166 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



following language, in regard to this enterprise, in the first number of a 

 journal of which he is the editor : 



" Tides may ebb and flow ; the billows may surge with mighty power ; 

 the icebergs may tower their white-mantled forms high in the skies, and 

 sink deep in the briny sea ; the heavens may let loose their loud- rolling 

 thunder, and the earth heave up its fiery lava ; but, just so sure as these 

 elements exist and worlds revolve, Europe and America will be connected 

 with an electric cord." 



In a paper presented to the British Association by Mr. Eakewell, oil 

 " Telegraphic Communication between England and America," he pro- 

 posed to effect stich a communication by employing a single galvanized 

 iron wire sufficiently strong to be self-protective, and to be insulated with 

 gutta-percha or other non-conducting substances, covered with tarred 

 hempen yarn. Such a wire, it was stated, might, from its comparative 

 lightness and flexibility, be readily stretched across the Atlantic at a cost 

 of 100,000^. A single wire would, in the first instance at least, be 

 sufficient to supply the want of telegraphic communication, if the telegraph 

 were kept in constant work. Mr. Bake well alluded to the difficulty that 

 had recently been discovered in transmittirg telegraphic signals through 

 an insulated wire immersed in water, and to the means that had almost 

 as quickly been devised for overcoming the unforeseen obstacle. He 

 expressed a confident expectation that, should other difficulties arise in 

 prosecuting such an enterprise, they would also be as readily vanquished. 



Dr. Lardner states that, in the experiments made by him and M. Lever - 

 rier in electric transmission, messages were sent over a space of 1,000 

 miles of wire without intermediate battery power, and with a terminal 

 battery of very limited power; 336 miles of the wire iipon which the 

 current was transmitted were iron, a very indifferent conductor, and the 

 remaining 746 miles were copper wire of exceedingly small diameter. It 

 is certain, therefore, that by reason of the inferior conducting power of the 

 one part, and the very small transverse section of the other part, this 

 length of 1,082 miles offered a much greater resistance to the transmission 

 of the current than would 1,600 miles of copper wire such as is usually 

 selected for submarine cables. Nothing would be easier than to give the 

 copper wire enclosed in the cable such a thickness, and to apply to it such 

 batteries as would insure the transmission of a current of sufficient 

 intensity. 



SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH BETWEEN EUROPE AND AFRICA. 



At the British Association, in a communication on the above subject, 

 presented by Mr. Brett, the eminent telegraph engineer, the author 

 proceeded to give an account of the difficulties and prejudices they 

 encountered in establishing the first submarine telegraph, which has now 

 been successfully working for three years between France and England, 

 and stated that he had established the submarine telegraph between 



