In this year the capital was readjusted and appointed to the various interests forming the Western Union combination.
Soon after the union of the many conflicting telegraph interests had been effected, and through fear of a burdensome monopoly, a move was made towards the nationalization of the telegraphs. As a matter of course, this was strenuously opposed by the telegraph company’s representatives, and public sentiment was with the company.
Although politicians as a rule were favourably inclined to such a step, the majority of the people were against it, or indifferent, with the result that the movement dropped out of view, and has so far as known never been revived up to this period.
In telegraph operations little attention had been given to electricity as a science in America. Any improvements which had been made in connection with telegraphic appliances, except in repeating appliances, were of a comparatively trifling and unscientific character.
Marshall Lefferts had done much to show the value of statistics, and had laid down important ground work for systematized and scientific methods; he had even introduced some of the electric tests by which the telegraph wires afterward became so potential, but no clearly defined system had been in practice.
The battery man still multiplied his cells, emptied his carboys of nitric or sulphuric acid, and bathed his zincs in mercury, to raise the telegraphic steam; the patient operator turned and returned during the long hours of the weary nights the spring of his relay, to catch the erratic movements of the armature as it vibrated before the changing currents on the line.
Cromwell Varley, a well-known electrician whose accomplishments as a gentleman of education as well as a scientist had preceded him in the frequent appearance of his name in the records of scientific investigation, had arrived in New York. Mr. Orton, at this time the President of the Western Union Company, invited Mr. Varley to make a thorough investigation into the condition of the lines and apparatus owned by the Company.
The report made by Mr. Varley, minute and exhaustive, revealed a startling condition of things—half of the wires were found to be practically unavailable.
The best wires in the service showed a resistance far above the proper standard.
A popular relay was found to have a resistance equal to one hundred miles of number 8 wire, the use of which was choking the most important circuits.