Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And in our last episode,
Speaker 1: we started to talk about the history of subsea cables
Speaker 1: requests from Entris and subsea cables trace their history back
Speaker 1: to the olden days of telegraphic communication mid nineteen century,
Speaker 1: before the telephone, and way before stuff like fiber optics. Now,
Speaker 1: some early tests of undersea cables showed that while there
Speaker 1: were significant challenges to overcome, it could totally work. However,
Speaker 1: there were some peculiar issues that cropped up, especially as
Speaker 1: you worked with longer and longer subsea cables, and we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about that, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: follow up on that specific part. So one person who
Speaker 1: quantified this issue was William Thompson, later known as Lord Kelvin.
Speaker 1: He would be knighted and then made a member of
Speaker 1: the Peerage, largely for his contributions to telegraphy, and we
Speaker 1: talked about him a little bit in the last episode.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about him a lot more in this one.
Speaker 1: He had described the relationship of a signal speed passing
Speaker 1: through an undersea cable as being inversely proportional by the
Speaker 1: to the cable's length the square of the cable's length. Actually,
Speaker 1: he said that as the square of the length of
Speaker 1: the cable increases, for any given diameter of a core conductor,
Speaker 1: the speed of the signal passing through that conductor would decrease.
Speaker 1: Uh He had discovered that a conductive cable insulated by
Speaker 1: some sort of material like Gutta percha or later synthetic rubber.
Speaker 1: UH the surrounded by a conducting medium like saltwater acts
Speaker 1: as a type of condenser. Now we are not talking
Speaker 1: about the kind of condenser you find in an air
Speaker 1: conditioner or a refrigerator. Condenser in this sense means capacitor.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an old word for what we would
Speaker 1: call a capacitor today. And a capacitor stores electricity. It
Speaker 1: stores an electrostatic charge in an electric field, and it
Speaker 1: builds up this electrostatic charge and it can rapidly discharge
Speaker 1: under the right conditions. So a typical capacitor consists of
Speaker 1: a pair of conductive plates. They are separated by a
Speaker 1: non conducting substance we call dielectric. So if you want
Speaker 1: to think of it like a sandwich. The bread of
Speaker 1: our sandwich are a pair of metal plates, one of
Speaker 1: which has a positive charge, one which has a negative charge,
Speaker 1: and the filling in our sandwich is tasty, tasty, non
Speaker 1: conductive dielectric. So an electric terminal connext to each of
Speaker 1: those plates. So, like I said, you have a positive
Speaker 1: side and a negative side pause of a negative electric charge.
Speaker 1: In other words, so when you connect this to a battery,
Speaker 1: the negative plate builds up electrons, it has a stronger
Speaker 1: negative charge. The other plate loses electrons. It becomes positively charged.
Speaker 1: But the electrons from the negative plate cannot immediately pass
Speaker 1: to the positive plate. You know, they want to do
Speaker 1: that because opposite charges attract, so positive attracts negative. But
Speaker 1: because we have that crumby dielectric sandwich filling coming up
Speaker 1: the two plates, the electrons cannot make that journey, so
Speaker 1: they just keep accumulating and the negative charge on that
Speaker 1: plate continues to grow. Effectively, we're storing that electric charge
Speaker 1: in this capacitor. In fact, if we disconnect it from
Speaker 1: the battery, that electric charge will still be in that
Speaker 1: capacitor for a good long while, as long as you
Speaker 1: haven't created a way for it to discharge. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, it's not connected to any other kind of circuit.
Speaker 1: And this is why if you've ever seen a video
Speaker 1: of someone smashing up old you know, cafod ray tube,
Speaker 1: television or monitor, you might have seen some some sparks
Speaker 1: fly like almost like a little explosion. Well that's because
Speaker 1: there are powerful capacitors in these old monitors and they
Speaker 1: can still have a significant and harmful charge of electricity
Speaker 1: inside them because, like I said, capacitors store electricity. This
Speaker 1: is why it's a good idea to you know, not
Speaker 1: smash them. Anyway, let's get back to capacitors. So you
Speaker 1: got this capacitor and it's stored up an electric charge
Speaker 1: from a power source. But if you connect that capascitor
Speaker 1: to a circuit with a load on it, such as
Speaker 1: a flash bulb for a you know, a film camera,
Speaker 1: it allows the capacitor to release or you know, dump
Speaker 1: that entire electric charge all at once, you know, just
Speaker 1: in an instant. So you get this sudden electric discharge,
Speaker 1: which is useful for your applications, like having a flashbulb
Speaker 1: go off. You see, energy from a battery has this
Speaker 1: sort of ramping up situation. So if you had the
Speaker 1: flashbulb just attached to a switch with a battery attached,
Speaker 1: then the bulb would not go off as quickly. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't just go off in an instant It will come
Speaker 1: on slightly more gradually and turn off more gradually, and
Speaker 1: thus not be suitable for you to take a picture
Speaker 1: with like a film camera, where you want the aperture
Speaker 1: to have just the right amount of light exposure when
Speaker 1: it opens. And it might seem to us when you're
Speaker 1: using a battery that things are coming on instantly, are
Speaker 1: going off instantly, but when you're talking about super high
Speaker 1: speed applications, that really makes a difference. A capacitor makes
Speaker 1: it seem truly instantaneous to us. Anyway, the future Lord
Speaker 1: Kelvin was kind of sussing all this out, that these
Speaker 1: cables under the ocean can start to act like a
Speaker 1: capacitor and store up an electric charge which interferes with
Speaker 1: signals passing through. And he saw that subseat cables wouldn't
Speaker 1: behave the same way as terrestrial ones, would you know,
Speaker 1: the ones above the waves. With terrestrial cables, you didn't
Speaker 1: encounter the same issues of signal RETARDA is what they
Speaker 1: called it the signal being slowed down like they overland
Speaker 1: they weren't seeing this, but under the oceans they were.
Speaker 1: So he was advising engineers to consider this challenge and
Speaker 1: to find new ways to approach subsea cables to account
Speaker 1: for those differences. And one thing he advised was that
Speaker 1: the cable should be a large diameter core cable, in
Speaker 1: other words, thicker copper wires. He felt that a pure
Speaker 1: copper cable, like something as pure as you can make it,
Speaker 1: with a pretty thick diameter would reduce the electrical resistance
Speaker 1: of the cable, and he was right. But there were
Speaker 1: other people like Michael Faraday, another brilliant engineer, and Samuel
Speaker 1: Morse who was he was pretty sharp himself. They felt
Speaker 1: that the copper wire really needed to be very narrow,
Speaker 1: very thin, in order to reduce the effects of signal retardation.
Speaker 1: They felt that that by being isolated from the water,
Speaker 1: in other words, having it thinner and surrounded by more installation,
Speaker 1: that that would solve the problem. Now, Thompson had his
Speaker 1: own supporters, including another very important person on the team
Speaker 1: who were you know, figuring this stuff out. But the
Speaker 1: narrow cable also had lots of supporters, and perhaps more importantly,
Speaker 1: a narrow cable would represent a cheaper option because you
Speaker 1: needed less copper. Right, you weren't making as thick a
Speaker 1: copper wire. So I bet you can guess which one
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Telegraph Company went with. And now just a
Speaker 1: quick digression. One thing that the pandemic has really taught
Speaker 1: us today is that not everyone accepts scientific explanations as
Speaker 1: being realistic. And I do grant that the process of
Speaker 1: science means that you have to do lots of testing
Speaker 1: of hypotheses in order to see if they actually hold up.
Speaker 1: You can't just accept a hypothesis on the face of it,
Speaker 1: because sometimes we make hypotheses that are wrong. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: make some that are really wrong. But when we actually
Speaker 1: have tested them and they have stood those tests, we
Speaker 1: should be ready to accept those scientific results. C. Thompson
Speaker 1: was pretty thorough in his analysis, and others could have
Speaker 1: followed his lead and tested his findings themselves to their satisfaction,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really do that anyway. The reason I
Speaker 1: even say all this is Lord Kelvin's work wasn't immediately
Speaker 1: embraced by telegraphy companies because, for one thing, if he
Speaker 1: was right, it would mean that these companies would all
Speaker 1: have to spend way more money to make cables. Those
Speaker 1: cables would be far more expensive. Um. And there were
Speaker 1: some who just figured that all you really need to
Speaker 1: do was increase the voltage to sufficient levels to push
Speaker 1: a signal through a very long cable, and that would
Speaker 1: end up causing issues. Um. Just as a reminder, voltage
Speaker 1: in an electrical system is kind of like water pressure
Speaker 1: in a plumbing system. It's not how much electricity there is,
Speaker 1: rather the difference in positive to negative electric charge, or
Speaker 1: you know, you can think of it as how much
Speaker 1: ooth the electricity has behind it. So you can have
Speaker 1: high voltage with a low current, which means you're pushing
Speaker 1: out a tiny stream of electricity at incredible pressure. Or
Speaker 1: you can have low voltage but high current. In that
Speaker 1: case you're moving a lot of electricity but not with
Speaker 1: a whole lot of ooth behind it. Or you can
Speaker 1: have both voltage and current be high or low. But
Speaker 1: that's enough, because I talked about that in the previous episode.
Speaker 1: So while the Future Lord Kelvin was exploring the limitations
Speaker 1: of contemporary technology with regard to subsea cables, companies began
Speaker 1: to lay more of those subsea cables over relatively short distances,
Speaker 1: and because you know, Lord Kelvin's discoveries showed that we'd
Speaker 1: really only encounter significant limitations over great distances. Subsea cables
Speaker 1: worked good enough in most cases, though companies would have
Speaker 1: to replace them every couple of decades due to wear
Speaker 1: and tear. But well before all those replacements, in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen fifties, there was a growing interest in creating
Speaker 1: a cable long enough to connect Europe to North America. Now,
Speaker 1: this would be significantly longer than any subseed cable produced
Speaker 1: up to that point. One person in America who was
Speaker 1: really pushing for this was a businessman named Cyrus west Field.
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about engineers and scientists in these episodes,
Speaker 1: but we also have to remember that financiers and business
Speaker 1: folk are really important too, because you know, that's where
Speaker 1: the money comes from. So Field had made his fortune
Speaker 1: in the paper industry, uh, though not always smoothly. It
Speaker 1: took him a while to get there, but by his
Speaker 1: early thirties he was so wealthy that he decided to
Speaker 1: retire the rotten wats it anyway, he became interested in
Speaker 1: telegraphy and he joined a venture proposed by and English
Speaker 1: electrician Frederick in Gisborne, who was living in Canada and
Speaker 1: Gisborne wanted a cable that connected Newfoundland with Nova Scotia
Speaker 1: and to go across a body of water along the way.
Speaker 1: So Field helped secure investors and the cable had been
Speaker 1: designed and built and laid, though the project ended up
Speaker 1: taking much longer than Field had estimated due to the
Speaker 1: rugged terrain of Canada and the fact that Canada has
Speaker 1: a lot of natural dangers in it, such as bears, wolves,
Speaker 1: and tim Horton's but the cable's success convinced Field that
Speaker 1: a subsea cable connecting North America to Europe would be invaluable,
Speaker 1: particularly for business purposes, like if you have a partnership
Speaker 1: and you've got, you know, a partner in London and
Speaker 1: you were in New York, it would be really useful
Speaker 1: to be able to communicate with that person in near
Speaker 1: real time. So the route that seemed the most promising
Speaker 1: would be Newfoundland to Ireland. That was a distance that
Speaker 1: would equal somewhere between six hundred to two thousand miles.
Speaker 1: So Field attracted supporters and investors both in America and
Speaker 1: in England. Our Buddy Billy the Future, Lord Kelvin Thompson
Speaker 1: joined that project. Uh. Samuel Morris did as well. John
Speaker 1: Watkins Brett, who had overseen the first commercial subsea connection
Speaker 1: between Dover, England and Calais, France, which we talked about
Speaker 1: in the last episode. Uh, he also was part of
Speaker 1: this endeavor. And Field brought on a British surgeon with
Speaker 1: the amazing name Edward Orange Wildman white House to serve
Speaker 1: as chief electrician. And you might think, huh, that's weird
Speaker 1: bringing a surgeon in to act in that capacity. Pun intended.
Speaker 1: But this was a time when the fields of medicine
Speaker 1: and science we're pretty darn mixed. Like you had engineers
Speaker 1: whould become the positions and physicians who become an engineers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And we were just starting to see people begin to
Speaker 1: specialize in specific fields. Also, how do you say no
Speaker 1: to a guy named wild Man? So the project got
Speaker 1: started around eight fifty four, but it would take years
Speaker 1: of work before the cable would be built, let alone deployed.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the Atlantic Telegraph Company really needed to
Speaker 1: find a good route to avoid issues with the c floor.
Speaker 1: They knew they wanted to go from Newfoundland to Ireland.
Speaker 1: But they need to plot the exact course. Now, there
Speaker 1: was no way to send signals down through the water,
Speaker 1: to bounce off the cea floor and come back up
Speaker 1: and give us kind of a map of what the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean looked like, which meant that you
Speaker 1: had to do things in a much more low tech way.
Speaker 1: That way involved a heavy weight on a rope. You know,
Speaker 1: you might use something like a cannon ball, and you
Speaker 1: would need a really long rope, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of miles long at least, and you would typically mark
Speaker 1: off links of the rope so that way you can
Speaker 1: see how deep the ocean is at any given point
Speaker 1: by plopping the weight over the side of the boat,
Speaker 1: letting it sink all the way to the bottom, and
Speaker 1: then reading off where on the water line the rope.
Speaker 1: It's like like, where on the rope is the waterline?
Speaker 1: Is what I really meant to say. And you would
Speaker 1: need to do that many times as you went down
Speaker 1: your proposed path, because what if the depth increases or decreases.
Speaker 1: So using this method, ship Cruise found a route that
Speaker 1: was at a depth of around two miles from the surface,
Speaker 1: with a relatively flat seabed, and that was chosen to
Speaker 1: be the site for the cable between Newfoundland and Ireland.
Speaker 1: The cable would rest against the seabed without risk of
Speaker 1: rubbing against like craggy rocks and breaking apart, and the
Speaker 1: cable's design meant that it would be heavy enough to
Speaker 1: sink down on its own without the need for additional weights.
Speaker 1: Wildman designed the cable, which had seven copper wires in
Speaker 1: it to carry signals that were kind of UH coiled together.
Speaker 1: The wires were insulated by a triple layer of gutta percha. Now,
Speaker 1: in case you don't remember what that is, I talked
Speaker 1: about in the previous episode. That was an extract from
Speaker 1: a plant that had the same name, and the extract
Speaker 1: could be heated to be made pliable and then would
Speaker 1: behave pretty much like rubber does UH. And that meant
Speaker 1: that it was also an electrical insulator. So the wires
Speaker 1: and gutta percha were nearly half an inch in diameter. UH.
Speaker 1: This core of the cable would then't have a layer
Speaker 1: of yarn soaked in tar, beeswax and other materials wrapped
Speaker 1: around it, which added thickness and stability to the cable,
Speaker 1: protecting the copper from damage, and then would come the armor,
Speaker 1: which was made up of a weave of seven iron
Speaker 1: wires uh the core of the cable weighed one seven
Speaker 1: pounds per nautical mile. This was about a quarter of
Speaker 1: the weight that William Thompson had recommended. But the fully
Speaker 1: armored cable is weight, you know, once it had the
Speaker 1: iron sheath on it. That was a ton for every
Speaker 1: mile of cable, and the route chosen was about six
Speaker 1: miles long. At the cable was about half an inch
Speaker 1: in diameter total at five eighths of an inch. By
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty seven, the cable was ready. The United States
Speaker 1: and UK governments each supplied a steam powered ship for
Speaker 1: the purpose of laying the cable, and the American ship
Speaker 1: was called the Niagara. The British ship was called the Agamemnon.
Speaker 1: Each ship would carry half the length of the cable.
Speaker 1: Is too much cable for one ship to carry At
Speaker 1: that point, there was some disagreement over how this should
Speaker 1: be done and how to join the two lengths of
Speaker 1: cable together. One of the project's leaders, an engineer named
Speaker 1: Charles Tilston Bright, who was one of you know, William
Speaker 1: Thompson's allies. One of the people who sided with Lord
Speaker 1: Kelvin about what the cable should be like. He said
Speaker 1: that what they should do is send the two ships
Speaker 1: to sail to the middle of the Atlantic, join the
Speaker 1: ends of the length of cable together to make one
Speaker 1: single cable, and then have one ship sailed to the east,
Speaker 1: which would be toward Ireland, and one ship sailed to
Speaker 1: the west towards Newfoundland, and that they just bring the
Speaker 1: whole length of the cable out to the end destinations.
Speaker 1: The two ships could remain in contact with each other
Speaker 1: because they could send signals over that cable. They could
Speaker 1: connect those to their instrumentation and actually send electric signals
Speaker 1: from one ship to the other to make sure that
Speaker 1: everything was working correctly. But the rest of the project
Speaker 1: did not really like this um They felt that this
Speaker 1: was not the best way to do it. You know.
Speaker 1: Bright was saying, Hey, if we do it this way,
Speaker 1: then each ship is spending half the amount of time
Speaker 1: out in the ocean once we start. That reduces the
Speaker 1: chance that we run into bad weather. They said, no,
Speaker 1: that sounds too risky. We would rather start in Ireland,
Speaker 1: have both ships go across the ocean, and when the
Speaker 1: length of cable runs out for ship number one. Ship
Speaker 1: number two will splice the end of its cable to
Speaker 1: that one and continue the rest of the way to Newfoundland.
Speaker 1: So in the summer of eighteen fifty seven, numerous barges
Speaker 1: transported the lengths of cable to these two ships, and
Speaker 1: once loaded, each coil of cable measured twelve feet high
Speaker 1: and forty ft in diameter. And the plan was for
Speaker 1: Niagara to go ahead and lay the first half of
Speaker 1: the cable, with Agamemnon following with the second half, and
Speaker 1: once Niagara would reach the end of its cable supply,
Speaker 1: that's where they would splice it all together. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't work out that way in eighteen fifty seven. And
Speaker 1: I'll explain more if we come back from this break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we had the Niagara and the Agamemnon, but those would
Speaker 1: not be the only ships involved in this little project.
Speaker 1: There were also support ships. There was the HMS Advice,
Speaker 1: the HMS Willing Mind, and the HMS Cyclops. There were
Speaker 1: also two escort ships, the u s S Susquehanna and
Speaker 1: the HMS Leopard. They all set sail to lay the
Speaker 1: cable on August eightifty seven and right away, there were problems.
Speaker 1: So the first segment of the cable was the shore cable.
Speaker 1: This was a shorter length that wasn't the full subsea cable.
Speaker 1: This was the version of the cable that was to
Speaker 1: lay close to the shore, thus called the shore cable.
Speaker 1: It was more heavily armored because it was going to
Speaker 1: be subjected to more wave action and potentially rub up
Speaker 1: against stuff like rocks. Plus there was always the danger
Speaker 1: of a ship anchor snagging the cable, so they wanted
Speaker 1: it to be very heavily armored. But before Niagara could
Speaker 1: even go five miles, the thicker part of the cable,
Speaker 1: this shore cable, caught up in the machinery that was
Speaker 1: used to feed the cable out into the ocean, and
Speaker 1: the cable broke. Now, the crew of the Willing Mind,
Speaker 1: which sounds like kind of an HP Lovecraft story, they
Speaker 1: were able to retrieve the end of the snapped cable
Speaker 1: under the sea, and the crew of the Niagara was
Speaker 1: able to splice it back into place um and so
Speaker 1: they were able to repair the cable and try again.
Speaker 1: Uh they were able to lay the rest of the
Speaker 1: shore cable segment without further incident, and then they spliced
Speaker 1: the end of the shore cable to the length of
Speaker 1: the sub sea cable, the the main cable they were carrying.
Speaker 1: So now, over the next several days, everything worked pretty
Speaker 1: much as planned. Uh, I mean there were some drawbacks.
Speaker 1: Samuel Morris, who was on board the Niagara, got terribly
Speaker 1: sea sick and so he was pretty much incapacitated. But
Speaker 1: the other members, including William Thompson, they were fine, and
Speaker 1: they remained in contact with wild Man white House, who
Speaker 1: remained back in Ireland, using the cable to send signals
Speaker 1: even as they were you know, spooling it into the ocean. Now,
Speaker 1: I said that things worked more or less his planned,
Speaker 1: But but that's smoothing over some stuff that was pretty tricky.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the machine that was spooling out the
Speaker 1: cable had a grooved wheel kind of like a pulley,
Speaker 1: and the cable fit into this groove to be fed
Speaker 1: out into the ocean. But sometimes the cable would slip
Speaker 1: off the wheel. That meant that they had to stop
Speaker 1: in order to you know, get the cable back on
Speaker 1: the wheel to get it back in place. Also, the cable,
Speaker 1: if you remember, had a layer of yarn soaked in tar.
Speaker 1: Some of that tar would occasionally seep outside of the
Speaker 1: cable and get on the wheel, so they would have
Speaker 1: to stop occasionally in order to clean the wheel off,
Speaker 1: because otherwise the cable was sticking to it, so that
Speaker 1: also made things a little slow. On August eleven, eighty seven,
Speaker 1: the Niagara's crew ran into a serious problem. Now, the
Speaker 1: intent was to lay the cable down at the same
Speaker 1: rate of speed as the ship's movement, but several days
Speaker 1: after Niagara had, you know, started this run, they noticed
Speaker 1: that the cable was starting to feed out faster than
Speaker 1: the ship was moving. So, in other words, they were
Speaker 1: they were putting too much cable into the ocean as
Speaker 1: they were going along, which could potentially mean that the
Speaker 1: ship would run out of its length of cable too early,
Speaker 1: and that there was a chance that the cable wouldn't
Speaker 1: reach all the way across the Atlantic, kind of like
Speaker 1: an extension cord that's just a foot too short for
Speaker 1: doing whatever it is you planned on doing. Now, the
Speaker 1: Niagara's crew hit the brakes on the machine that was
Speaker 1: feeding the cable out into the ocean on this spinning wheel,
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you want to imagine it,
Speaker 1: and the weight of the cable was such that the
Speaker 1: cable's tensile strength couldn't match the weight of the cable itself,
Speaker 1: and uh Niagara was in the low point of a
Speaker 1: wave when the brakes had engaged. But then, obviously waves
Speaker 1: have troughs and they also have crests. So as the
Speaker 1: wave was crusting and Niagara went up the wheel had
Speaker 1: its brakes on, it wasn't going to move at all,
Speaker 1: and that amazing amount of tension on the cable was
Speaker 1: enough to make it snap. The machines brakes should have
Speaker 1: released automatically once a certain amount of tension was achieved,
Speaker 1: but it failed to do so, so there is no
Speaker 1: salvaging the lost cable. It was a couple of miles
Speaker 1: down on the ocean floor. The first attempt of laying
Speaker 1: the Transatlantic telegraph cable was just a failure, but from
Speaker 1: failure comes lessons learned, and the team was determined to
Speaker 1: try again the following year. So joining the project at
Speaker 1: this point was William Everett, now the chief engineer for
Speaker 1: the expedition. Everett went to work designing a new machine
Speaker 1: to feed out the cable to the ocean. He created
Speaker 1: a new breaking system to avoid making the same mistakes
Speaker 1: as the eighteen fifty seven voyage, and in that year,
Speaker 1: between two attempts, William Thompson, the future Lord Kelvin, would
Speaker 1: create a sensitive instrument designed to detect electrical currents, even
Speaker 1: a very weak electrical current, for example, the kind of
Speaker 1: current that might pass through a very long cable that's
Speaker 1: under the water. This was his mirrored galvanometer. Uh and
Speaker 1: you might wonder what the heck is a galvanometer? Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's consider for a moment how the European telegraph
Speaker 1: machines work. They had pharro magnetic needles, So passing a
Speaker 1: current through an electro magnet would create a magnetic field
Speaker 1: that would attract the needles and make them deflect from
Speaker 1: their normal orientation. The strength of that magnetic poll would
Speaker 1: determine how much the needles would deflect. But what if
Speaker 1: you have a very weak signal? Well, Thompson wanted to
Speaker 1: create a device that was more sensitive and capable of
Speaker 1: detecting those very very weak signals that would pass through
Speaker 1: a transit lane cable. His approach was truly ingenious. He
Speaker 1: created a housing that held a coil of conductive wire,
Speaker 1: with the coil held in a horizontal orientation. So if
Speaker 1: you're thinking, think of like, you know, a spring, but
Speaker 1: you're holding the spring horizontally, you know, left to right.
Speaker 1: And from this coil he suspended a small mirror using
Speaker 1: some silk thread so that the mirror would hang in
Speaker 1: the middle of the coil. And attached to the mirror
Speaker 1: were permanent magnets, so when a current passed through the coil,
Speaker 1: it would create a magnetic field that would either attract
Speaker 1: or repulse the permanent magnet, turning the mirror slightly, having
Speaker 1: it tilt a bit. Now that's one half of the gadget.
Speaker 1: You would have that set up on, say a nice
Speaker 1: sturdy desk. Across from that you would have the other half,
Speaker 1: which was a calibrated scale that would be facing the
Speaker 1: mirror of the first half. So the mirror is pointing
Speaker 1: back at the scale, and behind the scale he put
Speaker 1: an oil lamp. Now the scale above where the actual
Speaker 1: calibrated scale was. But you know, set in a little
Speaker 1: panel of wood, was a narrow aperture, so the lamp
Speaker 1: is behind this right, think of like almost like a cabinet.
Speaker 1: The lamp is behind the cabinet, but you have this
Speaker 1: very narrow aperture. So some light can go through, kind
Speaker 1: of like a crack in a door. So light is
Speaker 1: passing through this aperture. The light would come through, hit
Speaker 1: the mirror, the mirror would reflect the light, and the
Speaker 1: light would get reflected onto the calibrated scale. So think
Speaker 1: of almost like a ruler, and you have this thin
Speaker 1: ray of light essentially hitting the ruler on a specific point.
Speaker 1: If a current were to pass through the coil, it
Speaker 1: would cause the mirror to shift a bit. And that
Speaker 1: was Thompson's genius because it created a system. And when
Speaker 1: a telegraph operator sending a dot in Morse code would
Speaker 1: cause the mirror to tilt one way, so you would
Speaker 1: see the light shine like let's say our argument's sake
Speaker 1: a little to the left of where it's resting position was,
Speaker 1: and a dash would make it go the other way,
Speaker 1: so now you would see the light move over to
Speaker 1: the right of its normal rest position. It was very
Speaker 1: very sensitive, so even weak signals would cause the mirror
Speaker 1: to shift a bit, and if you were just paying
Speaker 1: attention to the light, you could see what someone on
Speaker 1: the other end was sending through, what sort of signals
Speaker 1: they were sending through. It would become incredibly important because again,
Speaker 1: those signals once they went from you know, one coast
Speaker 1: to the other, pretty darn weak. Now in the summer
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty eight, the second expedition was ready to
Speaker 1: try and once again they would rely on the agamem
Speaker 1: Non and the Niagara. And this time they decided to
Speaker 1: go with Bright's plan. That is, they were going to
Speaker 1: start in the middle of the Atlantic. They would join
Speaker 1: the ends of the cables of the two ships together,
Speaker 1: and then they would lay the cables out as Niagara
Speaker 1: headed to Newfoundland and Agamemnon headed to Ireland. They met
Speaker 1: at approximately fifty two degrees north thirty three degrees west
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Atlantic. It's more precise than that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to go through the entire coordinates anyway,
Speaker 1: Just getting to that location was rough. The weather had
Speaker 1: turned as the ships headed to the middle of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and at one point Agamemnon was actually pushed two hundred
Speaker 1: miles off course due to the weather. Forty five crew
Speaker 1: members were injured during the passage because the ships were
Speaker 1: kind of pitched back and forth, and you know, they
Speaker 1: had this massive heavy coil on board the ship. But
Speaker 1: fortunately no hands were lost On June, the two ships
Speaker 1: met at the appointed spot and they spliced the cable
Speaker 1: together and then they set off and for about one
Speaker 1: kilometers the two ships were able to stay in contact
Speaker 1: by sending messages through the joined cable. But then both
Speaker 1: ships reported a failure in the line, and both crews
Speaker 1: assumed that the problem had to be on the other ship.
Speaker 1: Like that, Niagara was saying, ha, something's happened on the Agammemnon,
Speaker 1: and the people on the agam m Now we're saying,
Speaker 1: those yokels over at Niagara have totally mucked it up.
Speaker 1: So they both returned to the origin point where they
Speaker 1: first met, in the middle of the Atlantic, and then
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, we're burning daylight, so let's
Speaker 1: just cut the cable. So it was like a hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers worth a cable that they cut, and they spliced
Speaker 1: together again. They made a new splice and started off
Speaker 1: second time. This time the Agammemnon ran into some problems
Speaker 1: with the cable snapping. After the ships were hundreds of
Speaker 1: kilometers apart from each other, the two ships both headed
Speaker 1: back to Ireland and it looked like the project was doomed,
Speaker 1: except Cyrus Westfield, the businessman and optimists, and Anglo File
Speaker 1: convinced his partners to keep trying, and so on July
Speaker 1: fifty eight they went for it yet again. And I
Speaker 1: guess the third time was the charm, because this time
Speaker 1: the ships were able to lay the cable in fair weather.
Speaker 1: Niagara reached Newfoundland with the cable intact on August four,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight, and the Agamemnon made it to Ireland
Speaker 1: with its cable still working on August five, eight. So
Speaker 1: on August ten, operators sent some test messages across the cable,
Speaker 1: and by gum it worked. Europe was now connected via
Speaker 1: wire to North America. The signals took a long time
Speaker 1: to cross because the issues with induction on the ocean
Speaker 1: floor were significant and the signal was quite weak, but
Speaker 1: it was detectable thanks to Thompson's galvanometer. Now, when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll talk a bit about a very special
Speaker 1: message sent across that cable, but first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break, Okay. On August six, eighteen fifty eight, we
Speaker 1: had an historic first. Queen Victoria, Regent of the United Kingdom,
Speaker 1: sent a telegraph message to US President James Buchanan, and
Speaker 1: it said, Dear Jimmy BRIT's rule Americans drul love Vicky. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. It didn't say that. It said, quote to
Speaker 1: the President of the United States, Washington, the Queen desires
Speaker 1: to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this
Speaker 1: great international work. So then U. Buchanan reply back with quote,
Speaker 1: may the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven proved
Speaker 1: to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between
Speaker 1: the kindred nations, and an instrument designed by Divine Providence
Speaker 1: to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world
Speaker 1: end quote. So this was a huge deal. Okay, Like,
Speaker 1: it's very hard for us to put this in the
Speaker 1: context because in our world, instantaneous communication is the norm.
Speaker 1: We can even chat with astronauts aboard the space station,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty incredible. But back then this was truly monumental,
Speaker 1: and there were huge celebrations to commemorate the event. Things
Speaker 1: got pretty rowdy, so much so that City Hall in
Speaker 1: New York City got set on fire, not on purpose,
Speaker 1: I should add, this actually happened because of some fireworks
Speaker 1: that went off. Course, the Atlantic Telegraph Company saw a
Speaker 1: huge surge of investments because now we suddenly had a
Speaker 1: connection between Europe and North America. Charles Bright received a
Speaker 1: knighthood for his work on the project, and the crews
Speaker 1: didn't need to use the full length of cable they
Speaker 1: had on hand. They had some left over, so the
Speaker 1: America's side, the Niagara side, those leftovers became sought after keepsakes.
Speaker 1: So the famous jewelry company Tiffany and Company purchased the
Speaker 1: excess cable and chopped it up into ten centimeter lengths
Speaker 1: and sold it off at fifty cents a pop as
Speaker 1: souvenirs because capitalism. Alright, So the cable had been laid
Speaker 1: and a few messages have been sent across it, but
Speaker 1: the signal was pretty weak, and what's worse, it was
Speaker 1: growing weaker. So Wildman white House, you know, the chief
Speaker 1: electrician for this project, decided to go all Tim Allen
Speaker 1: on the cable and he called for more power. He
Speaker 1: wanted to increase the voltage across the cable to try
Speaker 1: and push signals through and overcome the electrical resistance, pushing
Speaker 1: it to somewhere around two thousand volts, which was a
Speaker 1: tremendous voltage at the time. So he really wanted to
Speaker 1: try and overcome the problems that William Thompson had been
Speaker 1: warning everyone about for the last couple of years. But remember,
Speaker 1: the company had decided to go with the thin wire
Speaker 1: design that Michael Faraday and Samuel Morris had proposed, and
Speaker 1: you know, Wildman white House was also part of that group.
Speaker 1: He was also of the opinion that the narrow where
Speaker 1: wires were the way to go. Now we cannot be
Speaker 1: certain what ultimately caused this cable to fail just a
Speaker 1: few weeks after it was connected, because I did happen,
Speaker 1: But the contemporaries at the time blamed white House. They
Speaker 1: said that the increased voltage across the line led to
Speaker 1: the cable essentially melting through its installation, and once that happened,
Speaker 1: enough of the cable lost its signal to the salty
Speaker 1: water around it. So, in other words, white House would
Speaker 1: take the fall for the failure of the cable. Now
Speaker 1: do I think he was responsible, I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 1: I figure he's probably at least partly to blame because
Speaker 1: he seemed to think that the stage was the solution
Speaker 1: to any transmission problem. You know, just use enough voltage
Speaker 1: and you can force your way through any obstacle, and
Speaker 1: since he sided with Faraday and Morris, it did mean
Speaker 1: that the cable had a much higher electrical resistance to
Speaker 1: overcome than what Thompson was suggesting. However, there is a
Speaker 1: historian named Donard de Coogan who investigated this matter in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and he examined some retrieved cable that
Speaker 1: was to be used on the project and noted that
Speaker 1: the manufacture of the cable itself was not great. In
Speaker 1: other words, he was saying that the quality of the
Speaker 1: cable was rather faulty and might have contributed to the failure.
Speaker 1: He said the core of the cable was not uniformly
Speaker 1: in the center of the insulator, so like your copper
Speaker 1: wire wasn't in the center of the cable the way
Speaker 1: it should have been, and that at some points along
Speaker 1: the length of the cable it was really close to
Speaker 1: the iron armor, so if the copper and the iron
Speaker 1: were to touch, that would be almost like a short circuit.
Speaker 1: He also noted that the Gutta purchase installation had likely
Speaker 1: deteriorated over the months between eighteen fifty seven when uh
Speaker 1: the unused cable. After after it snapped, crews returned with
Speaker 1: the unused cable, and they put it in storage, and
Speaker 1: they used that same cable for the eighteen fifty eight expedition.
Speaker 1: Sod Cogan said, it's quite possible that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of deterioration within that year, that they didn't store
Speaker 1: it properly, and that the the installation began to kind
Speaker 1: of rought away from the copper. So the cable's usefulness
Speaker 1: was likely limited from the get go, whether you put
Speaker 1: more voltage through it or not. I think there's probably
Speaker 1: a mixture of these two explanations going on here. That
Speaker 1: white House was partly to blame, but the construction and
Speaker 1: storage of the cable probably contributed to its failure as well.
Speaker 1: And my guess is that no matter what, the cable
Speaker 1: would have ultimately failed before a year had passed. But
Speaker 1: the nice thing about having a person to point to
Speaker 1: and say that's the guy who fouled it all up
Speaker 1: is that the rest of the partners for the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Telegraph Company were able to find more investors to do
Speaker 1: the whole darned thing over again. You know, they had
Speaker 1: proven that the cable actually worked, It could connect Europe
Speaker 1: and North America. It was definitely possible. They just needed
Speaker 1: to make some improvements so that it would work beyond
Speaker 1: just a couple of months. Fun side fact, the failure
Speaker 1: of the cable ended up being a big blow to
Speaker 1: Tiffany and Company because they had bought all that excess
Speaker 1: cable and then chopped it up to sell it as souvenirs.
Speaker 1: But no one was really eager to buy a length
Speaker 1: of cable for a cable that stopped working just a
Speaker 1: few weeks after it went live, what say. So a
Speaker 1: lot of those pieces of cable ended up just finding
Speaker 1: their ways into all sorts of different you know, warehouses
Speaker 1: and collections and stuff. You can still occasionally find it today,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. But yeah, um it was.
Speaker 1: It was not not the big financial windfall that Tiffany
Speaker 1: and Company expected it to be. Following the eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight failure, the Atlantic Telegraph Company took several years before
Speaker 1: making another attempt, and part of that was because the
Speaker 1: British government was conducting a thorough inquiry into the affair.
Speaker 1: Uh this gave Charles Bright and William Thompson plenty of
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk about their discoveries with regard to electrical
Speaker 1: transmissions across great distances through undersea cables, and the inquiry
Speaker 1: committee found those explanations to be really compelling, and so
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Telegraph Company would defer to Thompson and Bright's
Speaker 1: recommendations for the design of the next cable. So Thompson's
Speaker 1: design would be much more expensive because he was calling
Speaker 1: for the purest copper that they could get hold of,
Speaker 1: and to make thicker copper wires seven of them. Again,
Speaker 1: he also called for better installation and had suggested as
Speaker 1: to the amount needed of insulation to copper in order
Speaker 1: to really give significant protection to the copper wires at
Speaker 1: the core. The company named Thompson an electrical consultant. Now,
Speaker 1: he didn't possess direct authority over any of the project.
Speaker 1: It's not like he could send out directive commands to
Speaker 1: the engineers who were working on building the cable. However,
Speaker 1: he could make recommendations to the A. T. C. And
Speaker 1: the company could then take those suggestions seriously, and they did,
Speaker 1: and they became an important part for the next expedition.
Speaker 1: This one would not take place until eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: probably for a few reasons. I mean, between eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight and eighteen sixty five, the United States had a
Speaker 1: little Civil War, so that probably was a deterrent to
Speaker 1: giving a transatlantic cable laid while you're also link with
Speaker 1: a war you know, going on within one of the countries. Um,
Speaker 1: But it also just took time to re engineer things.
Speaker 1: The new cable would have seven copper wires of greater
Speaker 1: diameter than the eight fifty eight version. They were insulated
Speaker 1: with four layers of gutta percha as well as some
Speaker 1: other stuff that made up the outside layer of of insulation.
Speaker 1: The main length of cable had an armored sheath of
Speaker 1: ten wires, uh the shore end cables had an additional
Speaker 1: layer of twelve triple stranded iron wires to add heavier
Speaker 1: armor for near the shore. A company called Telegraph Construction
Speaker 1: and Maintenance made the cable, and another company called Webster
Speaker 1: and Horsefull provided the iron wires for the armoring. This
Speaker 1: time it would be a single ship, a big steamship
Speaker 1: called the Great Eastern that was used to lay the cable,
Speaker 1: and it would carry the entire length, so there was
Speaker 1: no need for a second cable ship. The Great Eastern
Speaker 1: left in the spring of eighteen sixty five from Ireland. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: after traveling hundreds of miles and getting past the midway
Speaker 1: point in the Atlantic. As they were feeding out the cable,
Speaker 1: it snapped. This still was not the end of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Telegraph Company's attempts. The company planned once again to
Speaker 1: try and connect Europe with North America, and they would
Speaker 1: do this in eighteen sixties six. Samuel Canning, an engineer
Speaker 1: who had been part of all the previous expeditions, was
Speaker 1: named the leader, the engineering leader for this project, and
Speaker 1: it was July eighteen sixty six to lay out a
Speaker 1: new cable. The Great Eastern took its journey. The cable held.
Speaker 1: It took two weeks for the Great Eastern to cross
Speaker 1: the ocean, but on July the Great Eastern arrived at
Speaker 1: Heart's Content, Newfoundland. But that wasn't all. They weren't going
Speaker 1: to rest on their laurels having successfully connected North America
Speaker 1: to Europe with another stronger telegraph cable. No, they had
Speaker 1: even more planned. I'll explain after this last break. So
Speaker 1: the Great Eastern set sail. You say, set sail, it's
Speaker 1: a steamship. I guess you do. It set sail again
Speaker 1: on August nine, eighteen sixty six, and it headed back
Speaker 1: to the point in the Atlantic Ocean where the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five cable had snapped. The previous crew on the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five expedition had actually marked the location of
Speaker 1: the snap with a buoy. They had anchored a buoy
Speaker 1: at that spot. So the Great Eastern found the buoy
Speaker 1: and several ships took art in an effort to define
Speaker 1: where the line was. They used you know, soundings to
Speaker 1: try and seek out where the line was along the
Speaker 1: sea floor, and they marked the path with more buoys.
Speaker 1: The Great Eastern tried to hook the eight six cable,
Speaker 1: and hooking meant using a very large grapnel kind of
Speaker 1: like what you see in spy movies where people are
Speaker 1: throwing a grapple up the like a grappling hook up
Speaker 1: a wall so that they can scale it. Same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, only way bigger and way more heavy duty.
Speaker 1: And attached to this was a rope or line that
Speaker 1: measured six and a half inches in circumference. The rope
Speaker 1: was made out of iron and twisted hemp, so not
Speaker 1: just a you know, a rope made out of rope,
Speaker 1: It was a rope made of iron as well. It
Speaker 1: had to be super strong to carry the immense weight
Speaker 1: of the cable should they hook it. And this one
Speaker 1: was rated to carry up to thirty The rope was
Speaker 1: wound around a drum connected to a steam powered winch.
Speaker 1: And because they were anticipating that they would be pulling
Speaker 1: a weight of several tons, the winch had to be
Speaker 1: a real monster, and that that engine to turn it
Speaker 1: also had to be And the idea was to lower
Speaker 1: the grapnel down to the sea floor and then drag
Speaker 1: it slowly across the sea floor in an attempt to
Speaker 1: snag the cable. Now, how would you know if you
Speaker 1: got a quote unquote bite. Well, an engineer monitored a dynamometer.
Speaker 1: Now these days, a dynamometer measures engine torqu and r
Speaker 1: p m s. In the original days of dynamometers from
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, they were meant to measure muscle output,
Speaker 1: so like actual human or animal muscle output. But at
Speaker 1: this point we're talking about steam engine dynamometers, and they
Speaker 1: measured steam pressure inside engine cylinders. I'll read a description
Speaker 1: of much a device. This comes from the Victorian collections.
Speaker 1: They actually have one in their collection, and here's the description. Quote.
Speaker 1: It has an oscillating recording drum with vertical silver clip
Speaker 1: attached for holding paper in place around the drum. The
Speaker 1: drum oscillates left to right. There is a pulley attached
Speaker 1: to a length of cord which is attached to the drum.
Speaker 1: Beside the drum is a fine metal arm vertically adjustable
Speaker 1: small hole in the end to hold a pencil end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: whether the one aboard the Great Eastern resembled the one
Speaker 1: that's in the Victorian collections, I don't know. I have
Speaker 1: no clue if it does or not, nor do I
Speaker 1: actually fully understand the working mechanism of this device. I
Speaker 1: almost started to look into it, but then I figured
Speaker 1: I've done enough tangents for this episode already, so we'll
Speaker 1: just say that this was acting like you know, when
Speaker 1: you cast a fishing line and you've got that little
Speaker 1: bobber on the surface of the water, and you watch
Speaker 1: the bobber and when you see the bobber jiggle around,
Speaker 1: you know you've got a bite. Same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: except you're looking at an indicator, and when you see
Speaker 1: that there's an indication that the engines having to work harder,
Speaker 1: like the pressure is increasing. You can, you know, deduce
Speaker 1: the reason why the engines having to work harder is
Speaker 1: because it's pulling more weight. It's snagged that cable. It
Speaker 1: took two weeks of attempts to do this, but they
Speaker 1: finally succeeded. They actually partially succeeded a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but they lost the grip on the cable, but they
Speaker 1: kept at it, and after two weeks they finally got it.
Speaker 1: They pulled the end of the cable aboard the Great
Speaker 1: Eastern and they brought that end to the ship's instrument room,
Speaker 1: and there they connected it to a signaling device. So
Speaker 1: they sent a signal over the cable back to Ireland,
Speaker 1: and then they waited and after a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: they received an answer. So the cable was still operational
Speaker 1: even after being under the ocean for a year, and
Speaker 1: because it still worked, it meant the crew could splice
Speaker 1: some new cable to the end of the snapped one. Actually,
Speaker 1: technically the new cable was unused cable from eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: It was the amount that had remained on board after
Speaker 1: the cable had initially snapped. So they repaired the cable
Speaker 1: and they laid it again, and they returned to Heart's Content.
Speaker 1: So this meant that in eighteen sixty six the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Telegraph Company successfully laid not one but two transatlantic cables.
Speaker 1: So this was a huge success. The investment in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five was no longer a literal sunken cost, like
Speaker 1: people have pretty much written that one off, But now
Speaker 1: it was actually working. So the thing that they had
Speaker 1: funded a year ago was now actually operational, and it
Speaker 1: meant that they had twice the signaling capacity as they
Speaker 1: did before. Like if eighteen sixty five had been successful,
Speaker 1: then they would have done the eighteen sixty six expedition
Speaker 1: and they would have had half the capacity. Now they
Speaker 1: had twice what they had planned. So the eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: six cable was actually a huge improvement over the one
Speaker 1: that they laid in eighteen fifty eight, the one that
Speaker 1: only worked for a few weeks. The transmission speed on
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifty eight line was painfully slow. Seems like
Speaker 1: it's an understatement. It took two minutes for a single
Speaker 1: character in Morse code to transmit from one side to
Speaker 1: the other. Two minutes just for one letter or number.
Speaker 1: So when Queen vic sent that message to Jimmy the Buke,
Speaker 1: it took about sixties seven minutes to just send that
Speaker 1: one message. I read earlier, but the eighteen sixties six
Speaker 1: cable could carry eight whole words per minute, not characters.
Speaker 1: I'm talking words now. Yes, this was still incredibly slow,
Speaker 1: but at least could be practical compared to the eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight version. But then considering that the alternative was
Speaker 1: to take a two week journey on a steamship to
Speaker 1: carry a message from say, London to New York, and
Speaker 1: then another two week voyage to take the return message
Speaker 1: from New York to London, this was a huge improvement.
Speaker 1: You weren't waiting a month to hear back about the
Speaker 1: thing that you wrote about. The eighteen sixty six expedition
Speaker 1: was the culmination of more than a decade of work
Speaker 1: and experimentation and a lot of failures. Then those failures
Speaker 1: taught us a ton of lessons. William Thompson made several
Speaker 1: observations that later generations of scientists and engineers would build upon.
Speaker 1: They would solve engineering problems to make faster communication possible
Speaker 1: across subcede lines, and of course, much much later we
Speaker 1: had telephone lines and then subsee power lines and fiber
Speaker 1: optic lines. Now a lot more had to happen to
Speaker 1: get to the point where we are today, and we
Speaker 1: are not still relying on those old telegraph wires like
Speaker 1: those days are over. However, that being said, the process
Speaker 1: of laying modern lines across the ocean is pretty darn
Speaker 1: similar to the way we did it back in the
Speaker 1: old days. I mean, it's about spooling up these enormous
Speaker 1: power lines or transmission lines and then unspooling them as
Speaker 1: a ship sails across the ocean. It's it's pretty much
Speaker 1: the same thing we did back in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: So some stuff hasn't changed all that much. Now. If
Speaker 1: there's interest, I'll do some more episodes about subseded cables.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the various inventions that made stuff like
Speaker 1: signal boosting possible below the waves, because a lot had
Speaker 1: to happen to make these powerful enough so that we
Speaker 1: could do things like transmit Internet signals, for example. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you were relying on the transmission speed of the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six cable for your Internet, you would never
Speaker 1: get anything done. It would take way too long. So
Speaker 1: there are things that we've devised that improve signal transmission
Speaker 1: in subsea cables that we're not really possible back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties when this first cable had been laid.
Speaker 1: So if there is interest, I'll continue down this pathway
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about some of those uh inventions. But
Speaker 1: for our next episode, I anticipate talking about a different topic.
Speaker 1: It's just if I hear people say, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to know more about like how those subsea cables evolved
Speaker 1: over time, We'll totally come back and talk about it more.
Speaker 1: This was a fun thing to research, tons and tons
Speaker 1: of reading of historic documents, which was a blast. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. Actually got a little tiresome because,
Speaker 1: let me tell you, those writers must have been paid
Speaker 1: by the word because you think I'm wordy. I mean
Speaker 1: I am, but these these journalists of days of old,
Speaker 1: they make me seem rather curt and uh and quick
Speaker 1: of speech by comparison. All right, well, that rouse up
Speaker 1: this episode. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. The handle we use for the show
Speaker 1: is text stuff h s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. YEA. Tech Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,