Heroes of the Telegraph/Chapter 4

He remained chief engineer of the Magnetic company until 1860, and consulting engineer till 1870. During this period he took out several important patents, one in October 1852 (No. 14331 of 1852) for 'improvements in making telegraphic communications and in instruments and apparatus employed therein and connected therewith.' In this patent is to be found the first mention of sets of resistance coils constructed so as to form a series of different values. He also took a lively interest in the classics, in music, and in general literature; but the real love, the central passion of his intellectual life, was the pursuit of science. The paper was followed by others on the mathematical theory of electricity; and in 1845 he gave the first mathematical development of Faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an hypothesis of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces of electricity at rest. The Cambridge Mathematical Journal of 1842 contains a paper by him-'On the uniform motion of heat in homogeneous solid bodies, and its connection with the mathematical theory of electricity.' In this he demonstrated the identity of the laws governing the distribution of electric or magnetic force in general, with the laws governing the distribution of the lines of the motion of heat in certain special cases.

A fully equipped kitchen with electric stove and hob, dishwasher, microwave, fridge, freezer, what is electric cable Nespresso machine (please supply your own capsules) and coffee perculator. India-rubber had been tried by Jacobi, the Russian electrician, as far back as 1811. He laid a wire insulated with rubber across the Neva at St. Petersburg, and succeeded in firing a mine by an electric spark sent through it; but india-rubber, although it is now used to a considerable extent, was not easy to manipulate in those days. We gave them half an hour to convey the end of the wire to shore and attach the type-printing instrument, and then I sent the first electrical message across the Channel. In the Morse code the letters of the alphabet are represented by combinations of two distinct elementary signals, technically called 'dots' and 'dashes,' from the fact that the Morse recorder actually marks the message in long and short lines, or dots and dashes.

At the age of seventeen, when ordinary lads are fond of games, and the cleverer sort are content to learn without attempting to originate, young Thomson had begun to make investigations. The signals from the Niagara became very weak, but on Professor Thomson asking the electricians on board of her to increase their battery power, they improved at once. This was reserved for Louis Napoleon.' According to Mr. F. C. Webb, however, the first of the signals were a mere jumble of letters, which were torn up. The following year Mr. John Watkins Brett laid the first line across the Channel. The route she was to follow was marked by a line of buoys and flags. He induced the American Government to despatch Lieutenant Berryman, in the Arctic, and the British Admiralty to send Lieutenant: Dayman, in the Cyclops, to make a special survey along the proposed route of the cable. Next summer a steamboat was fitted out for the purpose, and the cable was submerged. We have thus far followed out the recorder in its practical application to submarine telegraphy. These soundings revealed the existence of a submarine hill dividing the 'telegraph plateau' from the shoal water on the coast of Ireland, but its slope was gradual and easy.

Maury told him that according to recent soundings by Lieutenant Berryman, of the United States brig Dolphin, the bottom between Ireland and Newfoundland was a plateau covered with microscopic shells at a depth not over 2000 fathoms, and seemed to have been made for the very purpose of receiving the cable. The Great Eastern steamed back to England, where the indomitable Mr. Field issued another prospectus, and formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, with a capital of £600,000, to lay a new cable and complete the broken one. As to the line itself, Mr. Field consulted Professor Morse, who assured him that it was quite possible to make and lay a cable of that length. Thomson became a man of public note in connection with the laying of the first Atlantic cable. To these gifts of theory, electrical and mechanical, Thomson added a practical boon in the shape of the reflecting galvanometer, or mirror instrument. The property was nice and clean (thanks Richard!) and the rooms were lovely and quiet.