The late Lord Kelvin A GREAT CAREER. Part I.

Progress, Volume III, Issue 4, 1 February 1908, Page 116

The late Lord Kelvin A GREAT CAREER. Part I.

they brought him, directly ?nd indirectly, may be gauged by the fact that his will was proved the other day for nearly a million of sterling value. Unlike mpny men of his genius the professor carried his genius with him into the region of business; a fact to be estimated by his position at the head of several firms, notably the Kelvin Company, of Glasgow. Some of these were established to manufacture the various articles of his invention, such as the compass, the deep-sea sounder, the galvanometer, the numerous dynamometers, ampere meters, volt meters a watt meters, and the rest; while others were concerned with their distribution throughout the various maikets of the world. One can easily picture the veteran, who had watched the paying out of the first Atlantic cable by the light of instruments of his own invention, presiding also at the meetings of the directors whose business it was to regulate manufacture and distribution, and we may declare without fear of contradiction that the value of his originality, shrewdness, and method told their tale in the one department as they had done in the other. It was not by cheese-paring that he made that large fortune above alluded to, for he enjoyed life in*', expensive i fashion. His mansion at Gilraore Hill, GJasgow, was one of the finest of the western^suburbs of that city, and he kept a yacht in which he entertained often a large and distinguished company, and made voyages not confined to the magnificent waters of Scotland and the British Isles generally, but extending to the Norway fiords and the more distant Mediterranean. Mention of these aquatic tastes recalls the fact that Thomson, during his career as a student, attained to eminence in athletics, well as on the intellectual side, becoming so distinguished thai he carried off at Cambridge on one occasion the much coveted " Silver Sculls." \ It was an example which justifies the decision of Cecil Rhodes to insist upon allround excellence — both physical and mental — in the scholars holding his now famous and much-sought scholarships. There is a further justification in the wonderful success of the career that followed the combination of " silve* sculls " and second wranglership.

A biographer said of him :—": — " Intense intellectual activity and physicial energy have characterised bis whole career. At seventeen he had commenced bis career of discovery, at twenty-two he was Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, in 1866 be was knighted for his distinguished services(at forty-two) in connection with the Atlantic telegraph. The highest honours academical were heaped upon him — he was the first scientific man to be raised to the peerage — his name is co-extensive with the whole range of electrical science and molecular physics. No physical question seems too large or too profound foi his grasp of intellect. He has estimated the size of atoms and the probable age of the world's maturity. His theory of the dissipation of universal energy is comparable with Newton's theory

of gravitation, in the largeness of its^ generalisation, that all motion tends to become heat, and to diffuse itself uniformly. His ' Natural Philosophy ' is a monument of dynamical learning, in part the work of Professor Tait, his Edinburgh colleague. Flis name meets one on almost e\ery page of works on electricity and thermodynamics. In telegraphy his name is a household \*ord. At the remotest stations on the earth's surface his beautiful instruments are to be seen in play, flashing out the message from the ocean. At a recent loan exhibition, his cs.se of electrometers, his tide-calculating machine, his improved compass, his pianoforte apparatus for sounding the deep sea, testify to tho range and quality of his inventive genius. Iv America his fame is as grea^ ss it is at home." One has but to add that the sum of these achievements in money represents a million sterling to completely realise the appealing power of the great example of physical and

mental combination, left by the great man who ended bis career a few days before the close of last 3 7 ea:. No man it car be said ever realised the limits of time so fully as Lord Kelvin, ar>d of no man will it probably ever be said that the presence of that limitation was more regretted by the human race. His genius was specially adapted for discovery along the lines of the abstruse. He grasped fast where few could everi see anything. When towards the close of his fifty-five years of the Clasgow Professorship he was emancipated from the work of teaching his class, he continued to give a course of lectures on the properties of matter, a subiect which at his ripe age (he was then seventy-seven) showed the vast range of his natural knowledge and illustrated the bold flights of his scientific imagination. In these lectures he touched upon all things in heaven and earth, discoursing of actual elements and imagining 1 ideal ones, now asking the class to take their stand with him in space, now to go down into some hypothetical limbo of the earth's centre. In was said of him in thiVconnectionJ:b.at " alljmattei and motion

were the materials with wbich his genius delighted te work, whethei in the infinitely great or the infinitely little, in the delicate structure and dance of molecules, or the stupendous framework and race of planets." Erratic, it is conceded by his best friends, w these lectures were sometimes ; of their brilliancy it is unnecessary to speak; that they were instinct with the intensity of earnestness and enthusiasm no one could ever doubt who had heard them. His tremendous enterprise of character having carried him into such regions, what his genius for calculation and scientific accuracy, his grasp of principles and facts, would have done for him (wheie they might have, long before this, carried him into the realms of benefcial, perhaps epoch - making, discovery) it would be bootless to enquire. We may form a shrewd conjecture by considering the history of his researches in tbermo-dynamics. These were without doubt his most important

investigations, for" though he" entered every department of science, he concentrated his efforts on this one especially, taking it far beyond the point where he had first found it ; reconciling the differences of the great men who had investigated before him — Carnot, Toule, Rumford, Davy, \fa3rer, and others, and adding of his own observation and thought so much, that he brought his theory of the conservation of energy to a point where it almost commands the assent of the whole scientific world. With his more remarkable theory of the dissipation of energy be did not get quite so far, having taken it up later in life, but he took it far enough to enable men to see of what tremendous importance were its possibilities. These things raise the question as to what the xesult might have been had he concentrated on those subiects (that fascinated him beyond all others, with which his genius was more fit to cope that 1 those of men less gifted) in directions revealed by his wondrous imagination to his phenomenal power of work. Bu t there was more practical work forcing itself upon his attention. It was of immediate requirement and of most exacting as well as absorbing charactei. His genius entered the world of practical invention and was to some extent lost to science ■ not that science was altogether neglected, as but for the scientific discoveries of Thomson, there could not have been any successful submarine telegraph} 7 -. But the great careei opening out in the realm of the profound had to be abandoned. In the latter days of his life he kept touch witi» the progress of the day, attending witb enthusiastic interest to all achievements and weighing every speculation. For example, we had a glimpse of him the other day in these columns proposing the customary favourable resolution after the British Association had heard Sir David Gill's very fine lecture on astronomical science, m which the piesent position was reviewed with such fascinating force. All his life he was ever at work at something. If on shore it would be in the library of his beautiful suburban villa — the place a miracle of order, not a thing out of its place and no litter whatever, everything proclaiming the systematic clear intellect working swiftly to practical results. About him were mathematical and scientific works, a bust of Newton on the mantel, and a portrait of Faraday on the wall, books and papers and memoranda on the table in order ready for use and reference. Here he read much and arranged his ideas. But when the time came for hard thinking, he would take to what he called his " working study " near the laboratories of his college. We have a description of him in that " sanctum sanctorum" — cigar in mouth, staring into the embers of the fire, intent on some subtle process going on iv his brain of analysis or calculation, or a mixture of both, until the formation of some definite conclusion, and then a few woids to the amanuensis waiting at the table to give the new idea shape. - Or it might be in the cabin of his yacht, the Lalla Rookk — on the voyage to a Mediterranean port or to Madeira — where, by the way, he first met his second wife — or in one of the lochs of the western highlands which he greatly loved to travel in , and in that cabin he always declared he could work better than anywhere else. His work in connection with submarine telegraphy had given him a taste for the sea which his profits enabled him to indulge to bis heart's content. We have no picture of him at his work among the ocean cables, but none is required to enable us to understand the leading position he speedily took in that connection. The history with which he was destined to be so conspicuously connected began without

him in 1845, when the " General Oceanic Company " was registered, and Messrs. Brett, Wollaston, and Reid laid down the first cable across the English Channel in the year 1850. This line, though successfully laid, was a complete failure, injured by a trawler, and not capable by reason of its weight and unhandiness of being lifted it was lost. But the experience had proved, by means of a few signals transmitted before the failure, the error of the prevailing belief, which was that the current of electricity would, when submerged, be dissipated in the water, notwithstanding the insulating covering of the conductor. These signals had also the effect of keeping alive the ten years' concession granted to the Messrs. Brett between England and France. In 1851 the well-known railway engineer, Crampton, fixed the type of cable — the general type of iron- wire-sheathed cable which has been, with modifications, in use ever since. A cable was made accordingly by the Gutta-percha Company, of a weight of seven tons to the mile, and laid successfully and proved everything that could have been desired. The next place to be tried w?s the Irish Channel, and after three failures Sir Charles Bright laid the famous cable between Poit Patrick and Donaghadee, settling the question for a longer distance and deeper water.

British capital and enterprise next gave cables to various places : among others, Sardinia and Corsica, Balaclava and Yarna — for the convenience of the alUes duri»g the Crimean war — 171 miles through an average depth of 100 fathoms. An attempt to cross the Mediterranean from Corsica to Algiers foiled about the same time — 600 miles of cable being lost in about 800 fathoms. But two cables were successfully laid between the Italian coast and Corsica. Cables were also laid between England ar>d Holland without much difficulty. Further trials in the Mediterranean were failures, but they accumulated experience of a valuable kind, in the matter of the machinery for paying out cable and the rate at which in deep water the r cable and the steamer paying it out should respectively run. Sardinia and Malta were put in connection, and Malta and Corfu.

But all this was not ocean telegraphy. None of the experiments threw any light on the distance question or the depth ; and besides very little was known of the depth of ?ny ocean. The first of these was engaging the attention of Professor Thomson.who, after many experiments and a thorough investigation, propounded the true theoryof the subject, namely, that the speed of communication through electric cables is in inverse ratio to the square of the cable's length. Having discovered the difficulty, one strong enough to forbid the laying of ocean cables entirely, the professor set himself with characteristic determination to overcome the same. With him a difficulty was always a thing made to be overcome. The problem was to enable currents to be sent through the long lengths required in unbroken circuit, and at a speed enabling messages to be passed quickly enough in succession to be profitable commercially. The obvious things to do were to improve the material used for cables, to select only copper of the best conductivity ,^and to invent a new signalling apparatus. The formula having warned the electricians that the current must be of the weakest, it was Thomson's care to provide a recording machine of the most sensitive. All these matters he eventually succeeded in arranging on the basis which proved the bridge which carried ocean telegraphy from failure to commercial success. At first, however, he had only succeeded with the third when the first attempt was made to lay an Atlantic cable. The first cable was laid in August, 1865, and it was in April of the same year that Professor Thomson had perfected and patented his galvanometer, an instrument of extreme delicacy adapted both for testing purposes, especially aboard ship during cable expeditions, and for receiving signals. This was a highly sensitive modification of Gauss and Weber's very heavily constructed reflecting telegraph of 1837. In virtue of its extreme sensitiveness it had the effect of materially reducing the length of time taken by a sufficient force of electricity reaching the further end, such as was capable of actuating the indicating apparatus. This was the fore-runner of what we now term the " mirror-speaking " instrument, and " may be said to have been the means of first rendering ocean telegraphy a fait accompli from an electrical and commercial point of view." The opinion is that of Sir Charles Bright, who more than any other engineer contributed to the establishment of submarine telegraphy, who, in fact, took the lead in the matter from the very beginning. His testimony on the subject is absolutely final, of course. The above fact will, Sir Charles goes on in his history of submarine telegraphy to state, be better appreciated when we remember that the best instrument contemporaneous with the Thomson mirror galvanometer could scarcely receive two words per minuts, where the working of the mirror was ten to twelve words, and with a subsequent improvement this was increased to a capacity of twenty per minute. Moreover, concludes Sir Charles, it required considerably less power. By this time the depth and character of the ocean bed between Ireland and Newfoundland had been ascertained. Instead of the certainties of 6000 and 7000 fathoms expected by most authorities on the subject, the depth was found by Lieutenant Berryman, U S.S. Arctic, and Captain Dayman, H.M.S. Cyclops, sounding with the apparatus of Lieutenant Brooks, of the U.S.A. navy, to vary gradually from 1700 ,to 2400 fathoms between the two places. The demonstration that the deep water — the 6000 fathoms above referred to — did not extend to the north as had been feared, was received with general satisfaction, and made the way of the projected Altantic cable easier considerably. The chief of the U.S.A. National observatory christened the tableland then discovered " Telegraph Plateau," and thus described the same : " The bed of the sea between Ireland and Newfoundland is a plateau, which seems to have been placed there especially for the purpose of holdng a submarine telegraph and of keeping it out of the way." The problem of submarine telegraphy still was confronted with the task of facing life under 1700 to 2400 fathoms. But it was shorn of three-fourths of its most formidable dangers. The soundings moreover demonstrated the ocean bottom to be smooth and soft, covered to ? certain depth with the shells of microscopic infusoria. There was no difficulty, it was clear, to' be anticipated from the ocean bed. As]to the' distances to be communicated through, they were the subject of experiments largely after

the suggestions of Thomson. The directors of these were for the most part Sir Charles Bright and Mr. E. Whitehouse. They had 2000 miles of land wires connected, and found that they could transmit " signals " (battery key contacts, producing single impulses) satisfactorily at the rate of 210, 241, and 270 a minute. These things led to the formation of a company in London for the promotion of Atlantic telegraphy . At the same time Mr. Cyrus Field and Professor Morse, who had been watching things from the other side of the Atlantic, managed to secure the monopoly of all the possible landing places on the American coast. The result was the formation of the first Atlantic telegraph company, by amalgamation of British and American effort. But there was a bad handicap in the shape of the term limit insisted on from the American side, which by imposing undue haste on the construction and fitting up, and on the planning of suitable gear and testing apparatus, led in reality to the failure of the first Atlantic cable laid. The two names that stand out pre-eminent amongthe list of leading shareholders are Pender and Thomson. Of these the former lived to become the great moving and controlling spirit of the majority of the cable systems of the world ; the second, by his ingenuity and perseverance made that profitable submarine telegraphy possible. It is hardly necessary to detail the history of the first cable that immediately followed. Enough that the British Government guaranteed a year to the enterprise and promised men-of-war for laying purposes, that the United States Government made similar promise of shipping co-operation, that was raised by the company, and that the cable was finally laid between Valentia Bay (Ireland) and Trinity Bay (Newfoundland) after one failure necessitating a delay of twelve months — by the U.S. frigate Niagara and H.M.S. Agamemnon, in August, 1858. The two ships steamed out each with half the cable on board to the middle of the Atlantic. Arrived there, they spliced the ends and sailed apart, paying out cable. The Niagara arrived at Trmity Bay on the 2nd of August, and the Agamemnon at Valentia Bay on the sth, on which day communication was established between the two countries. The Times said: "Since the discovery of Columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere of human activity." The excitement in Britain and America was tremendous. It was short-lived, for the communication thus established lasted only twenty days. Thomson, who had been present on the Agamemnon throughout the laying operations, and had conducted the testings and general electric work, had his reasons as to the cause. It was freely alleged that Mr. Whitehouse applied too much power and destroyed the cable. Thomson, however, declared that if the cable had been properly handled it would have done its work well enough. He leaned to the theory that weak joints were the real cause of the loss of current. The public mind was discouraged, for men jumped rapidly to the conclusion that the impossibility of cable communication over such long distances and at such depths had been demonstrated. There was a counsel of despair ; and advice to lay a cable at a few fathoms under the surface attached to buoys, which, besides floating the cable, would serve as places for tapping the current. We give an illustration of this proposal. Soon after the failure of the Atlantic cable the Red Sea, Aden, and East India cable was laid m three sections of about 1000 miles in all. Its success was confined to each section, and was only temporary, while there is no record of a message sent through the whole system. This cable proving as difficult to handle for repairing purposes as the Atlantic cable, had like it to be abandoned. Thus a million to million and a half sterling had disappeared, and there was nothing to show for the money but the demonstration of the possibility of laying and working a deep-sea cable ; to say nothing of the proved value of the messages sent. For example an expenditure of a few sovereigns saved the Government /50.000 in connection with the embarkation for Canada of certain regiments. For these reasons it was felt that the attempts to establish cables should be continued. But m the absence of specific information it was thought inadvisable to proceed without further consideration and study of the subject. Acting under the, advice of Professor Thomson the Government appointed a " Committee of Enquiry on the Construction of. Submarine Cables." The Committee took evidence from* all practical men and the scientists who had any experience of telegraphy and the handling of electric cables. It sat for nearly three years, l devoted its questions to the subjects of manufacture of cables and their material, their routes, the testing of them, the receiving and transmitting instruments used with them, the speed of signalling and other matters that had cropped up during the eventful trips of the cable-laying steamers. (To be continued).