DEEP-SEA TELEGRAPHY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4205, 11 September 1874, Page 3

DEEP-SEA TELEGRAPHY.

(From the New York Herald, July 25.) Science has recently been successfully busy in devising and perfecting new apparatus for deep-sea sounding, and we have fresh assurances that the furrowed bed of the ocean will soon be mapped as distinctly as the orographic features of the great continents. Sir William Thomson, the indefatigable pioneer in the science of cable laying, has made an important and invaluable contribution to deepsea telegraphy in an ingenious and inexpensive, apparatus for bringing up bottom from abyssal depths of the ocean. The value of such an invention is far greater than at lirst appears. When lieutenant James M. Brooke, some years ago, designed his little sounding machine, by which the telegraph explorer, as never before, could fetch up from the midocean bottom specimens of its ooze, people little dreamed that on this apparently insignificant contrivance would depend the discovery and definition of the mysterious “telegraphic plateau” on which now rest the Atlantic cables. It may bo assumed that deep-sea telegraphy and deep-sea cable laying will progress pari passu; for until we can get a map of the dark, slimy bottom and ascertain its suitableness for the costly strand capitalists will not embark in now cable projects. More than a year ago Commander Belknap, of the American Navy, in his Pacific survey,

introduced the cheap pianofox-te steel xvire and successfully tested its adaptation to the delicate xvork of ocean bed exploration, Sir William Thomson, after long and elaborate experiments xvith the same wire, has fully demonstrated its sufficiency fox- soundings in three thousand and thrae thousand fi\'c hundred fathoms, depths xvhich appx-oach the extreme and most abyssal caverns of the salty deep. According to a paper recently read by this eminent electrician and physicist the cheap xvire he used .is of small size, easily managed, xvhether the ship be hox-e-to or under steam, and xveighs about fifteen pounds to the nautical mile, bearing a pull of txvo hundred and forty pounds without bx-eakiug. The simplicity and economy of this sounding line brings it xvithin the skill and ability of almost every naval vessel afloat, so that the xvork of deep-sea surveying may be pushed forwax-d by all naval offleex-s. Instead of detaching the sinking xveight of thirty pounds of lead or iron at each experiment, as xvas done xvith the old apparatus, tho nexv invention brings back the sinker. Tests made in the rough xvatex-s of the Atlantic prove that, even xvhen the vessel is steaming six knots an hour, flying soundings can be taken in moderate depths. There is little doubt that this ingenious arrangement xvill be extensively used in all futux-e deep-sea telegraph laying, and xvill also gix-e an impulse to the study of ocean orography.