SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



the announcement of the formation of this company 

 for telegraphing across the Atlantic, Sir G. B. Airy, 

 F.R.S., Astronomer Royal of England, declared that 

 such means of communication was impossible; first, 

 because it was a physical impossibility to submerge a 

 cable safely to so great a depth, and secondly, that no 

 signals could travel for such a distance, anyway. Know- 

 ing the type of mind of this kind of scientist, it is probable 

 that long after the Atlantic cable was an accomplished 

 fact, the Astronomer Royal was still maintaining that 

 the thing was impossible, and showing his mathematical 

 calculations to prove it. Fortunately for civilization 

 Sir Charles Bright and Lord Kelvin were scientists of a 

 different type. 



With the fund subscribed, the making of a cable was 

 begun at once, and while this was in progress certain 

 ships detailed for the purpose were being prepared to 

 receive the cable, and fitted out with apparatus for 

 laying it. The total space occupied by the cable was 

 too great for any single vessel, there being some 340,500 

 miles of copper wire alone used in its construction. The 

 English government, therefore, detailed the war-ship 

 Agamemnon, and the United States government sent 

 over the Niagara. Into the holds of these ships the 

 cable was coiled in great tanks, each coil carefully laid 

 by hand so that it would uncoil readily and without any 

 possibility of even a momentary hitch which might prove 

 disastrous to the undertaking. The Niagara was to 

 undertake to lay the European hah" of the cable, the 

 Agamemnon taking up the task in mid-ocean and con- 

 tinuing the work as far as the American shore. 



[34] 



