The Battery and the Boiler: Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables by - (world best books to read txt) 📖

his note-book, “not only from London to India, but to each of the intermediate stations on the cable line, so that we had direct intercourse that night with the King of Portugal, the Governors of Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, and the Khedive of Egypt. But that was not all. We put the old and the new world into communication, so that the ‘press of India sent salaam to the press of America.’ Sir James Anderson also telegraphed to Cyrus W. Field, Esquire, the father of submarine telegraphy in my estimation,” (Hear, hear, from Robin), “and he sent a reply, which began, ‘Your message of this evening received by me before five o’clock this afternoon.’ Mark that, Captain Rik, the message received before it was sent, so to speak!”

“Ay, ay, lad—I know—difference of longitude,—fire away.”

“Well, I have fired away most of my ammunition now,” returned Sam, “and if you don’t haul down your colours, it must be because you have nailed them to the mast and are blind to reason. I may add, however, that the Viceroy of India sent a telegram to the President of the United States, to which he got a reply in seven hours and forty minutes, but the slowness of this message was accounted for by the fact of accidental and partly unavoidable delay in transmission both in Washington and London. At 1:30 a.m. of the 24th the traffic of the line became pressing, and all complimentary messages ceased with one from Bombay, which said, ‘Sun just risen; delightfully cool; raining.’”

“Doesn’t it seem as if the Baron Monkhausen’s tales were possible after all?” remarked Mrs Wright, looking as if her mind had got slightly confused.

“The Baron’s tales are mere child’s-play, mother,” said Robin, “to the grand facts of electricity.”

“That’s so, Robin,” said Sam, still turning over the leaves of his note-book, “and we had some magnificent experiments or illustrations at the fête, which go far to prove the truth of your remark—experiments which were so beautiful that they would have made the eyes of Letta sparkle even more gorgeously than they are doing at present, if she had seen them.”

Letta blushed, returned to self-consciousness for a moment, looked down, laughed, looked up as Sam proceeded, and soon again forgot herself in a fixed and earnest gaze.

“The two telegraph instruments communicating with India and America, which stood on two tables, side by side, in Mr Pender’s house, were supplied by two batteries in the basement of the building. Eighty cells of Daniel’s battery were used upon the Penzance circuit for India, and 100 cells on the Brest circuit for America. The ordinary water-pipes of the house served to connect the batteries with the earth, so as to enable them to pump their electricity from that inexhaustible reservoir.”

“I was not aware that electricity had to be pumped up through pipes like water,” interrupted Mrs Wright, on whose mild countenance a complication of puzzled expressions was gradually gathering.

“It is not so pumped up,” said Sam. “The pipes were used, not because they were pipes, but because they were metal, and therefore good conductors.”

“But you haven’t told us about the beautiful experiments yet,” murmured Letta, a little impatiently.

“I’m coming to them, little one,” said Sam. “One battery exhibited the power as well as the beauty of that mysterious force which we call electricity. It was the large Grove battery. A current passed from it to copper wires, in a certain manner, produced a dazzling green light, and the copper melted like wax. With silver a still brighter and purer green flame was the result. With platinum an intense white light was given off, and the molten metal fell in globules of exceeding brilliancy. With iron lovely coruscations were exhibited, the boiling vapour flying and burning in all directions; and a platinum wire three feet long was in an instant melted into thousands of minute globules. All this showed the power of electricity to produce intense heat when resistance is opposed to its passage.”

“It is remarkably human-like in that respect,” said Captain Rik, in an under-tone.

“Then its power to produce magnetism,” continued Sam, “was shown by Lord Lindsay’s huge electro-magnet. This magnet, you must know, is nothing but a bit of ordinary metal until it is electrified, when it becomes a most powerful magnet. But the instant the current is cut off from it, it ceases to be a magnet. If you understood much about electricity,” said Sam, looking round on his rapt audience, “I might tell you that it is upon this power of making a piece of iron a magnet or not at pleasure, that depend the Morse and Digné telegraph instruments; but as you don’t understand, I won’t perplex you further. Well, when a piece of sheet copper was passed between the poles of Lord Lindsay’s giant magnet, it was as difficult to move as if it had been sticking in cheese—though it was in reality touching nothing!—influenced only by attraction.” (“That beats your power over Sam, Madge,” whispered Robin. “No it doesn’t,” whispered Madge in reply.) “Then, one most beautiful experiment I could not hope to get you to understand, but its result was, that a ten-gallon glass jar, coated inside and out with perforated squares of tinfoil, was filled with tens of thousands of brilliant sparks, which produced so much noise as completely to drown the voices of those who described the experiment. A knowledge of these and other deep things, and of the laws that govern them, has enabled Sir William Thomson and Mr Cromwell F. Varley to expedite the transmission of messages through very long submarine cables in an enormous degree. Then the aurora borealis was illustrated by a large long exhausted tube—”

“I say, Sam,” interrupted Rik, “don’t you think there’s just a possibility of our becoming a large long-exhausted company if you don’t bring this interesting lecture to a close?”

“Shame! shame! uncle Rik,” cried Robin.

As the rest of the company sided with him, the captain had to give way, and Sam went on.

“I won’t try your patience much longer; in fact I have nearly come to an end. In this long exhausted tube, ten feet in length and three inches in diameter, a brilliant and beautiful crimson stream was produced, by means of an induction coil. In short, the occasion and the proceedings altogether made it the most interesting evening I have ever spent in my life, e–except—”

Sam paused abruptly, and looked at Madge. Madge blushed and looked down under the table,—presumably for the cat,—and the rest of the company burst into an uproarious fit of laughter, in which condition we will leave them and convey the reader to a very different though not less interesting scene.