CABLE 



1037 



CABLE 



the apparatus of submarine telegraphy that 

 messages are now sent at the rate of sixty or 

 more words a minute. An early change of 

 importance was the addition of a large tinfoil 

 condenser, which is connected to the receiving 

 instruments and to the ground, and helps to 

 overcome the condensing effect of the cable 

 itself. The automatic transmitter is a device 

 to gain both accuracy and speed ; it is operated 

 by a strip of paper in which holes have been 

 punched, representing the dots and dashes of 

 the letters of the alphabet. A still more val- 

 uable invention is that which makes it pos- 

 sible to transmit messages in both directions 

 at the same time, as in the duplex telegraph. 

 Quadruplex or multiplex transmission is not 

 yet possible. 



Cost of Messages. Though charges for cable 

 service are less than formerly, they are still 



which the company may deliver at any time 

 within twenty-four hours costs but half the 

 regular amount; a letter, not in cipher, to be 

 delivered within twenty-four hours costs sev- 

 enty-five cents for thirteen words; and a week 

 end letter, sent Saturday for delivery Monday, 

 costs one dollar fifteen cents for twenty-five 

 words. 



The Atlantic Cable. No incident in history 

 gives greater evidence of the power of perse- 

 verance than the story of the laying of the 

 first Atlantic cable. When Cyrus W. Field, 

 in 1854, first became interested in the project, 

 the longest cable in operation was between 

 shores less than 100 miles apart. Engineers 

 of the United States navy had previously dis- 

 covered that the ocean bed between New- 

 foundland and Ireland was nearly level and 

 composed of soft mud, apparently an ideal 



PRINCIPAL OCEAN CABLES IN .1917 



much higher than for land telegrams. Rates 

 are constantly being changed by the companies, 

 but for regular messages the cost is about 

 twenty-five cents a word from New York to 

 London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, 

 Glasgow or Dublin; fifteen cents to Havana; 

 thirty-six cents to the British West Indies; 

 fifty cents to Porto Rico; forty cents to Pan- 

 ama, and sixty-five cents to most of the South 

 American countries. From San Francisco to 

 the Philippines, Japan or China the rate is 

 over a dollar a word, but to Australia not over 

 eighty cents. 



Because of the great cost of cable messages 

 it is customary to send them in codes in which 

 a single word may be made to stand for an en- 

 tire sentence. Recently some of the companies 

 have introduced several varieties of reduced 

 rate messages, which, like telegraph night let- 

 ters, are designed to keep the lines busy dur- 

 ing hours when they would otherwise be idle. 

 Thus a message from New York to London 



resting place for the delicate strand which 

 might link the Old World to the New, but 

 many prominent scientists declared it impos- 

 sible to lay a cable over two thousand miles 

 long, or to operate it if laid. 



Field's first attempt to lay a short cable 

 from Canada to Newfoundland, in 1855, was 

 a failure, but he succeeded in this part of his 

 task the next year. Then followed nine years 

 of discouragement, brightened only by the tem- 

 porary success of the cable of 1858, which was 

 laid by the British warship Agamemnon and 

 the United States warship Niagara, after two 

 cables had broken in midocean. When the 

 cable failed after only a few weeks' service, the 

 opposition to Field increased, but again he set 

 about his task of raising capital for the enter- 

 prise. The Great Eastern, then the largest 

 ship afloat, was chartered in 1865, and after 

 losing a thousand miles of cable on its first 

 trial succeeded in putting in place two cables 

 which permanently joined the two countries, 



