We question, however, whether it would have been possible to have accomplished the feat of crossing the Channel with the electric fire before this date, as the difficulty of insulating the wires, so as to prevent the water from carrying off the electricity, would, we imagine, have been insuperable, but for the happy discovery of gutta percha, which supplied the very tough, flexible, non-conducting material the electrician sought for. Thus it might be said that the instantaneous interchange of thought between distant nations awaited the discovery of a vegetable production in the dense forests of the Eastern Archipelago. The first application of this singular substance to the insulation of electric conducting wires was made in 1847, by Lieutenant Siémens, of the Prussian artillery, for a line to cross the Rhine at Cologne.
The first submarine wire laid down was that between Dover and Cape Gris-nez, in the vicinity of Calais, belonging to the Submarine Telegraph Company. This wire, thirty miles in length, was covered with gutta percha to the diameter of half an inch, and sunk (August, 1850), as it was paid out, by the addition of clumps of lead at every sixteenth of a mile. The whole was completed and a message sent between the two countries on the same day. In the course of a month, however, the cable broke, owing to its having fretted upon a sharp ridge of rocks about a mile from Cape Gris-nez. It was now determined to make a stronger and better-constructed cable, capable of resisting all friction in this part of the Channel. The form of cable adopted for this and all other submarine telegraphs now in existence seems to have been originally suggested by Messrs. Newall and Co., of Gateshead, the wellknown wire-rope manufacturers. Instead of one, four wires, insulated by the Gutta Percha Company, were twisted together into a strand, and next “served” or enveloped in spun-yarn. This core was then covered with ten iron galvanized wires five-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, welded into lengths of twenty-four miles, and forming a flexible kind of mail. The cable was manufactured in the short space of twenty-one days. It weighed 180 tons, and formed a coil in the hold of the old hulk that carried it of thirty feet in diameter outside, and fifteen feet inside, standing five feet high. All went well with the undertaking until about one-half had been “paid out,” when, a gale arising, unfortunately the tug-boat that towed the hulk containing the rope broke away, and vessel, wire, and all, drifted, with a racing tide, full a mile up the Channel before it could be overtaken. The consequence was, that the cable was violently dragged out of its course in the middle of the straits. What was worse, a sharp “kink,” or bend, also occurred near the Dover shore, which doubled the cable on itself, but luckily produced no serious damage. The “lie” of the submarine cable between Dover and the vicinity of Calais, at this present moment, is expressed in the following diagram:—
When the cable at length came near the French coast, it was found to be, in consequence of this unintentional detour, at least half a mile too short. This was remedied, however, by splicing on a fresh piece; and, on securing it at Saugat, the new place of landing, fixed upon on account of its sandy shore, it was found that the communication was good, and good it has remained ever since—a proof of the admirable manner in which the wires were insulated and the cable constructed. The placing of this successful cable was superintended by Mr. Wollaston, the Company’s engineer, and by Mr. Crampton, the contractor. Mr. Wollaston, who is a nephew of the illustrious philosopher of the same name, and who also presided over the earlier attempt, will accordingly, in the annals of electricity, carry off the honours of having first laid down the ocean telegraph.
The same Company, not long afterwards, laid another cable across to Ostend. This established a connection with Europe through Belgium, and was planned to prevent this line of communication falling into the hands of another company, and was not, as was suspected at the time, a matter of political foresight on the part of the directors, to enable them to carry on their intercourse with the continent, in spite of France, supposing war should break out between the two countries. Who would have believed a short time since, in Belgium, that the day would come when it would be quicker to convey intelligence to France by way of England than directly across the frontiers? Yet such was actually the case; for, before the line was laid by land, it was a thing of very frequent occurrence for despatches from Ostend to cross the Channel to Dover by one cable, and to be immediately switched across to Calais by the other; thus paying us a momentary triangular visit underneath the rapid straits.
The notion, however, of preventing competition proved to be vain. A third cable was laid on the 30th May, 1853, between the English coast at Orfordness, near Ipswich, and the port of Schevening in Holland, and thence to the Hague. This cable is the longest at present in connection with this isle, extending 120 miles under the turbulent North Sea. It was, however, paid out during a violent gale of wind without the slightest accident, and affords the most direct means of communication with the north of Europe, and entirely commands the commercial traffic of the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Hague cable (or cables, for there are now many, consisting of a single wire conductor each, running side by side) is the property of the International Company, a branch of the Old Electric Telegraph, and its wires go direct to the Lothbury office.
Whilst England has moored her south-eastern shores to the continent by three cables, and put herself en rapport with all its principal cities, her north-western extremity has been secured, after many failures, to the sister kingdom—the Electro-Magnetic Company having laid a submarine wire from Portpatrick and Donaghadee, in the neighbourhood of Belfast, and the British Electric Telegraph Company another between Portpatrick and Whitehead in Belfast Lough. England, as befits her, led the way in these adventures upon the sea with the electric fire, and the Danes, Dutch, Russians, and others, are now following in her track.
Will it be believed that in 1841, long after the electric telegraph was working in England, scientific men were seriously discussing in the French Chamber the propriety of establishing a night telegraph on the visual principle, and that when at length it was determined to call in the aid of electricity, instruments were ordered to be so constructed that signals could be given after the fashion of the old semaphore, in order that the officials might be spared the trouble of leaving their ancient ruts? The needles were accordingly displaced for a mimic post, to which moveable arms were attached and signs were transmitted by elevating or depressing them by electricity, instead of by hand. Of course this absurd system was after a while abolished, and the instrument now made use of is a modification of the dial telegraph constructed by Breguet. The first telegraph planted in France was constructed by Mr. Wheatstone, from Paris to Versailles, in 1842. The principal line is that running from Calais viâ Paris to Marseilles, which puts the English Channel and the Mediterranean in communication, and transmits for us the more urgent items of the India and China mail.
Belgium and Switzerland are perhaps the best supplied of all the continental kingdoms with telegraphic communication. The Belgian lines were excellently planned and cheaply constructed, consequently their tariff is comparatively low, the average charge for a message being 3 francs 48 centimes, or about 2s. 10½d. Of the nature of the messages sent we can form a very good idea by the following classification of a hundred dispatches:—
| Government | 2 | |
| Stock-jobbing | 50 | |
| Commercial | 31 | |
| Newspaper | 4 | |
| Family affairs | 13 | |
| 100 | ||