Luckily another gum which could be melted by heat, and readily
applied to the wire, made its appearance. Gutta-percha, the adhesive
juice of the ISONANDRA GUTTA tree, was introduced to Europe in 1842 by
Dr. Montgomerie, a Scotch surveyor in the service of the East India
Company. Twenty years before he had seen whips made of it in Singapore,
and believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical
apparatus. Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered its merits as an
insulator, and in 1845 the latter suggested that it should be employed
to cover the wire which it was proposed to lay from Dover to Calais. It
was tried on a wire laid across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne. In
1849 Mr. C. V. Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway Company,
submerged a wire coated with it, or, as it is technically called, a
gutta-percha core, along the coast off Dover.
The following year Mr. John Watkins Brett laid the first line across the
Channel. It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without
any other protection. The core was payed out from a reel mounted behind
the funnel of a steam tug, the Goliath, and sunk by means of lead
weights attached to it every sixteenth of a mile. She left Dover about
ten o'clock on the morning of August 28, 1850, with some thirty men on
board and a day's provisions.
Pages:
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101