82 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
The actual conditions were as follows, in the words of the 
son of Sir Charles T. Bright, engineer for the Atlantic Tele- 
graph Company, who of course understood the technical 
procedure: “Unfortunately for the life of the cable, Mr. 
Whitehouse [the official electrician] was imbued with a belief 
that currents of very high intensity, or potential, were the best 
for signaling; and he had enormous induction-coils, five feet 
long, excited by a series of very large cells, yielding electricity 
estimated at about 2000 volts potential. The insulation was 
unable to bear the strain, and thus the signals began to gradu- 
ally fail.” 
This was at the beginning of the tests made, as soon as the 
cable had been laid. ‘The mistake of Dr. Whitehouse in as- 
suming that a high voltage was best suited for sending a mes- 
sage through the cable was similar to the other serious mis- 
take of the British technical staff when they assumed, in the 
previous year, that a ponderous machine was best for laying 
the cable. ‘They tended to overdo the idea of power. This is 
a common mistake in the early stages of invention and design; 
later procedure is likely to simplify and tone down the clumsy 
tendencies of pioneer work. 
“For something like a week,” said the younger Bright, “the 
efforts to work through the cable with the above apparatus 
proved ineffectual, the power being constantly increased to 
no purpose. Professor ‘Thomson’s reflecting galvanometer, 
which had worked so well during the voyage, was then used 
again with ordinary Daniell cells.” 
By this latter method the cable was made to function. The 
first clear message came through on August 13, eight days after 
the landing. Toward the end of the month, several itemized 
news dispatches were successfully sent. The results, however, 
were erratic, and there was little reliability. Sometimes sev- 
eral hours were required to send a single dispatch, although 
on one occasion a message was sent and answer received in two 
minutes. 
