc, painted red, with a broad gilt belt was completed in three weeks, but, owing round it, and weighs 186 lbs.; but its fall is to an accident in laying it down, it suffered broken by striking an air cylinder beneath. a twist or bend, which took it out of the The instant that the ball at Greenwich falls, direct line, and prevented it from reaching the current of electricity, conveyed by the wire to Saugat, south of Calais. It was necesfrom Greenwich, draws an electric trigger sary, therefore, to add to it another mile of connected with the ball at Charing-Cross, and cable, which being immediately done, though causes it to fall at the same instant. By the task was not an easy one, the communithe aid of a galvanic clock at the Observatory, hourly signals transmit accurate Greenwich time to the central station at Lothbury, and also to that at Charing-Cross, and the time is transmitted several times a day to Tunbridge, Deal, and Dover. cation between Calais and Dover was completed on the 17th October 1851, and since that time, Great Britain and the Continent of Europe have, by this iron larynx, conversed with each other on every subject. which can interest humanity. The expense of the cable was £9000, and the station at Dover and Calais, £6000. This line of telegraph belongs to the Chartered Submarine Telegraph Company. By the private enterprise of Messrs. Newall and Company, a still longer submarine cable was stretched across the Irish channel from Holyhead to Dublin, or rather The first promoters of the Electric Telegraph, sanguine as they were of its ultimate triumph over the prejudices of the railway companies, who at first rejected it, and of supine governments, who were blind to its advantages, and never contributed to its extension, they yet never anticipated that its lines would span wide arms of the sea, and, by crossing even oceans themselves, would to Howth. In the deep sea portion of it, girdle the terraqueous globe. The subma- the gutta percha rope containing one copper rine telegraph was not a corollary of the wire was surrounded by ten twisted iron terrestrial. It was a new idea, which it re- wires, and the shore ends of the same rope quired genius to suggest, and science to real- surrounded by six iron wires. Transported ize. Dr. O'Shaughnessy, so early as 1839, from the works at Gateshead on twenty succeeding in laying down an insulated con- waggons, it was sent by railway to Maryducting wire, attached to a chain-cable in port, where the Brittania carried it to Holythe River Hoogly, which carried the electric head. On the 4th of June 1852, it was decurrent from one bank to another. Another posited in the Irish Channel, where the depth step was made in 1847, by M. Siemens, of water is 70 fathoms, nearly double that who first applied gutta percha to the insula- between Dover and Calais. The length of tion of the wires, and laid down a tele- the cable is 64 miles, and the time of laying graphic line to cross the Rhine at Cologne.it down was 18 hours. These steps, however, though very import- The next great submarine enterprise, unant, were not to be compared with the der the direction of the Submarine Telebold and successful attempt to carry a sub- graph Company, was that of uniting Dover marine cable from Dover to Calais. In with Ostend, a distance of 70 miles. This 1850, the Submarine Telegraph Company gigantic cable, also the work of Messrs. made the necessary arrangements with the Newall and Company, cost £33,000, and French and Belgian Governments, and was laid down on the 4th of May. On the Messrs. Newall and Co., the celebrated wire- 6th of May it was the bearer of a friendly rope makers of Gateshead, were intrusted message from Belgium to London. with the manufacture of 24 miles of a wire- The Magnetic Telegraph Company and cable, to stretch over a distance of 21 miles.* the British Telegraph Company, have, acFor this purpose, four copper wires, the cording to Dr. Lardner, laid down cables of sixteenth of an inch in diameter, were the same kind from Portpatrick to Donaghcovered with successive coatings of gutta adee, a species of rivalry which Parliapercha. The wires were then twisted to- ment ought not to have permitted. The gether, and surrounded with a mass of spun first of these Companies have established yarn soaked in grease and tar, so as to form upwards of 2000 miles (many of them una compact rope impervious to water. In der ground) of telegraphic lines, and have order to give strength to this combination, 13,000 miles of wire in active operation, and protect it from external injury, ten gal- connecting England and Scotland with the vanized wires are twisted round the rope, so principal towns in Ireland. *An unsuccessful attempt had been made in 1850, when the cable broke by the action of the waves rubbing it against a ridge of rocks near Calais, at Cape Gris-nez. Electric Telegraph Company, which acts in A Company, entitled the European and common with the two Submarine Companies, now united, was established in order to connect the cables of those Companies with The idea of what may provisionally be the metropolis, and with Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester. called a transmarine telegraph has been recently brought forward by Mr. Lindsay of Our limits will not permit us to give any Dundee. This plan is to send the electric farther details respecting these submarine current through great distances of water by establishments. The most important facts means of long lines of wire stretching along concerning all those which are yet completed, the opposite shores. These lines communior in progress, are contained in the following table given by Dr. Lardner : 6 Ditto, do., British Tel Orfordness and the 10 135 Across the Great Belt, Across the Mississippi, 1 Newfoundland Across the Zuyder Zee, 6 and Prince Edward's Is land, 1 Spezzia and Corsica, 6 8 10 7 1 7 7 2 5 2 71 14 8 cate with a powerful battery, and their four terminations dip into the sea, so that the electric currents flow in two different directions across the ocean. Mr. Lindsay had made experiments on a small scale in Scotland, which so far confirmed his views; but he repeated them on a larger scale last summer at Portsmouth, where he sent messages through a mile of water, though there were many ships in the intervening space, and many of them with coppered bottoms. In this experiment the length of the lateral wires was less than half a mile. We understand that a patent has been secured by a company who intend in spring to make experiments on a great scale. Although it would be a work of superogation to point out to our readers the various uses of the Electric Telegraph, yet there are some of them so little known, and others of so remarkable a nature, that they deserve the widest circulation. Among these uses, those of a scientific nature may claim A submarine line of much greater length the first place. The beautiful arrangement than any of the preceding, and of high tem- which we owe to Mr. Airy, the Astronomerporary interest, is about to be laid down by Royal, of transmitting to the most distant order of Government from Varna to Cape telegraphic regions the true time of GreenChersonese or Balaklava. The length will wich, is one of inestimable value. The dif be 300 miles, and Mr. Liddell, the engineer ficulty of obtaining correct time for the on the new Litchfield and Hitchin Railway, accurate record of astronomical and atmowho has already laid down cables in the spherical phenomena, has been experienced Mediterranean and other seas, has under- by all who do not possess astronomical intaken to complete it in two months. May struments. This may, however, be comits first message convey to Lord Raglan and pletely removed; and even with ordinary General Canrobert the gratifying intelligence house-clocks we may record our observations that they have conquered a secure and hon-with a degree of accuracy sufficiently corourable peace. rect for those which can be made by private We have already mentioned the contem- individuals. Mr. Airy, however, has gone plated line from Natchez to San Francisco much farther than this. By having the in California, which will connect the Pacific Royal Observatory at Greenwich* connected with the Atlantic, and even with St. John's with the submarine cables at Brussels and in Newfoundland, which is only five days' Paris, he has been able to determine the passage from Galway, and which would then correct latitudes and longitudes of their obconnect the Pacific with Europe. But why servatories, and the same process will doubtmay we not contemplate the union of New- less be extended to every place in the telefoundland with Europe by a submarine cable graphic world. Geography will thus parwhich has been already proposed? As a ticipate in the same advantages with aswork of art it is doubtless practicable, and tronomy, and the difficult and expensive the European powers might contribute the operation of national surveys will be carried means of thus uniting the two hemispheres on with greater facility and correctness. of the globe. In meteorology, the Electric Telegraph A new principle of telegraphic communication, if it shall prove of practical value, may render such an enterprise within the reach even of the western states of Europe. *The beautiful application of electricity for recording observations, invented by Mr. Bond of the United States, has been carried into effect with great improvements, by Mr. Airy at Greenwich. |