898 WILLIAM THOMSON, LORD KELVIN. 



The task of again laying an Atlantic Cable was taken up in 1865 

 with Thomson as the responsible electrical head. As is well known 

 the 1865 cable broke in mid-ocean necessitating a new cable. This 

 was laid in 1866 under Thomson's careful supervision aboard ship, 

 and with constant tests as to the integrity of the cable being paid out. 

 The result was completely successful and was at once followed by the 

 picking up at sea, the splicing and completion of the broken 1865 

 cable; thus rendering available two cables instead of one. It was 

 characteristic that Thomson had previously renounced any claim for 

 time or services or even expenses, unless success was obtained. It was 

 this success which earned him his Knighthood. His attention had 

 not, however, been turned away from his purely scientific work. 

 His papers on the age of the sun's heat and on the secular cooling of 

 the Earth, brought on the famous controversy with the naturalists, 

 principally the biologists and geologists; a controversy which was 

 continued until at last the discovery of radio-activity had introduced 

 new, and before unknown, factors, which had not entered into his 

 calculations, and which virtually destroyed their applicability to the 

 case. His studies on the rigidity of the Earth did much to negative 

 the old assumption of a fluid interior supporting a solid crust. His 

 papers dealing with his vortex theory of atoms, and papers and 

 addresses on the ether of space were not the less noteworthy, though 

 the views advanced he later renounced. In spite of his firm belief 

 in the doctrines of creation and design in nature, he was not prevented 

 from suggesting that the first germs of life on the earth might have 

 been brought by a meteor from the outside. His practical judgment 

 caused him to realize at once the great value of Bell's telephone in 

 1876, he being a first witness of its performance at the Centennial 

 Exhibition. His appreciation of the future great service to be expected 

 from the larger electrical applications was another evidence of his 

 exceptional practical insight. This is exemplified in a strikingly 

 prophetic statement made by him on Jan. 22, 1878, before the Institu- 

 tion of Civil Engineers of Great Britain. 



Later Sir William Thomson contributed markedly to the art of 

 exact electrical measurements in large work by his inventions of 

 electrostatic voltmeters and particularly by his electrodynamic bal- 

 ances, now known as Kelvin balances. He was author of the 

 article on Electricity and also the four principal sections on Heat in 

 the ninth edition of the Encyclopoedia Brittanica. 



Among many subjects investigated mathematically and experi- 

 mentally by him were gyrostatics and wave motions, on which he 

 became an authority. 



