FROM THE IEE ARCHIVES

Visions of the future for a shilling In 1851 Britain was the world’s greatest industrial nation. .the electric telegraph. Various machines were shown, That year the first international exhibition to celebrate including the five-needle telegraph used by the Great modern manufacturing was organised under the Western Railway and several examples of Cooke and enthusiastic patronage of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s Wheatstone’s two-needle telegraph. consort. ‘The Exhibition of the Works of Industry of A problem which had just been solved was the design all Nations 1851’ of cables suitable comprised 7000 for submarine tele- British and 6000 graph transmission. foreign entries. In The brothers John the technical quality and Jacob Brett had of the exhibits, won from the Britain succeeded in French government its unspoken aim the concession to of outclassing the run a submarine work of the thirteen telegraph cable from European countries, Dover to Calais, thirteen American and they took the countries, and seven opportunity to ex- others from around hibit the telegraph the world who instrument which participated in would be used to addition to the send messages over various British their Channel cable. colonies. Their exhibition During the five A specimen page from Jacob Brett’s printing telegraph, used to transmit catalogue entry months that the messages between Dover and Calais in 1851, and his season ticket of proclaimed proudly: exhibition was admission to that year’s Great Exhibition where the device was on display ‘This printing open, more than six million people paid at least a shilling to telegraph effects all the purposes of telegraphic visit and at its peak some 40 000 were admitted each day. communication by a single wire only; printing in Roman… The building, specially erected for the purpose in Hyde letters, recording in duplicate with the rapidity of a Park, was an exhibit in itself. Conceived and designed of compositor… It is worked by galvanic or magnetic glass in a cast-iron frame by Joseph Paxton, former head electricity, and controlled by hydraulic or atmospheric gardener to the Duke of Devonshire, it enclosed a total area regulators’. On display were specimens of the ‘printing of more than 70 000 square metres and included within its executed at 200 miles distance’, one of which is now in the structure a row of huge elm trees. The Crystal Palace, as the IEE Archives. building was known, was dismantled afterwards, enlarged The cable was successfully laid across the channel on and re-erected in Sydenham, South London, where it 25 September 1851 and T. R. Crampton, who was in charge remained until the 1930s. of the laying operation, was able to announce the feat just as British engineering reigned supreme at the Great Queen Victoria was leaving the platform after formally Exhibition, and one of the newest technologies was that of declaring the exhibition closed.

IEE REVIEW JULY2002 41