The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 11, 1903, Page 11

\ f= TR il % hakéspeares 2 (irdled = '. i g ki I will put s girdle ‘round about the earth tn forty minutes.—'‘Mid- summer Night's Dream.” HIS boastful promise of the elfin Puck to jealous Oberon was written by the immortal Bard of Avon nearly three centuries ago. With the in- spired imagery of the true poet Shakespeare placed the accomplishment of the improbable feat in possible Fairyland, little dreaming that It would one day become a recorded fact in the practical, material world of men. Yet that 1dly’ written prophe of the long ago, designed solely for the enter tainment of royal Blizabeth and her court, lald bare the heart of a truth which sclence has since unearthed to flaunt in the face of time. All of which goes to show that poet and savant are much of a kin, though one rides a winged Pegasus and the other a spade.; Puck girdled the earth with a wave of thought Man now proposes to do the same tk With & wave of electricity, which s as a vehicle for thought. The only dif- ference is in the method and not the means. The first step taken toward the fulfill- ment of Shakespeare’'s pregnant prophecy was the laying of the original deep water cable across the English Channel in 1530, The last step bega hg of the long copper thread which enabled little Hawai! to send a joyous New Year greeting to her big busy brothers beyond the se. All that now remains is the closing of the gap between Honolulu and Manila across the wide waste of waters that fume and fret at the indifferent stars or turn thelr heaving breasts to the amorous kisses of & tropical sun. When this is done any man with the price to pay may girdle the earth with his messengers of thought in Master Puck’s allotted time of forty minutes. Of course, in order to do this, the way would have to be cleared ahead of the message to &void delays in transmis- elon. Such an arrangement would be im- perative, because the volume' of business dane by the various cable systems in the world s so enormous that all messages have to take thelr turn according to pre- cedence in fillng. A little figuring will readily show what this means. There are altogether 200,000 nautical miles of cables in active opera- tion to-day, representing an Invested capital of $275,000,000. The annual cost of maintaining these cables is $20 a mlle, or & total of $40,000,000. In addition to this 1s the 6 per cent Interest which financiers count upon as & fair return on capital in- vested, which would increase the neces- eary gross earnings by $16,500,000 more, making & grand total of $56,- 500,000 yearly income In order to put the combined enterprises on paying basis. There is also an-~ other point that must be taken into consideration. Theaver- age life of a cable is less than fifty years, and its net earnings must be sufficient to refund the original invest- THE: OLD ~~weaY THE SUNDAY CALL. e L, Prophecy of a Wy e i [P X ol Y 2 S s 2s 77, 4"/ ,'/ 7. 2 % Z 5 e 7 o ment during that period, besides paying profit dividends. As new companies are constantly being organized and more cables are being laid the business must be & profitable one. That being the case, the actual number of messages sent is enough to stagger the imagina- tion. Under these. circumstances it would be practically impossible for an ordinary commercial message to encircle the globe in less than five hours, owing to the many transfers required from one line to another. Even in single systems of ocean cables landing stations are necessary, as every additional mile means a proportion- ate loss of speed in the transmission of electric vibrations. The only exception is the stretch across the Atlantic, where no intervening stations are avallable. At these stations an operator receives the message and then repeats it over the next section, and so on until its destina- tion is reached. Sometimes, too, it makes a short cut overland before diving again into the caverned depths of the sea. This means more repeating and in- creased delay. A large number of s tions have lately been fitted up with automatic repeaters. They are very deli- cate and ingenious Instruments, but re- quire the close attention of an expert op- erator and are only avallable at the in- tervening stations of a single system. Transfers from one line to another must be made by hand. The following table shows at a glance the course and repeating points of a message sent around the world from San Francisco after the final section of cable between Honolulu and Mantla is laid: Route. San Francisco to Honolulu. Honolulu to Midway Island. Midway Island to Guam Guam to Manila . Manila to Hongko Hongkong to Saigon,Cochin China Saigon to Singapore . Eingapore to Madras Madras to Bombay (o Bombay to Aden, .. Aden to Alexandria Alexandria to Lisbon Lisbon to Azores . Azores to New York . New York to San Franclsco (over- Total distance To this mileage of ch: should properly be added an allowan of & per cent for the curvature of t earth’s surface, exclusive of the overiand sections, which would swell the total dis- tance traveled to 26,140 miles. That's a pretty good sprint to make, even in five hours, but with a clear track and a relay of energetic pacemakers the forty-minute record of Shakespeare's champion will scon be put out of business. No tariff schedule has yet been decided upon by the Pacific Commercial Cable Company for the Manila service, but Vice President G. G. Ward'estimates that the cost of a round the world message of ten words will be In the nelghborhood of $2s. Who will be the first to send it? After that all sorts of odd freaks and fancles will be possible to the eccentric million- alre or the resourceful strategist. There 1s no limit to the possibilities. For Instance, & young business man oc- cuples offices in @ big sky-scraper on Market street. His wife 1s away and he feels lonely. Perhaps there is a hanker- fug for a fow of the wild oats of earller days. On the floor below him is a bach- elor friend of long standing, & lawyer with a large practice. One of the old time dlnners at the club would be just the thing to break the deadly monotony. But he knows that the lawyer s very busy preparing & case and has locked himseif in his private office, with orders to admit no one. It would be a waste of time to send a note. It might never reach him. Moreover, that exasperating brief would occupy his attention the rest of the day. By that time the note would be for- gotten, even If it were re- celved. The tele- THE PONEY EXPRESS. phone is also use- less. The lawyer has disconnected his phone to pre- vent interruption. Then young Mr. Businessman is seized with an inspiration. Scribbling a few words on a plece of paper he hands it to a clerk with a hurried order. Five hours later; just as the brief is finished, a mes- er meanders into the lawyer's office with a cablegram. Although the young attorney has attained no little local dis- tinction, cable dispatches are still rare enough with him to excite his eager curiosity. He tears open the envelope this Is what he reads: ome my office immediately. Am foot- loose for dinner, etc., to-night.” The message s dated via Hongkong. Eombay, Azores and New York, showing that it has traveled completely around the world. The result may be arrived at in less than the conventional three guesses. Such a speculative episode is purely imaginary, of course, but wholly pessible, or will be at least within a few months. For the matter of that, the ruse could be worked even to-day, for the world is already belted with electricity, though in a very roundabout way. The time of transmission, too, is much longer than it will be by the shorter and more dircet line via Manila and Hongkong. Last July cable communication was opened by the British Pacific Company between Victoria, B. C., and Brisbane, Avstralia, by the way of Fanning, Fijl and Norfolk islands, From Brisbane there is an overland wire to Adelaide. There another cable system reaches out to Durban, Cape Town and the Cape Verde Islands, where connection is made with a third strand to the Azores, which 1= the distributing pointfor a large volume of intercontinental messages. In this way @ dispatch can now be hurtled around the world from Victoria across the Pacific and Indian cceans, up the west coasts of Africa and Europe to London and thence back to the starting point, via New York and Montreal. The stretch between Victoria and Fan- ning Island, by the way, I3 the longest single piece of cable ever laid, spanning as it does a fraction under 4000 nautical miles. A special vessel had to be bullt to lay it, as there was mnone in existence large enough to carry the massive weight of its almost endless coil. The next long- est are probably the Atlantic cables, of which there are fourteen within a com- paratively short distance of each other. Tne first of these was laid in 138 by the Great Eastern. This one and its thres immediate followers are now “dead” and inoperative, representing a loss to their cwrers of over $15,000,000. The ocean cable was an expensive ex- periment in those days, sclence not yet having discovered an effective means of pretecting the copper core from the action of the salt water and a consequent leak- age of current. Even a pinhead puncture was sufficient to cause endless trouble and It seemed practically impossible to lo- cate the injury, let alcne repair it. As late as the early '70's a fully equipped catieship, at an expense of hundreds of dollars daily, spent over eight months trying to find one of these punctures and finally had to abandon the attempt al- together as a complete failure. A few years ago, however, a system was devised for recording the number of vibrations necessary to send a current through one mile of cable. Then it be- came possible for an expert operator to figure out approximately the point where the current went astray. The methods of manufacturing cables have also vastly improved and many of the defects of early days have been entirely eliminated. Still the expense entalled is enormous, for each company is compelled to keep one or more costly cable ships in con- stant commission. The large number of cables across the Atlantic in such close proximity would undoubtedly lead to the most mischiev- ous confusion were it not for the fact that each cable is made after a dif- ferent pattern, which renders them easily distin- o X guishable. The experts on the re- pair ships are fami- liar with all patterns and have no trouble in identifying the particular cable they are after when It 1s raised to the surface by the picking-up gear. These improvements eventually placed the ocean cahle on a profit- able plane and have at last made possible the fulfiliment of Shakes- peare’s prophecy after a lapse of 300 years. To John W. Mackay is due most of the honor for this achievement, although a goodly share belongs to his eson, who has so loyally undertaken the welding of the last link. Yet It is doubt- ful if either of them in their dreams of girdling the earth ever gave a thought to the significant words of saucy Puck or thelr portent to the human race when the noontime of the world should have come. The modern surgeon employs in his work dozens of different kinds of thread for sewing up cuts and wounds. Among them are kangaroo tendons, horsehalr, silk and very fine silver wire. Many of these threads are intended to hold for a certain number of days and then natur- ally break away. The short, tough ten- dons taken from the kangaroo, which are used for sewing severs wounds, will hold for about four weeks before they break away. Silk thread will hold for much longer, sometimes six months, whils the 'nhrl.e silver wire is practically indestruct- . With the entire outfit a surgeon is able to select a thread that will last as long as the wound takes to heal and will then disappear completely. To accommodate this assortment of threads special varie- ties of needles are required. Besides the needls, craned in different segments of a circle, surgeons use needles shaped like spears, javelins and bayonet points. Some are as long as bodkins, with a point like a minfature knifeblade. Others have the sharpened end triangular. —_—— The diet of the aristocratic puss who is raised for sale is as carefully selscted as that of any sanitarium patient. At a cer- tain feline boarding-house where cats of high degree are bred and transients boarded in thelr mistresses’ absence, the following regimen is adopted: At 8:30 the cats have saucerfuls of food, prepared as for a baby, and given while warm at the consistency of cream. At 12:30 they dine either on & well bolled sheep's head, cut up very flne, or by way of change they have a fish dinner. At 3 o'clock a drink of warm milk is provided. At 7 p. m. they have fish and rice, or Dbiscults soaked in milk. Clean bofled—they are very emphatic about the boiling — water s al- ways kept on hand, as cats suffer from thirst ‘more than is gen- erally realized. 11