“Do not interrupt the clerks while engaged at the instruments.”
As the Vicar of Wakefield’s most important movements in life were “from the blue bed to the brown one,” so we must now request our readers to migrate with us from the attics of the Electric Telegraph Office to a low, dark, groined, 5th-of-November-looking cellar, thirty-two feet long by five in width, containing three shelves, on which are to be seen, lying in double rows, thirty-four galvanic batteries, or, to speak in more homely terms, small open troughs, five inches broad, and either thirty-two inches or twenty inches in length. The largest, weighing, when charged, 60 lbs., are called “twenty-fours,” because they contain that number of pairs of plates of copper and zinc separated by a little sand, the whole being then brought into galvanic action by being sluiced with sulphuric acid and water mixed in the proportions of one of the former to twelve of the latter.
The smallest, called “twelves,” contain only that number of pairs of plates.
Of these batteries it requires from four to six of the largest to be applied to one instrument to blow a message from London to Edinburgh. A single “twelve,” applied to each instrument, will project intelligence to a range of four or five miles.
These batteries are connected with the eight instruments in the attics by small copper wires, which, to prevent confusion of action from contact one with another, are covered with cotton thread, saturated with a mixture of tar, rosin, and grease.
With this simple precaution, nine wires, insulated from each other, are packed in a half-inch leaden tube, in which they again descend from the instruments to the cellar region. Four or five of these pipes are there packed into an iron pipe three inches in diameter, which conducts them under the foot pavement of the streets to the termini of the arterial rail-roads, alongside of which, and in the open air, a series of lines resembling those on which music is written, composed of galvanised iron, stout enough to bear tension, and suspended by posts, have, as is well known, been constructed. Along the street pavement, at every quarter of a mile, there are cast-iron “testing-posts” to enable the Company’s servants to examine all these wires in order to detect and remove any that require to be renewed.
Although the London police have strict orders to allow no one to impede the thoroughfare of the public, and accordingly are everlastingly mumbling the unphilosophical monotonous exhortation of “Get on, Sir!” “Move on, Ma’am!” yet it is almost impossible for any ruminating being to walk the streets without occasionally pausing to reflect not only on the busy bustling scenes which glide before his eyes, but on those which, at very different rates, are at the same moment flowing beneath his feet.
In our metropolis, there is scarcely a street which does not appear to take pride in exposing as often as possible to public view a series of pipes of all sizes, in which fire of various companies, pure water of various companies, and unmentionable mixtures, abominable to all, pass cheek by jowl with infinitely less trouble than the motley human currents flow above them. But among all the subterranean pipes laid bare before us there is certainly no one which has more curious contents than the three-inch iron pipe of the Electric Telegraph Company; and yet, of all the multitudes who walk the streets, how few of them ever care to reflect what a singular contrast exists between the slow pace at which they themselves are proceeding, and the rate at which beneath their feet forty-five electric wires are transmitting in all directions, and to a variety of distances, intelligence of every possible description!
How singular is it to reflect that, within the narrow space of the three-inch iron pipe which encases them, notice of a murder is flying to London papers, passing news from India going into the country; along another wire an officer is applying for his regimentals, while others are conducting to and fro the “price of stocks,” “news of the Pope,” a speech from Paris of the “collapsed poet,” &c. &c. &c. In case, from the abrasion of the cotton that surrounds the numerous copper wires within the pipe, any of them come into contact with each other, the intelligence which each is conveying is suddenly confounded; in which case other wires must instantly be substituted. Indeed, even as regards the strong galvanised iron wires which in the open air run parallel with our arterial railways, if in wet weather, in spite of the many ingenious precautions taken, the rain should form a continuous stream between the several wires and the ground, the electric fluid, escaping from the wires, is conducted by the water till it “finds earth,” the best of all conductors; and therefore, instead of the intelligence going on, say to Edinburgh, it follows the axiom of electricity by selecting the shortest road, and, thus completing its circuit through the earth, it returns to London. Sometimes, instead of going “to earth,” it flies back to the office in London along another wire, to which, by means of a continuous line of water or of entanglement of the two wires, it has managed to escape; in which case, the messages on both wires wrangling with each other, the communication is stopped.
It is commonly asserted and believed that many birds are killed by merely perching upon the iron wires of the electric telegraph; but at any time they can do so with perfect impunity. If, indeed, a bird could put one of his feet on the wire, and with the other manage to touch the earth, he would then, no doubt, be severely galvanised. That the railway company’s men often pick up under the wires of the electric telegraph partridges and other birds which have evidently been just killed—indeed, some are found with their heads cut off—is quite true; but these deaths and decapitations have proceeded, not from electricity, but from the birds—probably during twilight or fog—having at full speed flown against the wires, which, of course, cut their heads off, just as an iron bar would cut off the head of any man or alderman on horseback who, at a full gallop, was to run foul of it.