196 



NA TURE 



[August 5, 1922 



seriously the earliest suggestion that electric signals 

 might be sent under the sea. Yet it is worth while 

 to note that so early as 1811 an effort was made to 

 discover a suitable insulating covering for a sub- 

 marine wire and that the material used was india- 

 rubber. The decisive factor whereby submarine tele- 

 graphv became a practical proposition was, however, 

 contributed by Dr. Werner Siemens in 1847 when he 

 laid a telegraph cable in Berlin with wires insulated 

 by gutta-percha. Faraday, as Sir Charles Bright 

 reminds us, was also at the same time directing atten- 

 tion to the insulating properties of this new material. 

 Gutta-percha has never from that day to this had a 

 serious rival for insulation of deep-sea cables. 



Not that the pioneers had waited for it ' Previ- 

 ously, in June 1845, the brothers Brett, although 

 only small shopkeepers, in the true spirit of the old 

 merchant venturers applied for government sanction 

 to the provision of telegraphic communication be- 

 tween England and France. When the concession 

 came in 1849, gutta-percha had come into its own 

 and most of the cable laid was of copper wire with a 

 half-inch coating of gutta-percha. The need for a 

 special " shore-end " was recognised even then ; but 

 it is puzzling to know why a different insula- 

 tion should have been adopted. Yet we read 

 that " the shore-ends for about 2 miles from each 

 terminus consisted of a No. 16 BWG. conductor 

 covered with cotton soaked in indiarubber solution, 

 the whole being encased in a very thick lead tube." 

 It is scarcely surprising that it failed, but not before, 

 by transmission of a few signals, it had demonstrated 

 the practicability of ocean telegraphy. A " mad 

 freak," a " gigantic swindle," but, like many another 

 failure, a signpost to success. The next year a new 

 concession was secured and the Submarine Telegraph 

 Company was formed, but it was only floated on the 

 capital of a railway engineer (Thomas R. Crampton) 

 and his friends. The resulting cable, not completed 

 until the end of 1851, marked another development of 

 the engineer's art in cable-making. Kiiper, a colliery 

 engineer, suggested sheathing the insulated wire with 

 iron wires like a colliery pit rope ; and so was reached 

 the essential, and till now the final, form of the 

 successful and trustworthy submarine cable. 



Perhaps one day some one will write a work on 

 "Government versus Enterprise" in the hope that 

 responsible public servants may be taught by their 

 predecessors' failures. In 1850 the Bretts again found 

 that, " although sensible of their perseverance in 

 bringing the submarine telegraph about," the Govern- 

 ment could do nothing to help, and so — " landing 

 rights " not having yet been invented — the Bretts 

 proceeded on their own responsibility to span the 



Irish Channel. Ultimately success was achieved in 

 !853. with Charles Tilston Bright (aged 21) in com- 

 mand as engineer to the Magnetic Telegraph Company. 



These efforts, however, although they had demon- 

 strated the practicability of submarine telegraphy, 

 had not finished the work of the pioneer — the great 

 unfathomed depths of ocean had yet to be spanned. 

 To put a cable miles deep on the bed of the Atlantic 

 would be impossible, it was said, even if signals could 

 be passed through the enormous length of 2000 

 miles. Of course pioneers are never very anxious to 

 do anything but the impossible ; so J. W. Brett, 

 Cyrus Field (a wealthy American business man who 

 incidentally had discovered, or perhaps invented, 

 " landing rights " for Newfoundland) and Charles 

 Bright (as engineer) projected and with other ven- 

 turers formed the Atlantic Telegraph Company and 

 secured the required capital in a few davs. This 

 was of course only the beginning of the pioneer en- 

 gineers' work. The British and the United States 

 Governments encouraged and helped the scheme with 

 men-of-war, and at last on August 5, 1858, the 

 shore-end having been duly landed at Newfoundland, 

 the telegraph had bridged the ocean ; and the Times 

 could say " since the discovery of Columbus nothing 

 has been done in any degree comparable to the vast 

 enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere 

 of human activity." Unfortunately, although the 

 practicability of the scheme had been amply demon- 

 strated and the engineering success was unquestion- 

 able, after about two months' work the communication 

 failed — the conductivity of the cable was too low and 

 the power applied to it was too high. 



Then followed cables to the east — to Malta, Alex- 

 andria and India via the Persian Gulf, and it was not 

 until 1865 that any further effort to lay a cable across 

 the Atlantic was projected. In the meantime, Lord 

 Kelvin had perfected his wonderful mirror apparatus, 

 the progenitor of the syphon recorder ; closer know- 

 ledge of the actual requirements had been secured 

 and improvements in methods of manufacture de- 

 veloped. Also the paying-out and picking-up gear 

 had been largely developed by Henry Clifford, and 

 Brunei's great ship the Great Eastern was available 

 to take the large core cable that Bright had suc- 

 ceeded in securing. By the end of 1866 there were 

 two cables working across the Atlantic and the pioneers 

 had about finished their part of the business. The 

 next was routine — and skill combined with know- 

 ledge. Other cables followed, east and west ; and 

 then in 1872 commenced the great commercial 

 achievements under Sir John Pender, which the 

 Eastern Telegraph Companies are celebrating, after 

 fifty years, with such justifiable pride. 



International Chemistry. 



'"pHE International Union of Pure and Applied 

 1 Chemistry held a successful annual meeting 

 in Lyons on June 27-July 2. This was the third 

 annual meeting and a good deal of time was, as on 

 the former occasions, devoted to the details of organi- 

 sation and the business of getting such an international 

 body well established. Prof. Moureu has been 

 president for three years and has had a difficult 

 task in framing a policy for the score of nations who 

 are now represented in the Union and in guiding 

 them into harmony in these troublous times. He 

 has achieved his desire, and the Union seems likely 

 to continue for many years and to have an increasing 

 importance. It is intended in the future to pay 

 more attention to the purely scientific side of the 

 subject and to attempt some discussions which will 

 be of permanent value. 



NO. 2753, VOL. I IO] 



The Lyons meeting was well attended, about a 

 hundred and twenty delegates taking part, among 

 whom may be mentioned Messrs. Swarts and Timmer- 

 mans (Belgium), Billmann (Denmark), Mourelo 

 (Spain), Parsons, Bartow, and Washburn (United 

 States), Grignard, Kestner, Marie, Moureu, and 

 Perrin (France), Pope, Lowry, Hewitt, and Mond 

 (Great Britain), Nasini and Paterno (Italy), Bodtker 

 (Norway), Cohen, Kruyt, and Verkade (Holland), 

 and VotoFek (Czecho-Slovakia). Lyons is well pro- 

 vided with suitable buildings for the various meetings 

 and social functions and there are many objects of 

 interest in the vicinity. The commissions on 

 nomenclature, publications, standards, food analysis, 

 industrial hygiene, and international patents con- 

 tinued their work and presented interim reports. To 

 carry out the recommendations of these commissions 



