.^ig££i«23aaseEs?^ 



Earth 



Figure 40. — Thomson's "speaking galvanometer" and trans- 

 mitting key as used in marine cable telegraphy. From W. H. 

 Preece and J. Sivewright, Telegraphy, New York, 1876, p. 138. 



machine, George M. Phelps '" of Troy, New York, 

 combined certain features of the House and the 

 Hughes machines to produce the Phelps "combina- 

 tion telegraph" (fig. 39) that could initially send 

 about 30 words per minute and that was constantly 

 improved until it could send up to 60 words per 

 minute. This combination machine, patented in 

 1859, had considerable success where traffic was suf- 

 ficiently heavy to warrant the use of a rather compli- 

 cated and expensive machine. 



In addition to expanding the telegraph across con- 

 tinents, engineers and investors sought to join tele- 

 graph networks that ended at a coastline. In the 

 1840's numerous attempts were made to lay a cable 

 under water, but this goal was not attained until 

 gutta-percha was applied as underwater insulation.^' 

 C. V. Walker laid a successful gutta-percha cable 

 along two miles of the English Channel in January 



30 George Phelps, U.S. patent 26003 (November 1, 1859); 

 George B. Prescott, History, Theory, and Practice of the Electric 

 Telegraph, Boston, 1860, pp. 144-155; Electricity and the Electric 

 Telegraph, New York, 1888, 2 vols., vol. 2, pp. 642-647. 



31 C. Willoughby Smith, The Rise and Exteruion of Submarine 

 Telegraphy, London, 1891; Charles Bright, Submarine Telegraphs: 

 Their History, Construction and Working, London, 1898; G. R. M. 

 Garatt, One Hundred I'ears of Submarine Cables, London, 1950. 



1849, and later the same year a similar cable was 

 successfully laid under the Connecticut River, at 

 Middletown. The brothers Jacob and John Brett 

 laid a gutta-percha cable between Dover and Calais 

 in 1850, but it remained in operation less than a day. 

 Then the brothers manufactured another cable and 

 placed armor over the gutta-percha. This cable was 

 laid in 1851 and remained in operation for a decade. 

 The success of this cable led to more submarine cables: 

 England was joined with Holland and Ireland in 1853 

 and with India in 1864; among other cables laid in 

 North America was the one joining Nova Scotia and 

 Newfoundland in 1856. 



One of the men involved in the laying of the New- 

 foundland cable was the retired businessman, Cyrus 

 Field,^" who saw that the cable across the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence might be the first step in the laying of 

 a cable across the Atlantic. Several years before the 

 Newfoundland cable was laid, a hydrographer had 



32 Charles F. Briggs and Augustus Maverick, The Story of the 

 Telegraph and a History of the Great Atlantic Cable, New York, 

 1858; Report of the Joint Committee Appointed by the Lords . . . of 

 the Privy Council . . . and the Atlantic Telegraph Company to Inquire 

 into the Construction of Submarine Telegraph Cables, London, 1861; 

 Henry M. Field, The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph, New York, 

 1892. 



PAPER 29: DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRICAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE 19TH CENTURY: II 

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