THE SUBMARINE CABLE 



most difficult feats in history, as well as one of the most 

 useful commercial and economic ones. 



The Atlantic cable was not the first submarine 

 telegraphic communication ever projected or accom- 

 plished. As early as 1838, a successful cable had been 

 laid across the Hugli River in India, and in 1842, 

 Morse had laid a similar cable in New York Harbor. 

 The great difficulty with these first cables was the fact 

 that effective and permanent methods of insulating had 

 not yet been discovered. Copper wire wound with 

 strings saturated with tar, wax, and pitch, acted well 

 enough for a short time at small distances, but it was 

 not until the discovery that gutta-percha makes an 

 almost ideal insulator, that submarine cables of any 

 length became possible. With this discovery, however, 

 a great impetus was given to cable-laying, and in 1845 

 a company was formed for laying a cable between 

 England and France, a distance of twenty-five nautical 

 miles. 



ENGLAND LINKED WITH THE CONTINENT 



The announcement of a company for such a purpose 

 was received in a manner quite beyond the compre- 

 hension of the people of the present generation, surfeited 

 as they are with the marvelous accomplishments of ap- 

 plied science, which sends messages through the air, 

 photographs through opaque substances, and performs 

 numerous other seemingly miraculous feats inconceiv- 

 able to the most imaginative persons of two generations 

 ago. Few people, either in England or France in 1845, 



