SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



believed that the Channel cable could succeed. Those 

 of a suspicious nature denounced the scheme as a gigantic 

 swindle; others derided it as a mad freak of the im- 

 agination of enthusiastic visionaries; while one critic 

 naively pointed out that the scheme was impossible on 

 account of the roughness of the Channel bed, believing 

 that the intended method of communication was that of 

 actually pulling upon the cable, like pulling a mechanical 

 house-bell worked by wires. 



Nevertheless the projectors completed and laid their 

 cable, and communications were made between England 

 and France. A message of congratulation was sent to 

 Louis Philippe, and public incredulity had just turned 

 into public rejoicing when suddenly the cable ceased 

 to work. It was learned afterward that a Boulogne 

 fisherman, hooking up the cable and being unable to 

 account for such a mysterious-looking "seaweed," had 

 hacked off a section to take home to show his friends. 



The cable of 1846 proved conclusively that, for short 

 distances at least, the submarine telegraph was a possi- 

 bility. But sending a message twenty-five miles through 

 a cable laid in comparatively shallow water is a different 

 matter from sending it two thousand miles submerged 

 in water two miles in depth. Cables insulated with 

 gutta-percha did not conduct the current as readily as did 

 cables of the same size without insulation and sus- 

 pended in the air, the gutta-percha tending to absorb 

 and retard part of the charge. This difficulty, however, 

 was soon overcome by means of a succession of opposite 

 currents, but the problem that could not be solved ex- 

 cept by actual experiment was the effect that might be 



