Introduction to Copper Cabling (eBook)

Talking across the Atlantic

Unless we were to remain happy to communicate by lighting bonfires on hilltops or employing runners or galloping horses, we needed a real breakthrough.

A good idea that wasn’t followed up was the work of the Greek Thales who, in the sixth century BC, was one of the first to investigate electricity and magnetism. He did the trick of rubbing a balloon on his sleeve, and picking up some light pieces of material – actually he rubbed a piece of amber with some fur, but that’s near enough the same.

If he could only have encouraged more people to continue his work, we may have had warp drives and teleporters by now. But no-one showed any interest and, like they say in all good history books, ‘nothing happened for 2300 years’.

In the sixteenth century there was a flurry of interest in devising some form of long-distance communication system. There were many attempts with lights and mirrors, which had limitations where distances were involved. But flashing lights were nowhere as limited as the speaking tube, in which we would shout down a tube with an ear placed at the other end. This would limit the scope for long-distance communications but was resurrected about 200 years later with the idea of banging the outside of the tube with a hammer to send messages in code. This didn’t work either.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth century, we had noticed that the effects of magnetism and many people had great faith in its ability to provide a fast long-distance communication system as well as miracle cures for all ills and almost anything else.

It had been noticed that a compass needle can be deflected by another compass needle and so it was a small step to conclude that if it could be made to happen at any distance then all communication problems are virtually solved. There was a tendency to assume that this small problem would soon be surmounted and we could get on with the real invention bit. Rumors and claims were made for the most unlikely methods.

One very popular method was to make two such needles become ‘sympathetic’ and by moving one, the other would move by the same amount to remain parallel even when separated by enormous distances. Having produced two sympathetic needles, all we have to do is to mark the edge of the compass with the alphabet, and there we are – no-cost instant communications. Despite the small fact that the needles never did align themselves in parallel even when the needles were close together, the rumor spread quickly, probably just because it was such a neat idea that everyone wanted it to be true. A bit like flying saucers and little green men from Mars.

In those days we had to spread rumors from person to person but nowadays we have the media, which are in the fortunate position of not only being able to spread rumors to millions of people at a time but actually get paid for doing so.

When it was accepted that the range was very limited and the needles never did remain parallel, we could still demonstrate that a magnet could be used instead of the first ‘transmitting’ needle and the receiving needle would still be deflected, so the rest of the system could still work. It was soon seen to be limited in range but, and this gave hope, a larger magnet would have a larger range. All we needed to do was to build larger and larger magnets but this idea also died as some calculations were done on the size of the magnet needed for transmission over a few hundred miles. There was also the small problem of interference if more than one communication system was set up in the same area.

The American scientist, Benjamin Franklin was rumored to investigate electricity by flying a kite in a thunderstorm. Now, whether he actually did this or not, it was certainly a good enough story to encourage others to try it and to die in the attempt.

Benjamin certainly did investigate and develop the idea of air terminal or lightning conductors on buildings but even nowadays, many people have the wrong idea of what they are for and how they work. We will look at lightning conductors in a later chapter.

About 50 years later, in Geneva, Switzerland, George Lesage decided to use wire and a pith ball. The point of the pith ball was that it was extremely light and when charged with electricity by a connecting wire they would hold equal polarity of charge and hence repel each other. The pith ball would move away from the wire as in Figure 1.1. If we connect one wire for each letter of the alphabet, all we had to do was to energize the wire corresponding to the first letter and, at the far end, they would watch to see which ball moved. By this laborious process we could spell words, one letter at a time.