Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean’s carrier dove,
Thy errands to and fro!
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of Earth’s accord,
The funeral shroud of war!
The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee,
The Christ is whispering, “Peace!”
After a few months of working, the cable became inoperative, but its success was a demonstrated fact, and in 1866 a new cable was laid by the aid of that monster steamer “The Great Eastern,” since which time the cable has become one of the great factors of modern civilization.
Probably the most important of the inventions relating to submarine telegraphs is the siphon recorder, invented by Sir William Thompson, now Lord Kelvin (U. S. Pat. No. 156,897, Nov. 17, 1874). It is called a siphon recorder because the record is made by a little glass siphon down which a flow of ink is maintained like a fountain pen. This siphon is vibrated by the electric impulses to produce on the paper strip a zigzag line, whose varying contour is made to represent letters. In the illustration, [Fig. 15], m is an ink well, o a strip of paper, and n the ink siphon, one end of which is bent and dips down into the ink well, and the other end of which traces the record on the moving paper strip o. The siphon is sustained on a vertical axis l, and its lateral vibration is effected as follows: A light rectangular coil b b, of exceedingly fine insulated wire, is suspended between the poles N S of a powerful electro-magnet energized by a local battery. In the coil b b is a stationary soft iron core a, magnetized by the poles N S. The coil b b is suspended upon a vertical axis consisting of a fine wire f f, and the delicate electrical impulses over the submarine cable enter the coil b b through the axial wire f f as a conductor, and cause a greater or less oscillation of the coil b b between the poles N S of the electro-magnet. The coil b b is connected by a thread k to the siphon, and pulls the siphon in one direction, while the siphon is pulled in the opposite direction by a helical spring attached to an arm on the siphon axis l. The jagged lines seen in [Fig. 16] spell the words ““siphon recorder”.”
FIG. 15.—SIPHON RECORDER.
