Masters of Space by Walter Kellogg Towers

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The early 'sixties were trying years for the cable pioneers. It
required all of Field's splendid genius and energy to keep the project
alive. In the face of repeated failures, and doubt as to whether
messages could be sent rapidly enough to make any cable a commercial
success, it was extremely difficult to raise fresh capital. America
continued to evince interest in the cable, but with, the Civil War in
progress it was not easy to raise funds. But no discouragement could
deter Field. Though he suffered severely from seasickness, he crossed
the Atlantic sixty-four times in behalf of the great enterprise which
he had begun.

It was necessary to raise three million dollars to provide a cable of
the improved type decided upon and to install it properly. The English
firm of Glass, Eliot & Company, which was to manufacture the cable,
took a very large part of the stock. The new cable was designed in
accordance with the principles enunciated by Professor Thomson. The
conductor consisted of seven wires of pure copper, weighing three
hundred pounds to the mile. This copper core was covered with
Chatterton's compound, which served as water-proofing. This was
surrounded by four layers of gutta-percha, cemented together by the
compound, and about this hemp was wound. The outer layer consisted
of eighteen steel wires wound spirally, each being covered with a
wrapping of hemp impregnated with a preservative solution. The new
cable was twice as heavy as the old and more than twice as strong, a
great advance having been made in the methods of manufacturing steel
wire.

It was decided that the cable should, be laid by one vessel, instead
of endeavoring to work from two as in the past. Happily, a boat was
available which was fitted to carry this enormous burden. This was
the _Great Eastern_, a mammoth vessel far in advance of her time.
This great ship of 22,500 tons had been completed in 1857, but had not
proved a commercial success. The docks of that day were not adequate,
the harbors were not deep enough, and the cargoes were insufficient.
She had long lain idle when she was secured by the cable company and
fitted out for the purpose of laying the cable, which was the first
useful work which had been found for the great ship. The 2,300 miles
of heavy cable was coiled into the hull and paying-out machinery was
installed upon the decks. Huge quantities of coal and other supplies
were added.

Capt. James Anderson of the Cunard Line was placed in command of the
ship for the expedition, with Captain Moriarty, R.N., as navigating
officer. Professor Thomson and Mr. C.F. Varley represented the
Atlantic Telegraph Company as electricians and scientific advisers.
Mr. Samuel Canning was engineer in charge for the contractors. Mr.
Field was also on board.

It was on July 23, 1865, that the expedition started from the Irish
coast, where the eastern end of the cable had been landed. Less than a
hundred miles of cable had been laid when the electricians discovered
a fault in the cable. The _Great Eastern_ was stopped, the course was
retraced, and the cable picked up until the fault was reached. It was
found that a piece of iron wire had in some way pierced the cable
so that the insulation was ruined. This was repaired and the work of
laying was again commenced. Five days later, when some seven hundred
miles of cable had been laid, communication was again interrupted, and
once again they turned back, laboriously lifting the heavy cable from
the depths, searching for the break. Again a wire was found thrust
through the cable, and this occasioned no little worry, as it was
feared that this was being done maliciously.

It was on August 2d that the next fault was discovered. Nearly
two-thirds of the cable was now in place and the depth was here over
one mile. Raising the cable was particularly difficult, and just at
this juncture the _Great Eastern's_ machinery broke down, leaving her
without power and at the mercy of the waves. Subjected to an enormous
strain, the precious cable parted and was lost. Despite the great
depth, efforts were made to grapple the lost cable. Twice the cable
was hooked, but on both occasions the rope parted and after days of
tedious work the supply of rope was exhausted and it was necessary
to return to England. Still another cable expedition had ended in
failure.

Field, the indomitable, began all over again, raising additional funds
for a new start. The _Great Eastern_ had proved entirely satisfactory,
and it was hoped that with improvements in the grappling-gear the
cable might be recovered. The old company gave way before a new
organization known as the Anglo-American Telegraph Company. It was
decided to lay an entirely new cable, and then to endeavor to complete
the one partially laid in 1865.

With no services other than private prayers at the station on the
Irish shore, the _Great Eastern_ steamed away for the new effort on
July 13, 1866. This time the principal difficulties arose within the
ship. Twice the cable became tangled in the tanks and it was necessary
to stop the ship while the mass was straightened out. Most of the
time the "coffee-mill," as the seamen called the paying-out machinery,
ground steadily away and the cable sank into the sea. As the work
progressed Field and Thomson, who had suffered so many failures in
their great enterprise, watched with increasing anxiety. They were
almost afraid to hope that the good fortune would continue.

Just two weeks after the Irish coast had been left behind the _Great
Eastern_ approached Newfoundland just as the shadows of night were
added to those of a thick fog. On the next morning, July 28th, she
steamed into Trinity Bay, where flags were flying in the little town
in honor of the great accomplishment. Amid salutes and cheers
the cable was landed and communication between the continents was
established. Almost the first news that came over the wire was that of
the signing of the treaty of peace which ended the war between Prussia
and Austria.

Early in August the _Great Eastern_ again steamed away to search for
the cable broken the year before. Arriving on the spot, the grapples
were thrown out and the tedious work of dragging the sea-bottom was
begun. After many efforts the cable was finally secured and raised to
the surface. A new section was spliced on and the ship again turned
toward America. On September 7th the second cable was successfully
landed, and two wires were now in operation between the continents.
Thus was the great task doubly fulfilled. Once again there were public
celebrations in England and America. Field received the deserved
plaudits of his countrymen and Thomson was knighted in recognition of
his achievements.

[Illustration: THE "GREAT EASTERN" LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE. 1866]

The new cables proved a success and were kept in operation for many
years. Thomson's mirror receiver had been improved until it displayed
remarkable sensitiveness. Using the current from a battery placed in
a lady's thimble, a message was sent across the Atlantic through one
cable and back through the other. Professor Thomson was to give to
submarine telegraphy an even more remarkable instrument. The mirror
instrument did not give a permanent record of the messages. The
problem of devising a means of recording the messages delicate enough
so that it could be operated with rapidity by the faint currents
coming over a long cable was extremely difficult. But Thomson solved
it with his siphon recorder. In this a small coil is suspended between
the poles of a large magnet; the coil being free to turn upon its
axis. When the current from the cable passes through the coil it
moves, and so varies the position of the ink-siphon which is attached
to it. The friction of a pen on paper would have proved too great a
drag on so delicate an instrument, and so a tiny jet of ink from the
siphon was substituted. The ink is made to pass through the siphon
with sufficient force to mark down the message by a delightfully
ingenious method. Thomson simply arranged to electrify the ink, and
it rushes through the tiny opening on to the paper just as lightning
leaps from cloud to earth.

Professor, now Sir, Thomson continued to take an active part in the
work of designing and laying new cables. Not only did he contribute
the apparatus and the scientific information which made cables
possible, but he attained renown as a physicist and a scientist in
many other fields. In 1892 he was given the title of Lord Kelvin, and
it was by this name that he was known as the leading physicist of his
day. He survived until 1907.

To Cyrus W. Field must be assigned a very large share of the credit
for the establishment of telegraphic communication between the
continents. He gave his fortune and all of his tremendous energy and
ability to the enterprise and kept it alive through failure after
failure. He was a promoter of the highest type, the business man who
recognized a great human need and a great opportunity for service.
Without his efforts the scientific discoveries of Thomson could
scarcely have been put to practical use.

The success of the first cable inspired others. In 1869 a cable from
France to the United States was laid from the _Great Eastern_. In 1875
the Direct United States Cable Company laid another cable to England,
which was followed by another cable to France. One cable after another
was laid until there are now a score. This second great development in
communication served to bring the two continents much closer together
in business and in thought and has proved of untold benefit.

XI

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, THE YOUTH

The Family's Interest in Speech Improvement--Early Life-Influence of
Sir Charles Wheatstone--He Comes to America--Visible Speech and the
Mohawks--The Boston School for Deaf Mutes--The Personality of Bell.

The men of the Bell family, for three generations, have interested
themselves in human speech. The grandfather, the father, and the
uncle of Alexander Graham Bell were all elocutionists of note. The
grandfather achieved fame in London; the uncle, in Dublin; and the
father, in Edinburgh. The father applied himself particularly to
devising means of instructing the deaf in speech. His book on _Visible
Speech_ explained his method of instructing deaf mutes in speech by
the aid of their sight, and of teaching them to understand the speech
of others by watching their lips as the words are spoken.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh in 1847, and received
his early education in the schools of that city. He later studied
at Warzburg, Germany, where he received the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy. He followed very naturally in the footsteps of his father,
taking an early interest in the study of speech. He was especially
anxious to aid his mother, who was deaf.

As a boy he exhibited a genius for invention, as well as for
acoustics. Much of this was duo to the wise encouragement of his
father. He himself has told of a boyhood invention.

My father once asked my brother Melville and myself to try to
make a speaking-machine, I don't suppose he thought we could
produce anything of value, in itself. But he knew we could not
even experiment and manufacture anything which even tried to
speak, without learning something of the voice and the
throat; and the mouth--all that wonderful mechanism of sound
production in which he was so interested.

So my brother and I went to work. We divided the task--he was
to make the lungs and the vocal cords, I was to make the mouth
and the tongue. He made a bellows for the lungs and a very
good vocal apparatus out of rubber. I procured a skull and
molded a tongue with rubber stuffed with cotton wool, and
supplied the soft parts of the throat with the same material
Then I arranged joints, so the jaw and the tongue could move.
It was a great day for us when we fitted the two parts of the
device together. Did it speak? It squeaked and squawked a
good deal, but it made a very passable imitation of
"Mam-ma--Mam-ma." It sounded very much like a baby. My father
wanted us to go on and try to get other sounds, but we were so
interested in what we had done we wanted to try it out. So we
proceeded to use it to make people think there was a baby in
the house, and when we made it cry "Mam-ma," and heard doors
opening and people coming, we were quite happy. What has
become of It? Well, that was across the ocean, in Scotland,
but I believe the mouth and tongue part that I made is in
Georgetown somewhere; I saw it not long ago.

The inventor tells of another boyhood invention that, though it had no
connection with sound or speech, shows his native ingenuity. Again we
will tell it in his own words.

I remember my first invention very well. There were several of
us boys, and we were fond of playing around a mill where they
ground wheat into flour. The miller's son was one of the
boys, and I am afraid he showed us how to be a good deal of a
nuisance to his father. One day the miller called us into the
mill and said, "Why don't you do something useful instead of
just playing all the time?" I wasn't afraid of the miller as
much as his son was, so I said, "Well, what can we do that
is useful?" He took up a handful of wheat, ran it over in his
hand and said: "Look at that! If you could manage to get the
husks off that wheat, that would be doing something useful!"

So I took some wheat home with me and experimented. I found
the husks came off without much difficulty. I tried brushing
them off and they came off beautifully. Then it occurred to me
that brushing was nothing but applying friction to them. If
I could brush the husks off, why couldn't the husks be rubbed
off?

There was in the mill a machine--I don't know what it was
for--but it whirled its contents, whatever it was, around in
a drum. I thought, "Why wouldn't the husks come off if the raw
wheat was whirled around in that drum?" So back I went to the
miller and suggested the idea to him.

"Why," he said, "that's a good idea." So he called his foreman
and they tried it, and the husks came off beautifully, and
they've been taking husks off that way ever since. That was
my very first invention, and it led me to thinking for myself,
and really had quite an influence on my way and methods of
thought.

Up to his sixteenth year young Bell's reading consisted largely of
novels, poetry, and romantic tales of Scotch heroes. But in addition
he was picking up some knowledge of anatomy, music, electricity, and
telegraphy. When he was but sixteen years of age his father secured
for him a position as teacher of elocution and this necessarily turned
his thought into more serious channels. He now spent his leisure
studying sound. During this period he made several discoveries in
sound which were of some small importance.

When he was twenty-one years of age he went to London and there had
the good fortune to come to the attention of Charles Wheatstone
and Alex J. Ellis. Ellis was at that time president of the London
Philological Society, and had translated Helmholtz's _The Sensation
of Tone_ into English. He had made no little progress with sound, and
demonstrated to Bell the methods by which German scientists had caused
tuning-forks to vibrate by means of electro-magnets and had combined
the tones of several tuning-forks in an effort to reproduce the sound
of the human voice. Helmholtz had performed this experiment simply to
demonstrate the physical basis of sound, and seems to have had no idea
of its possible use in telephony.

That an electro-magnet could vibrate a tuning-fork and so produce
sound was an entirely new and fascinating idea to the youth. It
appealed to his imagination, quickened by his knowledge of speech.
"Why not an electrical telegraph?" he asked himself. His idea seems to
have been that the electric current could carry different notes over
the wire and reproduce them by means of the electro-magnet. Although
Bell did not know it, many others were struggling with the same
problem, the answer to which proved most elusive. It gave Bell a
starting-point, and the search for the telephone began.

Sir Charles Wheatstone was then England's leading man of science,
and so Bell sought his counsel. Wheatstone received the young man
and listened to his statement of his ideas and ambitions and gave
him every encouragement. He showed him a talking-machine which
had recently been invented by Baron de Kempelin, and gave him the
opportunity to study it closely. Thus Bell, the eager student, the
unknown youth of twenty-two, came under the influence of Wheatstone,
the famous scientist and inventor of sixty-seven. This influence
played a great part in shaping Bell's career, arousing as it did his
passion for science. This decided him to devote himself to the problem
of reproducing sounds by mechanical means. Thus a new improvement in
the means of human communication was being sought and another pioneer
of science was at work.

The death of the two brothers of the young scientist from
tuberculosis, and the physician's report that he himself was
threatened by the dread malady, forced a change in his plans and
withdrew him from an atmosphere which was so favorable to the
development of his great ideas. He was told that he must seek a new
climate and lead a more vigorous life in the open. Accompanied by his
father, he removed to America and at the age of twenty-six took up the
struggle for health in the little Canadian town of Brantford.

He occupied himself by teaching his father's system of visible speech
among the Mohawk Indians. In this work he met with no little success.
At the same time he was gaining in bodily vigor and throwing off the
tendency to consumption which had threatened his life. He did not
forget the great idea which filled his imagination and eagerly sought
the telephone with such crude means as were at hand. He succeeded in
designing a piano which, with the aid of the electric current, could
transmit its music over a wire and reproduce it.

While lecturing in Boston on his system of teaching visible speech,
the elder Bell received a request to locate in that city and take up
his work in its schools. He declined the offer, but recommended his
son as one entirely competent for the position. Alexander Graham
Bell received the offer, which he accepted, and he was soon at work
teaching the deaf mutes in the school which Boston had opened for
those thus afflicted. He met with the greatest success in his work,
and ere long achieved a national reputation. During the first year of
his work, 1871, he was the sensation of the educational world. Boston
University offered him a professorship, in which position he taught
others his system of teaching, with increased success.

The demand for his services led him to open a School of Vocal
Physiology. He had made some improvements in his father's system for
teaching the deaf and dumb to speak and to understand spoken words,
and displayed great ability as a teacher. His experiments with
telegraphy and telephony had been laid aside, and there seemed little
chance that he would turn from the work in which he was accomplishing
so much for so many sufferers, and which was bringing a comfortable
financial return, and again undertake the tedious work in search for a
telephone.

Fortunately, Bell was to establish close relationships with those who
understood and appreciated his abilities and gave him encouragement
in his search for a new means of communication. Thomas Sanders, a
resident of Salem, had a five-year-old son named Georgie who was a
deaf mute. Mr. Sanders sought Bell's tutelage for his son, and it was
agreed that Bell should give Georgie private lessons for the sum of
three hundred and fifty dollars a year. It was also arranged that Bell
was to reside at the Sanders home in Salem. He made arrangements to
conduct his future experiments there.

Another pupil who came to him about this time was Mabel Hubbard, a
fifteen-year-old girl who had lost her hearing and consequently her
powers of speech, through an attack of scarlet fever when an infant.
She was a gentle and lovable girl, and Bell fell completely in love
with his pupil. Four years later he was to marry her and she was
to prove a large influence in helping him to success. She took the
liveliest interest in all of his experiments and encouraged him to new
endeavor after each failure. She kept his records and notes and wrote
his letters. Through her Bell secured the support of her father,
Gardiner G. Hubbard, who was widely known as one of Boston's ablest
lawyers. He was destined to become Bell's chief spokesman and
defender.

Hubbard first became aware of Bell's inventive genius when the latter
was calling one evening at the Hubbard home in Cambridge. Bell was
illustrating some mysteries of acoustics with the aid of the piano.
"Do you know," he remarked, "that if I sing the note G close to the
strings of the piano, the G string will answer me?"

This did not impress the lawyer, who asked its significance.

"It is a fact of tremendous importance," answered Bell. "It is
evidence that we may some day have a musical telegraph which will
enable us to send as many messages simultaneously over one wire as
there are notes on that piano."

From that time forward Hubbard took every occasion to encourage Bell
to carry forward his experiments in musical telegraphy.

As a young man Bell was tall and slender, with jet-black eyes and
hair, the latter being pushed back into a curly tangle. He was
sensitive and high-strung, very much the artist and the man of
science. His enthusiasms were intense, and, once his mind was filled
with an idea, he followed it devotedly. He was very little the
practical business man and paid scant attention to the small,
practical details of life. He was so interested in visible speech, and
so keenly alert to the pathos of the lives of the deaf mutes, that he
many times seriously considered giving over all experiments with the
musical telegraph and devoting his entire life and energies to the
amelioration of their condition.

XII

THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE

The Cellar at Sanderses'--Experimental Beginnings--Magic Revived in
Salem Town--The Dead Man's Ear--The Right Path--Trouble and
Discouragement--The Trip to Washington--Professor Joseph Henry--The
Boston Workshop--The First Faint Twang of the Telephone--Early
Development.

Alexander Graham Bell had not resided at the Sanderses' home very long
before he had fitted the basement up as a workshop. For three years he
haunted it, spending all of his leisure time in his experiments. Here
he had his apparatus, and the basement was littered with a curious
combination of electrical and acoustical devices--magnets, batteries,
coils of wire, tuning-forks, speaking-trumpets, etc. Bell had a great
horror that his ideas might be stolen and was very nervous over any
possible intrusion into his precious workshop. Only the members of
the Sanders family were allowed to enter the basement. He was equally
cautious in purchasing supplies and equipment lest his very purchases
reveal the nature of his experiments. He would go to a half-dozen
different stores for as many articles. He usually selected the night
for his experiments, and pounded and scraped away indefatigably,
oblivious of the fact that the family, as well as himself, was sorely
in need of rest.

"Bell would often awaken me in the middle of the night," says Mr.
Sanders, "his black eyes blazing with excitement. Leaving me to go
down to the cellar, he would rush wildly to the barn and begin to send
me signals along his experimental wires. If I noticed any improvement
in his apparatus he would be delighted. He would leap and whirl around
in one of his 'war-dances,' and then go contentedly to bed. But if
the experiment was a failure he would go back to his work-bench to try
some different plan."

In common with other experimenters who were searching for the
telephone, Bell was experimenting with a sort of musical telegraph.
Eagerly and persistently he sought the means that would replace the
telegraph with its cumbersome signals by a new device which would
enable the human voice itself to be transmitted. The longer he worked
the greater did the difficulties appear. His work with the deaf and
dumb was alluring, and on many occasions he seriously considered
giving over his other experiments and devoting himself entirely to the
instruction of the deaf and dumb and to the development of his system
of making speech visible by making the sound-vibrations visible to the
eye. But as he mused over the difficulties in enabling a deaf mute to
achieve speech nothing else seemed impossible. "If I can make a deaf
mute talk," said Bell, "I can make iron talk."

One of his early ideas was to install a harp at one end of the wire
and a speaking-trumpet at the other. His plan was to transmit
the vibrations over the wire and have the voice reproduced by the
vibrations of the strings of the harp. By attaching a light pencil
or marker to a cord or membrane and causing the latter to vibrate by
talking against it, he could secure tracings of the sound-vibrations.
Different tracings were secured from different sounds. He thus sought
to teach the deaf to speak by sight.

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