April 21, 1921] 



NATURE 



241 



from a craft, such as that of the blacksmith, to 

 something' approaching- modern capitalistic pro- 

 duction. 



In 1543 occurred a great event in the history 

 of the industry^ — the founding of the first cast-iron 

 g-un at Buxted. The makers were Ralph Hogge 

 and Peter Bawde. Hogge was the owner of the 

 furnace, and Bawde one of the founders of bronze 

 guns in the service of the king. The former knew 

 how to work a furnace, and could furnish the 

 molten iron; the latter was an expert gun- 

 founder in bronze, and was learned in the propor- 

 tions of the various pieces. The guns thus cast 

 were very successful. As compared with bronze 

 guns there was an enormous saving in cost, even 

 after the founder had made a good profit and paid 

 the carriage to London. The manufacture of 

 these guns rapidly became a prominent feature in 

 the Sussex trade. It seems to have been the first 

 manufacturing industry in which the English dis- 

 tinguished themselves. During the reign of 

 Elizabeth and onwards to the time of Charles II. 

 English cast-iron guns were in demand all over 

 the Continent. The historian Hume remarks : 

 ''Shipbuilding and the founding of iron cannon 



were the sole ' arts ' in which the English ex- 

 celled. They seem, indeed, to have possessed 

 alone the secret of the latter, and great complaints 

 were made every Parliament against the exporta- 

 tion of English ordnance." Mr. Jenkins considers 

 that the most likely explanation of this is that the 

 Sussex men had invented some better and cheaper 

 method of making the moulds than that which 

 had been in use by the founders of bronze guns. 



About the middle of the sixteenth century a 

 public outcry against the consumption of wood by 

 the iron works was raised, and in Parliament re- 

 peated objections were urged against the works 

 both on this ground and on the impolicy of export- 

 ing ordnance. 



Mr. Jenkins carries his survey down to the time 

 of the Protectorate, from which it appears that in 

 1658 there were thirty-five furnaces and forty-five 

 forges operating in the Weald, of which twenty- 

 seven furnaces and forty-two forges were in 

 Sussex. This appears to have been the culminat- 

 ing point of the iron trade of the Weald. Con- 

 sideration of the further progress and decline of 

 the industry in later years is reserved for another 

 occasion. 



Long-distance Telephony. 



'X'HE progress which is being made in long- 

 •»• distance telephony is exemplified in the 

 interesting demonstration last week under the 

 direction of Col. Carty in which conversations 

 were carried on over a composite route of more 

 than 5500 miles made up of a 115-mile section 

 of submarine cable from Havana to Key West, 

 overhead lines through Washington and New 

 York, and right across the continent through San 

 Francisco to Los Angeles, and, for the sake of 

 completeness, including a 29-mile stretch of 

 " wireless " to St. Catalina Island, in the 

 Pacific. 



There is, of course, nothing remarkable in the 

 last-mentioned section in the point of distance, as 

 wireless telephony is in some ways less handi- 

 capped by distance than line working; but the 

 fact that the wireless apparatus was successfully 

 linked up with so long a land line is noteworthy. 

 The cable section, on the other hand, is of a 

 length which has hitherto been beyond the limits 

 of submarine telephony, for, as is well known, 

 the capacity effects inseparable from such cables 

 produce a distortion of the current waves which, 

 when their amplitude is sufficient for audibility, 

 renders articulation unrecognisable. The earlier 

 telephone cables relied upon artificially introduced 

 inductance to counteract this effect of capacity, 

 but, in the circuit we are speaking of, the problem 

 has been further solved by the use of thermionic 

 repeaters, so that waves of much smaller ampli- 

 tude can be employed in the cable. The Times 

 points out that the Havana-Key West cable is of 

 British manufacture, and is arranged to carry, in 



NO. 2686, VOL. 107] 



addition to one telephone communication, four 

 simultaneous telegraph messages. 



The capacity effect of overhead land lines is 

 also present, but is not nearly so serious as that 

 of cables. Inductance coils, or Pupin coils, as 

 they are called after their inventor, were employed 

 in the New York-San Francisco line when Ameri- 

 can trans-continental telephony was first accom- 

 plished before the days of the thermionic valve; 

 but it has now been found possible to remove 

 them altogether by establishing repeater stations 

 at 2So-mile intervals along the line. The same 

 method can be, and is being, applied to assist 

 speech over the shorter underground cables used 

 for trunk lines in England; but, even with such 

 assistance, it is only by the use of overhead lines 

 that distances of thousands of miles can be 

 bridged over by line telephony. 



The demonstrations show that there is nothing; 

 technically impossible in telephoning between 

 England and India or the Cape, for example, 

 where only short submarine connecting links are 

 required ; but whether it would be commercially 

 possible, owing to the great expense and diffi- 

 culty of patrolling and maintaining so long an 

 overhead line passing through every kind of terri- 

 tory, is another matter. 



The problem of transmitting speech over such 

 long, uninterrupted lengths of cable as across the 

 Atlantic is not yet solved, nor does its solution 

 appear likely in the near future. The only possi- 

 bilities in this direction are those of wireless 

 telephony, which, in the case of communication 

 between Europe and America, is already within 



