Talk:Transatlantic telegraph cable/Archives/2020

Laying the cable

It's unclear how in the 1850s they were able to reach a depth of a like 2.5 miles, let alone lay a cable. Anybody know how they did it?♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:37, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

They just dropped the cable off the ship and let it sink to the seabed? Needs something on how they laid it and how they made the cable, how long did it take, where was it made etc.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:48, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: If you fancy having a go at this yourself, Charles Tilston Bright, the chief electrical engineer on the project describes the manufacture and laying of the cable in great detail; Chapter 2, the first cable in the 1850s, Chapter 3, the succesful cable in the 1860s. Another good historical source is Willoughby Smith who was the leading engineer in the company responsible for the cable manufacture. See Chapter 6 of his book.

Actually, a more difficult and interesting problem than the original laying, is recovering the cable again for repair afterwards. This was usually done by dragging for it with grapnels. Because this was so difficult, very deep ocean was avoided wherever possible and the Atlantic route was chosen with this in mind rather than "as crow flies" direct route. SpinningSpark 16:50, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Rewritten lead

I've reverted the recent changes to the lead for a number of reasons. First of all, although a fairly minor point, the lead has ended up with a large number of one-sentence paragraphs, which is directly contrary to WP:LEAD ...a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs... The claim that there were five attempts is highly misleading. The 1857/1858 work was all one operation using the same stock of cable. Same goes for 1865/1866. Trying to put this in historical order doesn't entirely work for me and isn't strictly necessary in the lead. I think it is important to say the cables are obsolete and replaced upfront in the first paragraph. That informtion got relegated right to the end in another one-sentence para.

The edit summary said something had been removed as inaccurate. I couldn't spot what that was in a first read through. Can you point it out? SpinningSpark 10:07, 18 August 2020 (UTC)