OCEAN CABLE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8782, 9 April 1907, Page 3

OCEAN CABLE.

When it was first proposed to lay a cable from Dover to Calais it was denounced as a " mad freak," a " gigantic swindle." So little was known about it that when a fisherman hauled up the line with his trawl he thought it a new species of seaweed. Some thought the signals were to be given by pulling on the wire like a door bell, so they argued chat the ocean bed was fo° rough and uneven for that. While some objected that it would kill all the fishes, others believed that the fishes would gnaw off the insulating guttn.: percha covering and put the line out of business. Lieutenant Maury, a. marine, but not a cable, expert, ventured to express the opinion that there never would be a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, and a wire long enough, or a ship big enough to lay an Atlantic cable. When after a few weeks of operation the first Atlantic cable gave out, some declared that it never had worked and no messages ever had been sent, and some doubted if it ever had been laid.