EXTENSION OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH TO FRANCE, IRELAND, AND AMERICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 March 1851, Page 2

EXTENSION OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH TO FRANCE, IRELAND, AND AMERICA.

The establishment of an electro-telegraphic communication across the Straits between England and France has been for a considerable time foreseen, as one of the most natural in the train of consequences resulting- from the modern application of electricity to the transmission of intelligence between distant parts. If a line of wire could convey the electric impulse for thousands of miles over the surface of the earth, —as it lias clone and is doing,—there could be nothing in the nature of things to prevent it from being equally efficacious, if carried under the earth, or. even under water ; granted always, what no one has been heard to dispute, that it is in the power of art to protect the wire from whatever antagonistic influences it may be exposed to when down under earth or water. Trials of submerged lines of wire had in fact been made with perfect success across the Thames and the Hudson, both tolerably broad rivers ; and it was not to be doubted that what could be accomplished in this way for one mile, could be accomplished for thirty or fifty, or, indeed, any number of miles. It was but, in any case, to make the line of submerged wire longer, to sink it, perhaps deeper; and, if deeper, to protect it better. The simplest, of things, however, when carried out on a large scale, require often, as in this instance, for the doing of them, qualities of a high order, great enterprise, great perseverance, great executive powers of construction and direction. It was a great thing, assuredly, to undertake to underlay a sea of some thirty miles wide, with one continuous line of communication, a single break or flaw in which would be fatal to the whole ; there was a risk of failure to be braved, and in any event much expenditure of money, time, and trouble to be adventured on the issue; and beyond all doubt or question, it is a great thing to have successfully accomplished. To all such honour as belongs to the performing of a great undertaking well, Messrs. Jacob and'john Brett, the engineers of the Dover and Calais line of telegraph are richly entitled. The newspapers say that [they have obtained "the exclusive right of electric communication between this country and France for ten years." We do not see how this can well be, looking at the legal difficulties in the way; but we are sure that*™ reward they can have secured to themselves will be too great for the prodigious advantages which they have secured by their individual exertions, not only to both England and France, but to the world at large. For an electric telegraph to Calais, is not a thing winch will stop there. It is a telegraph to Vienna, to Moscow, to Constantinople, to Ispahan to Delhi, to Calcutta, to the remotest bounds, in short, of Europe and Asia. A few years ago people laughed when Lord PaJmerston predicted at the Southampton mceliuo- of the British Association, that a time might come when the minister of the day being "asked in Parliament, "Whether it was true that a war had broken out in India ?" would reply " Wait an instant till I telegraph the Governor-General and I will tell you." What was thought but a good joke in 1843, is now, in 1850, in the course of being actually accomplished, and ore a ,iew years rmore, is likely to take its place amongst the sober realities of the age. Nor to the Old World alone need our views of the id-

timate progress of electro-telegraphy be confined ; for, since the English Channel has been crossed, the crossing of the Irish must follow next, as but a matter of course ; and Ireland once reached, there lies but a couple of thousand miles or so between the Old World and the New. We say " but," for after all where is the practical difficulty? Not in producing the length of wire required, for any length of wire can be spun ; not in covering and insulating the wire, for thousands of miles of wire can be covered and insulated just as readily and surely as one; nor yet in laying down, as the Dover and Calais experiment has fully shown. The** only real difficulty in the case, we apprehend, will be to find ship-room for the enormous coil of wire that would be required ; but this is an objection which vanishes before the recollection of.such leviathan structures as the Canada and Great Britain. Besides, means may be found to effect on board t.bfi laying-down vessel a perfect junction of different lengths of wire, so as to allow of two, three, or more reels being employed. We assume, of course, that battery power sufficient to transmit the electric impulse through a wire of some two thousand miles long is at our command ; but though we are not aware of any recorded experiments that would justify us in taking the possibility of this for granted, we know that the recently receiving magnet of Morse is founded on the principle of counting for nothing the mere distance the electric message is to be transmitted; and, at all events, the fact is one capable of tentative determination on land before a single yard of an Atlantic line need be laid down. The Old and New Worlds being thus funited, we should then see the dream of the poet even more than realised; the earth "girdled round" about— not in " forty minutes"—but in a thousandth part of the time —in a single beat of the clock. What would all the other triumphs of human genius be to this ? Time and distance literally annihilated throughout the bounds of the planet which we inhabit! A triumph only to be transcended when the planets bhall themselves begin to telegraph one another—which is one of the very few things which, in this age of art-miracles, one would venture without hesitation to say will never happen.— Mechanic's Magazine,