Abstract
A SILVER thinible of historic interest has recently been present to the Science Museum, South Kensington, London, by Mr. R. B. Fitzgerald, nephew of the late Miss Emily Fitzgerald. The latter was the daugnter of the Knight of Kerry upon whose land was built the telegraph house in which were term-inated the first two Atlantic cables. After repeated failures in 1857 and 1858, the two cables from Valentia in Ireland to Newfoundland were successfully laid, and as an experiment they were connected together in Newfoundland so as to form from the Ireland end a continuous circuit some 3,700 miles in length. A cell was devised by borrowing Miss Fitzgerald's thimble, filling it with a few drops of acid and inserting a zinc wire. The current from this cell, which traversed the Atlantic and returned back again, was sufficiently strong to produce large deflexions on the reflecting galvanometer which had been recently devised by Prof. William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Atlantic Cable and a Silver Thimble. Nature 164, 948 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164948b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164948b0