Abstract
THE lecturer in his introductory remarks observed that an electric telegraph consisted essentially of three parts, viz., the electro-motor or battery, the conductor, and the receiving instrument. He demonstrated experimentally that the conductor need not necessarily be metallic, but that water or rarefied air might be used as such within moderate limits; at the same time, for long submarine lines, insulated conductors strengthened by an outer sheathing were necessary to insure perfect transmission and immunity from accident. The first attempts at insulation, which consisted in the use of pitch and resinous matters, failed completely, and in the years 1846 and 1847 the two gums india-rubber and gutta-percha were introduced, the former by Prof. Jacobi of St. Petersburg, and the latter by Dr. Werner Siemens of Berlin; this last gum soon became almost indispensable to the cable manufacturer on account of its great plasticity and ductility.
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The Steamship “Faraday” and Her Appliances For Cable-Laying * . Nature 10, 64–65 (1874). https://doi.org/10.1038/010064a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/010064a0