DEEP-SEA TELEGRAPHY.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 93, 17 September 1874, Page 3

DEEP-SEA TELEGRAPHY.

[From the New York Herald , July 25. J Science has recently been successfully busy in devising and perfecting new apparatus for deep-sea sounding, and we have fresh assurances that the Sorrowed bed of the ocean will soon be mapped as distinctly as the orographic features oi the great continents. Sir William Thomson, the indefatigable pioneer in the science of cable laying, has made an important and invaluable contribution to deep sea 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 first 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 midoeean 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 Adantic cables. It may be 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 new cable projects. More than a yearneo Commander Belknap, of the American Navy. in his Picific survey, introduced the cheep pianoforte steel wire and successfully tested its adaptation to the delicate work of ocean bed exploration. Sir William Thomson, after long a d elaborate experiments with the same wire, has fully demonstrated its sufficiency for soundings in three thousand and three thousand five hundred fathoms, depths which approach the extreme and most abyssal caverns of the salty deep. According to a paper recently read by this eminent electrician and physicist the cheap wire he used is of small size, easily managed, whether the ship be hove to or under steam, and weighs about fifteen pounds to the nautical mile, bearing a pull of two hundred and forty pounds without breaking. The simplicity and economy of this sounding line brings it within the skill and ability of almost every naval vessel afloat-, so ‘hat the work of deep-sea surveying may be pushed forward by all naval officers. Instead of detaching the sinking weight of thirty pounds of lead or iron at each experiment, as was done with the old apparatus, the new invention brings back the sinker. Tests made in the rough waters of the Atlantic prove that even when the vessel is steaming six knots an hour, flying soundings can be taken in moderate depths. There is little doubt that this ingenious arrangement will be extensively used in all future deep-sea telegraph laying, and will also give an impulse to the study of ocean orography.