Submarine Telegraphs

Abstract

IT may possibly be within the memory of some persons that, about the year 1840, Sir C. Wheatstone first conceived the idea of transmitting messages under the sea, and practically carried out at that time the first submarine telegraph cable. Selecting Swansea Bay, South Wales, as the chosen spot for his experiment, the great inventor sat in an open boat, about three miles from the Mumbles Lighthouse, with the lighthouse keeper as his assistant. A conducting wire, insulated with hemp and a resinous compound, served as the electric communication between his open boat and the shore. It is from the successful results of this first crude experiment, and Wheatstone's investigations into the laws that regulate the transmission of electric currents through metallic conductors, published shortly afterwards in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, that our present system of the testing of submarine cables is based, and the vast system of inter-oceanic communication that connects the civilised world together, has been framed.