Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

The Electric Telegraph Company endeavoured to make telegraphic communication a monopoly by buying up every new invention that seemed likely to enable any other Company to compete with them. With reference to the inventions made for improving the telegraph, Mr. Ricardo, the chairman of the Company, stated some curious facts in 1851. He said, “It has happened, not once, but I think twenty times, that a man has brought to us an instrument of great ingenuity for sale; we have taken him to a cupboard, and brought out some dusty old models, and said, ‘That is your invention, and there is wheel for wheel generally.’ Nevertheless he has, in fact, invented it. The ideas of several men are set in motion by exactly the same circumstances. One invention was brought for purchase to the Electric Telegraph Company; no model was brought with it; there was simply a description of the apparatus. It was on a principle which was received by electricians as impossible, and the men of science connected with the Company declared it to be impossible. Nevertheless the model was brought; and it was found that the thing was practicable against all rules by which hitherto they had been guided in the matter. We have bought a good many patented improvements; in most cases they were valueless in themselves; but in combination with others which we have, they may be made useful. We have found, after every possible experiment, that the original system of the needles is by far the best for all practical purposes. There is not one invention which is not brought to the Company before it is started against the Company, and we have expended nearly £200,000 in buying patents and litigating them; but we find, after all, that the original patent is by far the best and the most suitable for practical purposes. There is one patent of Mr. Bain’s for which we gave £8000 or £9000; although it did not quite come up to our expectations, it has proved useful in combination with other patents.”

This testimony will appear all the more remarkable when it is added that between 1837 and 1857 about forty different inventors took out patents for telegraphic apparatus, and that some of these men took out several patents. It is remarkable, moreover, that from the time of the formation of the Company till 1858, Professor Wheatstone did not patent any improvement of telegraphic apparatus. It has been said that during these years he entirely ceased to be an inventor, and did not bring his great electrical knowledge and inventive faculties into use. But this is not strictly accurate, for circumstances had occurred which for a time diverted his attention to another field for the application of electricity in which he became a pioneer. About the year 1850 Sir Charles Pasley was experimenting as to the explosion of submarine mines, and being acquainted with Professor Wheatstone and Professor Daniell, he informed them of his intention to use electricity for that purpose, and sought their advice on the subject.

These eminent electricians took much interest in the proposal, and under their superintendence the first arrangements for exploding submarine charges were worked out in the laboratory of King’s College. Acting on their advice Sir Charles Pasley used electricity to explode the charges of gunpowder that blew up the wreck of the Royal George at Spithead, which he was then engaged in removing. In 1853 Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector General of Fortifications, requested Captain Ward, R.E., to carry out some experiments for determining the best form of voltaic battery for military purposes. That officer then made himself fully acquainted with the labours of Professor Wheatstone and others; and afterwards reported in favour of a small battery seven inches long by four wide; but in 1855 Professor Wheatstone, who was then a member of the Select Committee on Ordnance, advised Sir John Burgoyne to institute a further experimental inquiry into the relative advantages of different sources of electricity. This investigation was accordingly carried out by Professor Wheatstone and Professor Abel; and in the course of it Wheatstone invented the first efficient magneto-electric machine for the explosion of mines. It was called the Wheatstone exploder, and it weighed 32 pounds. In a report on their experiments, presented to the Secretary for War in 1860, it was stated that by means of “a magneto-electric apparatus similar to that used in the Chatham experiments, and termed by Mr. Wheatstone the ‘Magnetic Exploder,’ the ignition at one time of phosphide of copper fuzes, varying in number from two to twenty-five, is certain, provided these fuzes are arranged in the branches of a divided circuit; to attain this result it is only necessary to employ a single wire insulated by a coating of gutta-percha or india-rubber and simple metallic connections of the apparatus and the charge with the earth.” They stated that from twelve to twenty-five charges could be exploded simultaneously on land at a distance of 600 yards from the apparatus; but the number of submarine charges which it could explode at one time was more limited. During the next seven years this apparatus was much used in gunnery experiments as well as in mining; and several modifications of it were devised on the Continent and in America. In 1867-8 Professor Wheatstone constructed a more powerful modification of his magnetic exploder, and Professor Abel ever afterwards spoke in the highest terms of the ingenuity and industry with which his former colleague had worked out the solution of this problem. He said that Professor Wheatstone brought under the notice of the Government the successful labours of Du Moncel, Savari, von Ebner, and others on the applications of electricity to military purposes; and if he had only done that service, he would have done an important work. But he did more; he constructed the first practical and thoroughly efficient magneto-electric machine for the explosion of mines.

Let us now pass from submarine mines to submarine cables. There have been several claimants to the honour of being the first to develop the idea of submarine telegraphy; and among them Professor Wheatstone is entitled to honourable mention. One of the first suggestions of a sub-aqueous telegraph was made by him. In 1840 he was giving evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and after he had given an account of the short line of telegraph from Paddington to Drayton, then the only line in existence, he was questioned as to whether an electric telegraph could be worked over a distance of 100 miles. He replied in the affirmative. “Have you tried to pass the line through water?” said Sir John Guest. “There would be no difficulty in doing so,” replied Wheatstone; “but the experiment has not been made.” “Could you communicate from Dover to Calais in that way?” “I think it perfectly practicable,” replied the enthusiastic inventor. The subject thus started for the first time in public was not new to Professor Wheatstone; for it afterwards appeared from manuscripts in his possession that he had given much consideration to it in 1837. Mr. John Watkins Brett, who was also honourably connected with the initiation of submarine telegraphy, stated in 1857 that he was ignorant until three or four years previously that a line across the Channel had been suggested years before by that talented philosopher, Professor Wheatstone; and he exhibited at the Royal Institution the original plans of Wheatstone drawn in 1840 for an electric telegraph between Dover and Calais. The cable he then designed was to be insulated by tarred yarn and protected by iron wire; and his plan of laying down and picking up was also shown in the drawing. The man who made the drawing for Wheatstone went to Australia in 1841, and did not return. But there were other evidences of its genuineness. Professor Wheatstone showed his plans to a number of visitors at King’s College, and a Brussels paper records that in the same year (1840) he repeated his experiments at the Brussels Observatory in the presence of several literary and scientific men, for the purpose of showing them the feasibility of making a cable between Dover and Calais. For carrying out his plans he designed three new machines, and minutely worked out the other details of the undertaking. In a manuscript written in 1840 on “a means of establishing an electric cable between England and France,” he stated that the wire should form the core of a wrought line well saturated with boiled tar, and all the lines be made into a rope prepared in the same manner. His correspondence shows that his plan became the subject of communications with persons of authority during the next few years; and in the month of September, 1844, he and Mr. J. D. Llewellyn made experiments with submerged insulated wires in Swansea Bay. They went out in a boat from which they laid a wire to Mumblehead Lighthouse, and they tested various kinds of insulation. These experiments were so successful that Wheatstone returned to his original Channel project. His idea, says Mr. R. Sabine, was to inclose the wire, insulated with worsted and marine glue, in a lead pipe; and for some time he was engaged in making inquiries as to the nature of the bed of the Channel and the action of the tides, as well as experiments with the metals he proposed to use. There is also evidence to show that in 1845 he proposed to use gutta percha in the manufacture of his proposed cable. It is said that gutta percha was first brought to England in the previous year, and there was such a demand for the small quantity then available that he could not get what he wanted of it.

In June 1846, the Times announced, in reference to a statement made “some time ago that a submarine telegraph was to be laid down across the English Channel, by which an instantaneous communication could be made from coast to coast,” that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, with a view of testing the practicability of this undertaking had now approved of the projector’s laying down a submarine telegraph across the harbour of Portsmouth, from the house of the admiral in the dockyard to the railway terminus at Gosport. “By this means there will be a direct communication from London to the official residence of the Port-Admiral at Portsmouth, whereas at present the telegraph does not extend beyond the terminus at Gosport, the crossing of the harbour having been hitherto deemed an insurmountable obstacle.... In a few days after the experiment has been successfully tested at Portsmouth, the submarine telegraph will be laid down across the Straits of Dover under the sanction of both the English and French Governments.” There is evidence extant to show that Professor Wheatstone was in the previous year in communication with the Admiralty on the subject of a cable across the Channel. It was on the twenty-fifth of the same month in which the above remarks were published that the Corn Law Importation Bill was carried through the House of Lords; and on the twenty-ninth the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords and Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons announced the resignation of the Government. Changes of Government, the famine in Ireland, and the great commercial panic that followed were of more absorbing interest than the laying of a submarine cable. At all events the small cable across Portsmouth Harbour was not laid till 1847. It was then stated that an offer made to the Admiralty to lay down a telegraph inclosed in metallic pipes was found to be impracticable. The successful cable had the appearance of an ordinary rope which was coiled into one of the dockyard boats, and as the boat was pulled across the telegraph rope was paid out over the stern, an operation that occupied a quarter of an hour. It worked satisfactorily.

Professor Wheatstone, in an agreement which he made with Mr. Cooke in April 1843, reserved to himself authority to establish “electric telegraph communication between the coasts of England and France ... for his own exclusive profit.” In a subsequent agreement dated October 1845, with reference to the sale of his patents, it was provided that “Mr. Wheatstone will take the chair of a committee of three, to take charge of the manufacture of the patent telegraphic instruments, and the taking out and specifying future patents and matters of the like nature, at a salary of 700l. a year, and shall devote to such objects what time he shall think necessary. It is also understood that a patent shall be applied for immediately to secure Mr. Wheatstone’s improvements in the mode of transmitting electricity across the water; that Mr. Wheatstone shall superintend the trial of his plans between Gosport and Portsmouth; and if these experiments prove successful, then in the practical application of the improvements to the purpose of establishing a telegraph between England and France, the terms on which such telegraph is to be held being a matter of arrangement between the proprietors of the English and French patents.”

But something more than the ingenuity of Professor Wheatstone was needed to carry the projected cable across the Channel. It required all the energy and enthusiasm of Mr. J. W. Brett to make it an accomplished fact. He did for the submarine telegraph what Mr. Cooke did for Wheatstone’s land telegraph in England, and he always bore generous testimony to the initiatory efforts of Professor Wheatstone. Mr. Brett, who was an inventor as well as an entrepreneur, in 1845 offered to the Admiralty to connect Dublin Castle by telegraph with Downing Street for a sum of £20,000, and the offer being refused, he turned his attention to uniting together France and England by a submarine line. In 1847 Louis Philippe granted the requisite permission to land and work a cable on the French coast; but the British public considered the scheme too hazardous to give it financial support. Three years later he brought the subject before Louis Napoleon, who was favourable to it. Accordingly in 1850, when 2000l. were subscribed for the work, a cable was made and laid. On August 28th, 1850, the paddle steamer Goliath, carrying in her centre a gigantic drum, with thirty miles of telegraph wire in a covering of gutta percha wound round it, started from Dover about ten o’clock, with a crew of thirty men and provisions for the day. The track in a direct line to Cape Grisnez had been previously marked by buoys and flags on staves. As the steamer moved along that track at the rate of four miles an hour, the cable was continuously paid out; leaden weights affixed to it at every one-sixteenth of a mile sank it to the bottom; and about eight o’clock in the evening the work was done.

Taking up an elevated position at the Dover Railway, Mr. Brett was able by the aid of a glass to distinguish the lighthouse and cliff at Cape Grisnez. The declining sun, he says, “enabled me to discern the moving shadow of the steamer’s smoke on the white cliff, thus indicating her progress. At length the shadow ceased to move. The vessel had evidently come to an anchor. We gave them half an hour to convey the end of the wire to shore, and attach the printing instrument, and then I sent the first electric message across the Channel: this was reserved for Louis Napoleon. I was afterwards informed that some French soldiers, who saw the slip of printed paper running from the little telegraph instrument, bearing a message from England, inquired how it could possibly have crossed the Channel, and when it was explained that it was the electricity which passed along the wire and performed the printing operation, they were still incredulous. After several other communications, the words ‘All well’ and ‘Good night’ were printed, and closed the evening. In attempting to resume communication early next morning, no response could be obtained.” The cable had broken. “Knowing the incredulity expressed as to the success of the enterprise, and that it was important to establish the fact that telegraphic communication had taken place, I that night sent a trustworthy person to Cape Grisnez, to procure the attestation of all who had witnessed the receipt of the messages there; and the document was signed by some ten persons, including an engineer of the French Government who was present to watch the proceedings; this was forwarded to the Emperor of the French, and a year of grace for another trial was granted.”

Near the rugged coast of Cape Grisnez the wire had been cut asunder about 200 yards out to sea; but though of short duration the experiment was considered so encouraging that it was determined to lay a much stronger cable next year, and to land it at a more favourable part of the French coast. When next year came the public were informed in the newspapers that the manufacture of the submarine telegraph cable afforded another instance in which rapidity of execution bordered on the marvellous, for “though the telegraph-rope was not less than twenty-four miles in length, it was completed in the short space of three weeks—an undertaking which manual labour could scarcely effect in as many years.” This cable was successfully laid, and on Thursday, the 13th of November, 1851, communications passed between Dover and Calais. The connections, however, with the land lines, giving direct communication between London and Paris, were not completed till the following November. It was remarked at the time as a singular coincidence that the day chosen for the opening of the Submarine Telegraph was that on which the Duke of Wellington attended in person to close the Harbour sessions. It was accordingly resolved by the promoters that his Grace on leaving Dover by the two o’clock train for London should be saluted by a gun fired by the transmission of a current from Calais. It was arranged that as the clock struck two at Calais the requisite signal was to be passed; and, punctual to the moment, a loud report reverberated on the water, and shook the ground with some force. It was then evident that the current had fired a 22-pounder loaded with 10 lbs. of powder, and the report had scarcely ceased ere it was taken up from the heights by the military who, as usual, saluted the departure of the Duke with a round of artillery. Guns were then fired successively on both coasts; Calais firing the guns at Dover, and Dover returning the compliment to Calais.

Professor Wheatstone also did some useful work in connection with the first Atlantic cables. In 1855 Professor Faraday was explaining the subject of induction at the Royal Institution, when it was mentioned to him that a current was obtained from a gutta percha covered wire, 300 miles long, half an hour after contact with the battery. “I remember,” says Mr. J. W. Brett in 1857, “speaking to him on the subject, and inquiring if he did not believe that this difficulty was to be overcome, and I received from him every encouragement to hope it might; but it at once became necessary that this point should be cleared up, or it would be folly to pursue the subject of the union of America with this country by electricity. I at once earnestly urged on Mr. Whitehouse to take up this subject, and pursue it independently of every other experiment, and a successful result was at last arrived at on 1000 miles and upwards of a continuous line in the submarine wires in the several cables, when lying in the docks. It did not rest upon one, but many thousand experiments.” But these experiments did not solve the problem, which exercised the ingenuity of the greatest electricians of the age. Professor Wheatstone conducted several series of experiments to aid in its solution. He showed that iron presented eight times more resistance to the electric current than copper did, and that differences in the size and quality of conductors and insulators affected the transmission of signals.