Cookson, Gillian, “‘Ruinous competition”: the French Atlantic Telegraph of 1869’, Entreprises et Histoire, 23 (1999), pp. 1–16
Cookson, Gillian, ‘The Golden Age of Electricity’, in I. Inkster (ed.), The Golden Age: Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850–1870 (Ashgate, 2000), pp. 75–86
Cookson, Gillian, & Colin A. Hempstead, A Victorian Scientist and Engineer: Fleeming Jenkin and the Birth of Electrical Engineering (Ashgate, 2000)
The main archival sources used are located: in the Institution of Engineering and Technology library and archives; in the Cable and Wireless Archive at Porthcurno; at the New York Public Library, Wheeler Collection; and within the Kelvin papers in the university libraries of Glasgow and Cambridge.
Dibner, B., The Atlantic Cable (1959) (http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/hst/atlantic-cable/)
Finn, B.S., Submarine Telegraphy: the Grand Victorian Technology (1973) History of the Atlantic Cable website (http://www.atlantic-cable.com/) Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall
Russell, W.H., The Atlantic Telegraph (1865, reprinted 2005)
Plate
1 Frontispiece by Robert Dudley from W.H. Russell’s The Atlantic Telegraph (Day & Son Ltd: London, 1865).
2 Manufacturing an electric telegraph cable. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
Coating the electric core with jute.
Covering the cable with jute and tar.
Covering the core with wire.
Coiling down the cable in the tank.
3 Building the land line from Dublin to Valentia. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
4 Telegraph station in a tent at Valentia, drawn by Robert Dudley. (Institution of Engineering and Technology)
5 The crew of the Agamemnon, 1858. (Institution of Engineering and Technology)
6 Reels of gutta percha-covered wire are placed in tanks at the Greenwich works.
7 Valentia in 1857–58.
8 Trinity Bay, Newfoundland: the telegraph house in 1857–58.
9 The Trinity Bay telegraph house mess room, 1858.
10 An unforeseen hazard: a whale crosses the Agamemnon’s cable, 1858.
11 Making steel wires for the 1865 cable. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
12 Coiling the cable in the Greenwich works.
13 The Great Eastern at Milford Haven. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
14 Samples of cable and signals, 1858 and 1866. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
15 Cable passing from Glass & Elliot’s works into a hulk on the Thames.
16 Paying-out machinery.
17 Cable being loaded from an old frigate on to the Great Eastern at Sheerness.
18 Visit of the Prince of Wales to see cable coiled aboard the Great Eastern, 24 May 1865.
19 The Great Eastern cable-laying machinery, c.1865. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
20 Foilhummerum Bay, looking seaward.
21 Foilhummerum Bay, where the cable came ashore in Ireland, 1865.
22 The course of the Great Eastern.
23 Foilhummerum Bay from Cromwell Point fort: the Caroline and boats laying the earth-wire, 1865.
24 The Caroline laying the shore end cable, Port Magee, 22 July 1865.
25 The Great Eastern under way, 23 July 1865.
26 Cable passing out of a tank on board the Great Eastern.
27 Splicing the cable after the first accident, 25 July 1865.
28 Searching for a fault in the recovered cable, 31 July 1865.
29 View from the paddle-box of the Great Eastern en route to Newfoundland.
30 Getting out one of the large buoys for launching, 2 August 1865.
31 In the bows, preparing to grapple for the lost cable, 2 August 1865.
32 The forge on deck, preparing a capstan.
33 Forward deck cleared for the final attempt at grappling, 11 August 1865.
34 Buoys and grapnels used to recover the 1865 cable. (Illustrated London News)
35 Marking the spot where the cable was lost in 1865.
36 The cable arriving in Heart’s Content Bay, 1866. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
37 Landing the cable in Heart’s Content Bay, 1866. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
38 Officers of the Great Eastern, photographed in 1869, as they set out on another cable-laying voyage. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
39 The cliffs at Porthcurno Bay, Cornwall. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
40 Laying the shore end of the French Atlantic telegraph in Brittany, 1869. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
41 The French Atlantic telegraph expedition, 1869. (Cable & Wireless Archives, Porthcurno)
Copyright
First published in 2012
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2012
All rights reserved
© Gillian Cookson, 2012
The right of Gillian Cookson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 8800 4
MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 8799 1
Original typesetting by The History Press
Ebook compilation by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
The Cable Page 14
