BACK REFLECTION
OPERATING THE CABLE IN THE EARLY DAYS BY PHILIP PILGRIM
T
his edition’s Back Reflections contains the reminiscing of a cable engineer from Newfoundland. The document was published by the historian and retired telegrapher, H. F. Shortis. In this record, the author details a smattering of interesting though often, unrelated, items. I have taken the liberty to insert commentary [in brackets] to provide further colour.
OPERATING THE CABLE IN THE EARLY DAYS
The death of John Temple in England, at the age of 83 [Atlantic Cable Engineer 1839-1922 who deployed first 3 Atlantic Cables], brought out details of the difficulties which beset cable engineers in their attempts in 1857-58, also in 1865-66 to bind Europe and America with an electrical conductor. Halifax has a lady resident whose husband had charge of the cable end at Bay Bulls Arm, Trinity Bay, Nfld. (now Heart’s Content). As the writer spent several years in that locality in the sixties you may print the narrative of various incidents of that time as a continuation of the romance. Tourists travelling over the Newfoundland Railway would not yawn when passing through the narrow isthmus at Bay Bulls Arm, if they knew of its old-time importance and that the big fellows of finance in London and New York were making the trenched Western Union cables under the rails hot with banking problems and market quotations. As stated in the editorial, the 1858
76 SUBMARINE TELECOMS FORUM MAGAZINE
Thomson’s Mirror Galvanometer (thanks to Science Museum)