underground electrical wires. 



Saturday, September 1. 



The President, Professor W. C. Kernot, M.A,, C.E., in the Chair. 



The following paper was read : — 



1.— UNDERGROUND ELECTRICAL WIRES. 



By K. L. Murray, Esq., C.E., M.S.T.E., President of the 

 Victorian Engineers' Association. 



That the placing of wires carrying electric currents underground 

 is a question of general interest does not, I think, require to be 

 demonstrated, for how few persons there are who have not wished 

 the network of wires, whicli stretched from pole to pole, along the 

 streets of all the chief cities and towns of the world, out of sight 

 somewhere ; and where can they be put out of sight, but under- 

 ground. 



It is thought by very many people to be an easy matter to so 

 deal with wires ; there are many too who imagine that electric 

 wires have been successfully placed under ground in other parts 

 of the world for years past. The object of this paper is to 

 give a few of the reasons why wires still remain overhead, and in 

 so doing to state what has been the history of undex-ground wires, 

 and what is now being done to place wires carrying electric 

 currents underground. 



We must go back to the earliest days of electric telegraphy to 

 find the first attempts to place wires underground. Cooke and 

 Wheatstone, the inventors of the first working telegraph in 

 England, and Morse, the father of electric telegraphy in America, 

 both placed tlieir wires underground at first. Messrs. Cooke and 

 Wheatstone's first plan was to have triangular-shaped lengths of 

 wood boiled in tar, with two grooves cut along each of the sides, 

 and one along the apex. In each of these five grooves a wire, 

 which was covered with cotton soaked in I'esin, was strained, and 

 the whole then covered with thin pieces of wood tacked on so as 

 to protect the wires in the grooves. This was a very clumsy 

 contrivance, fit only for experimental purposes, so that directly 

 the success of the telegraph was assured, the wires similarly 

 insulated were drawn into lead pipes. They worked for a year or 

 so, when the insulation failed and overhead wires on posts were 

 resorted to. That was in the year 1841, and from that time for 

 five years no further attempt was made to try working with under- 

 ground wires. 



Then, however, Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone once more tried 

 placing some underground. They were covered with two thick 



