Gutta percha, its discovery, history, and manifold uses.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gutta percha, its discovery, history, and manifold uses. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    At length, on the morning of the 28th of August, 1850, a steam vessel left Folkestone, bearing in its trail the covered wire made fast to the English shore, and in the evening the two countries w^ere within the speaking distance of a moment. The machinery employed in the preparation of the covered telegraph w^ire is highly ingenious. Two pairs of heated polished iron flatting rollers, one vertically above the other, are fed with soft Gutta Percha cylinders, which they deliver on the other side as flattened sheets. These are made to travel onward, and in the interval between them there also travels a row of copper wires. These three, i. e., the parallel sheets of Gutta Percha and the intervening wires, all meet between a pair of grooved cutting rollers, not quite close together. The grooves are of course the size of the required Gutta Percha casing, and each wure precisely “hits” the centre of a groove. The whole, therefore, appears on the other side as a band of covered wires, which may either be left together, as in the telegraph for rail¬ way tunnels, &c., or pulled apart into single pieces. The wires, thus incased, are then soaked for a considerable time in water, which is sure to “find out” any flaw, though invisible to the naked eye, which might prevent complete insulation. They are afterwards individually tested by a powerful galvanic battery, when if they stand the trial, they are pronounced fit for use. It is true that untoward accidents have for a time delayed the completion of the Submarine Telegraph. These, however, are being fast remedied. In a very short time the wire coil, doubly protected from the edge of rocks or the tricks of igno¬ rance, wfill re-appear. Several lines are to be laid across the channel in cables of cocoa nut fibre ; and if one should fail or be injured, the others will be ready. Probably by the time of the opening of our World’s Exhibition, London may be able to converse with Paris, and our gracious Queen, if it so please her, to bid her “cousin,” Louis Napoleon, to the glorious gathering. And such communication, once begun, can never stop. The greatest difficulties have been vanquished; the rest is compa¬ ratively plain. It is easier now to cross the A.tlantic with the telegraph, than five years since it was to span the British
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