0:00:06 > 0:00:09In the mid-19th century, a handful of visionaries
0:00:09 > 0:00:13embarked on a quest to change the world for ever.
0:00:13 > 0:00:16Involving some of the greatest minds of the era,
0:00:16 > 0:00:19financed on an unimaginable scale
0:00:19 > 0:00:23and radical new breakthroughs in engineering and technology,
0:00:23 > 0:00:26the goal was to physically link
0:00:26 > 0:00:30the two mightiest nations on Earth across thousands of miles of ocean.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37In a single stroke, they would slash communication times
0:00:37 > 0:00:40between Britain and America from weeks to minutes.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46Amongst those who made this astonishing feat possible
0:00:46 > 0:00:49was one of the greatest scientific minds of his day,
0:00:49 > 0:00:54an Ulsterman, William Thompson, later known as Lord Kelvin.
0:00:54 > 0:00:57This is the story of the man who shrank the world.
0:00:57 > 0:01:00This is the story of Kelvin's cable.
0:01:16 > 0:01:20Today we live in an age of communication,
0:01:20 > 0:01:22where information, images and data
0:01:22 > 0:01:26are transmitted in the blink of an eye all around the globe.
0:01:27 > 0:01:31Far from being astonished by this capability,
0:01:31 > 0:01:34we simply take it for granted, each and every day.
0:01:35 > 0:01:39If, like me, you're old enough to remember life before e-mails,
0:01:39 > 0:01:41the internet and instant messages,
0:01:41 > 0:01:45it is still hard to imagine that until relatively recently,
0:01:45 > 0:01:47a message sent overseas
0:01:47 > 0:01:51could only travel as fast as it could be physically carried.
0:01:53 > 0:01:55Nowhere was this problem more apparent
0:01:55 > 0:01:58than in mid-1850s Britain,
0:01:58 > 0:02:01when it came to keeping in touch with our cousins across the Atlantic
0:02:01 > 0:02:02in the New World.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09For news of America to reach British ears or vice versa
0:02:09 > 0:02:12meant a minimum ten-day journey by steamship.
0:02:12 > 0:02:17Even the most basic dialogue took weeks, or months to complete.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21But this was about to change for ever.
0:02:27 > 0:02:30The Victorian age had already witnessed one revolution,
0:02:30 > 0:02:32fuelled by the power of steam.
0:02:33 > 0:02:34BEEPING
0:02:34 > 0:02:37As a direct result, the pace of transport,
0:02:37 > 0:02:42industry and life in general had begun to increase rapidly.
0:02:43 > 0:02:47It becomes a culture of speed, a marketable commodity.
0:02:47 > 0:02:53So shrinking the world was part of the rhetoric of the new age of steam.
0:02:53 > 0:02:55The need for communication and a fast
0:02:55 > 0:02:57means of communication around the world is becoming
0:02:57 > 0:03:00ever more evident, because you had colonies, you had empires,
0:03:00 > 0:03:02you had newly-forming trade routes
0:03:02 > 0:03:06and information had to be passed at a rate that made it useful.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09So it had already been done between Britain and France,
0:03:09 > 0:03:11and it had been done within countries using telegraphs,
0:03:11 > 0:03:15but to be able to connect Britain and America in that way
0:03:15 > 0:03:20was so, so important and that's really why the transatlantic cable project was such a big deal.
0:03:20 > 0:03:24I think all of us know that the world today is almost literally
0:03:24 > 0:03:27bound up like a Christmas present by fibre-optic cables,
0:03:27 > 0:03:28many of them around the world.
0:03:28 > 0:03:32That all began more than 150 years ago.
0:03:33 > 0:03:36With pioneers on both sides of the Atlantic experimenting with
0:03:36 > 0:03:39the newfangled technology of the electric telegraph,
0:03:39 > 0:03:42the American inventor Samuel Morse
0:03:42 > 0:03:46transmitted his first official message in 1844,
0:03:46 > 0:03:51along 38 miles of wire, connecting Washington to Baltimore.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56Travelling at the unheard-of speed of 30 characters a minute,
0:03:56 > 0:04:01or one every two seconds, Morse's historic message simply read,
0:04:01 > 0:04:03"What hath God wrought?"
0:04:03 > 0:04:06Despite that rather ominous first note,
0:04:06 > 0:04:09the electric telegraph spread like wildfire
0:04:09 > 0:04:12and soon much of the landmass of the civilised world
0:04:12 > 0:04:19was crisscrossed with the wires of this wonderful new invention.
0:04:19 > 0:04:23And yet, despite the phenomenal impact the telegraph would have on the world,
0:04:23 > 0:04:27the technology behind it was relatively straightforward.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32So, this is a very simple electrical telegraph circuit.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35And what we've got here is a source of electricity,
0:04:35 > 0:04:37which are these batteries.
0:04:37 > 0:04:41We have something that will detect there's electricity flowing,
0:04:41 > 0:04:43which are these bulbs and then we have a way
0:04:43 > 0:04:46of switching on and off the electricity, which is this key here.
0:04:46 > 0:04:53And this is really a very simple way of using an electrical current
0:04:53 > 0:04:55to produce a signal.
0:04:55 > 0:04:59In this case, these bulbs either being on or off.
0:04:59 > 0:05:01And that's really the concept of an electrical telegraph.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05These wires could be travelling from one village to another,
0:05:05 > 0:05:08so you're able to do this over some distance.
0:05:08 > 0:05:11However, it's all very well being able to switch bulbs on and off like that.
0:05:11 > 0:05:14In order to send a message, you really need some sort of code.
0:05:14 > 0:05:16And that's where Samuel Morse came in.
0:05:16 > 0:05:19He developed a code depending on whether the bulbs
0:05:19 > 0:05:21were on for a long time...
0:05:22 > 0:05:24..or for a short time.
0:05:24 > 0:05:28So he called those dashes and dots.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31And a sequence of dashes and dots together
0:05:31 > 0:05:33corresponded to different letters of the alphabet.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37So, a skilled telegrapher would be able to send messages
0:05:37 > 0:05:39using these sequences of dashes and dots
0:05:39 > 0:05:42and therefore transmit messages from one place to another.
0:05:42 > 0:05:46And that's really the concept of an electrical telegraph.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01Electricity, like steam before it,
0:06:01 > 0:06:03soon began to shrink the world,
0:06:03 > 0:06:06and the new network of railway tracks provided an easy
0:06:06 > 0:06:08path for the telegraph wires to follow.
0:06:11 > 0:06:15But while steam had conquered both the land and the sea,
0:06:15 > 0:06:18once the electric telegraph reached the coast,
0:06:18 > 0:06:20it was literally the end of the line.
0:06:20 > 0:06:24All news had to continue its journey from there by ship.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28By the mid-1800s
0:06:28 > 0:06:31some visionaries had dared to dream of a cable spanning
0:06:31 > 0:06:33even the Atlantic Ocean.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43One such man was Cyrus Field,
0:06:43 > 0:06:47a successful New York entrepreneur in his early 30s,
0:06:47 > 0:06:51who was enjoying retirement, having made an absolute fortune
0:06:51 > 0:06:53in the paper business.
0:06:53 > 0:06:56As he stared at the globe in his study one day,
0:06:56 > 0:06:59Field traced a line from Newfoundland,
0:06:59 > 0:07:02the most easterly point on the North American continent,
0:07:02 > 0:07:05across thousands of miles of Atlantic Ocean
0:07:05 > 0:07:07until his finger happened across
0:07:07 > 0:07:09the nearest piece of European soil,
0:07:09 > 0:07:12which turned out to be Valentia,
0:07:12 > 0:07:16a tiny island off the south coast of Ireland.
0:07:16 > 0:07:20Fields knew nothing of electricity or telegraph technology
0:07:20 > 0:07:23but he knew that time is money
0:07:23 > 0:07:26and so, in the bold spirit of the age,
0:07:26 > 0:07:29he set about recruiting other equally unqualified
0:07:29 > 0:07:33American millionaires to share in his venture.
0:07:33 > 0:07:37Collectively they became known as the Atlantic Cable Projectors
0:07:37 > 0:07:44and in 1854 they founded the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company
0:07:44 > 0:07:47with the express purpose of laying a working telegraph cable
0:07:47 > 0:07:49across the Atlantic.
0:07:52 > 0:07:54For its day, and given Fields' complete lack
0:07:54 > 0:07:56of technical expertise,
0:07:56 > 0:07:59it was as bold a statement of ambition
0:07:59 > 0:08:02as that of President Kennedy a century later
0:08:02 > 0:08:04to put a man on the moon.
0:08:06 > 0:08:09PRESIDENT KENNEDY: We choose to go to the moon in this decade
0:08:09 > 0:08:14and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
0:08:14 > 0:08:16MISSION CONTROL: We're go.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19NEIL ARMSTRONG: Tranquility Base Here. The Eagle has landed.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27They were reaching beyond the technology that was available
0:08:27 > 0:08:29and it's really remarkable that
0:08:29 > 0:08:32sometimes you get an idea and you pursue it
0:08:32 > 0:08:34and it actually works, sort of,
0:08:34 > 0:08:36or works closely enough so that you can go on,
0:08:36 > 0:08:40and that's what happened here, because the technology was barely available to them.
0:08:40 > 0:08:42A very ambitious project for sure,
0:08:42 > 0:08:46because a lot of the key physical constraints were really challenging.
0:08:46 > 0:08:48You had all the North Atlantic weather to contend with,
0:08:48 > 0:08:52a sea bed that hadn't been properly charted or mapped at that time -
0:08:52 > 0:08:54none of these technologies were available.
0:08:54 > 0:08:57So it drove engineering to the limit
0:08:57 > 0:08:59but also, from an electrical point of view,
0:08:59 > 0:09:03the process of sending a signal from one side of the Atlantic to the other
0:09:03 > 0:09:06was electrically very challenging.
0:09:06 > 0:09:09The success of this Victorian information super-highway
0:09:09 > 0:09:12would be due in no small part
0:09:12 > 0:09:14to the Belfast-born scientist
0:09:14 > 0:09:17whose name is perhaps a little less well-known
0:09:17 > 0:09:19then it deserves to be.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Even here in the city where he was born,
0:09:25 > 0:09:28people walking past his statue pay him very little attention,
0:09:28 > 0:09:31if they even know who he is.
0:09:31 > 0:09:33But in the world of science,
0:09:33 > 0:09:36he's numbered amongst the very greatest of physicists.
0:09:36 > 0:09:40Known to history as Lord Kelvin of Largs,
0:09:40 > 0:09:44his given name was William Thomson.
0:09:44 > 0:09:49From the very earliest age, young Thomson's path towards academia
0:09:49 > 0:09:52was influenced by his father, James Thomson,
0:09:52 > 0:09:54the son of an Ulster-Scots farmer.
0:09:56 > 0:09:59Through sheer determination,
0:09:59 > 0:10:01James had worked his way up to the position of
0:10:01 > 0:10:04Professor of Mathematics at Belfast's
0:10:04 > 0:10:06Royal Academical Institution.
0:10:06 > 0:10:10When the death of his wife left him with six children to look after,
0:10:10 > 0:10:13he also personally undertook the home-schooling
0:10:13 > 0:10:16of his eldest sons, including young William.
0:10:16 > 0:10:21The leading characteristic of James Thomson Senior
0:10:21 > 0:10:25and the children, including William, especially,
0:10:25 > 0:10:29is that the worst sin in life is waste.
0:10:29 > 0:10:34Useful work is the key to their entire lives.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38Their life is like an allocation from God
0:10:38 > 0:10:42and every minute of that life has to be occupied
0:10:42 > 0:10:46not wasting their time but performing useful work.
0:10:46 > 0:10:51Spurred on by this most Presbyterian of work ethics,
0:10:51 > 0:10:54William's father attained even greater academic heights
0:10:54 > 0:10:58in 1832 when he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics
0:10:58 > 0:11:01at the University of Glasgow.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03Along with his older brother, James,
0:11:03 > 0:11:07William Thomson entered university life here in Glasgow,
0:11:07 > 0:11:09the city that was to play such a profound role
0:11:09 > 0:11:15in his own story. At the time, he was all of ten years old
0:11:18 > 0:11:21Seemingly in those days it was quite normal for kids
0:11:21 > 0:11:24with ability to get opportunities to join university.
0:11:24 > 0:11:25So at the age of ten
0:11:25 > 0:11:29he began studying at Glasgow University, which would seem quite amazing nowadays.
0:11:29 > 0:11:32But within two years he was publishing papers
0:11:32 > 0:11:34and winning prizes already
0:11:34 > 0:11:37in some of his investigations and some of his work,
0:11:37 > 0:11:39so quite quickly he began to show that the investment in time
0:11:39 > 0:11:41and effort was paying off.
0:11:41 > 0:11:45At 22, the future Lord Kelvin became Professor of Natural Philosophy
0:11:45 > 0:11:48at Glasgow University,
0:11:48 > 0:11:54marking the beginning of a half-century of scientific achievement.
0:11:59 > 0:12:01If you go on the internet and look at Wikipedia,
0:12:01 > 0:12:04you will find the longest list of achievements for anybody
0:12:04 > 0:12:06that I've ever found.
0:12:06 > 0:12:08The man was just across so many fields.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11Kelvin did a lot of work on energy
0:12:11 > 0:12:15and particularly the relationship between mechanical energy and heat energy
0:12:15 > 0:12:17and that was pioneering stuff.
0:12:17 > 0:12:19And he and his colleagues created
0:12:19 > 0:12:22a new branch of physics called thermodynamics.
0:12:22 > 0:12:26In fact he coined the phrase thermodynamics.
0:12:26 > 0:12:29Kelvin, the unit of temperature, is named after him.
0:12:29 > 0:12:34He arrived at the concept of having an absolute zero of temperature.
0:12:34 > 0:12:36But he was also a very good applied scientist,
0:12:36 > 0:12:38he was essentially an inventor.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41The mariner's compass, as reinvented, really, by Kelvin
0:12:41 > 0:12:45in his own time, was a very famous artefact
0:12:45 > 0:12:48of the 19th century and even into the 20th century.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53Secondly, his work focused on electricity and magnetism and that links in
0:12:53 > 0:12:56with the telegraphic industry very much.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00Naturally this expertise brought him to the attention
0:13:00 > 0:13:04of Cyrus Field and so it was that in 1857
0:13:04 > 0:13:09Thomson was invited to join the Atlantic Cable Company's growing list of directors.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12To look after the technical side of things, however,
0:13:12 > 0:13:16Field engaged the services of the fantastically named
0:13:16 > 0:13:22Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse as the project's chief electrician.
0:13:22 > 0:13:25Almost immediately, the two experts began to clash
0:13:25 > 0:13:30over their fiercely opposing scientific views.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34Innocently enough, all Thomson had done initially
0:13:34 > 0:13:36was to publish a few scientific theories
0:13:36 > 0:13:41about how electricity behaves in long-distance submerged cables
0:13:41 > 0:13:45and how those cables might be specifically designed for that purpose.
0:13:45 > 0:13:49Whitehouse, who was mostly self-taught through experiments,
0:13:49 > 0:13:51took that as a personal sleight,
0:13:51 > 0:13:55and launched a series of personal attacks.
0:13:55 > 0:13:57Of course it's just possible that Whitehouse
0:13:57 > 0:14:00was feeling a little defensive, given that he had trained
0:14:00 > 0:14:04not as a scientist but as a surgeon.
0:14:04 > 0:14:09Whitehouse and Thomson disagreed on how the cables should be designed.
0:14:09 > 0:14:13There were experiments that had been done by Whitehouse
0:14:13 > 0:14:16but they were using fairly short lengths of cable
0:14:16 > 0:14:18and done in the lab.
0:14:18 > 0:14:20To try and extrapolate that to the problem of the transatlantic
0:14:20 > 0:14:24cable run, the 2,500-mile run,
0:14:24 > 0:14:29was something that Whitehouse didn't really have the ability to do
0:14:29 > 0:14:32whereas Thomson's mathematical background
0:14:32 > 0:14:34and analysing the problem from that standpoint
0:14:34 > 0:14:37was a much more effective and reliable way.
0:14:37 > 0:14:39The essence of this disagreement
0:14:39 > 0:14:43centred on how the cable should cope with an electrical phenomenon
0:14:43 > 0:14:45known as retardation.
0:14:45 > 0:14:47What we've got here is a set-up that illustrates
0:14:47 > 0:14:50the problem that telegraphers had
0:14:50 > 0:14:53when the cables became very, very long.
0:14:53 > 0:14:56This device is going to produce
0:14:56 > 0:14:58effectively the same thing as I would do if I tapped
0:14:58 > 0:15:01the Morse key very, very quickly.
0:15:01 > 0:15:03We've got two cables here.
0:15:03 > 0:15:05We've got a fairly short black cable
0:15:05 > 0:15:10and a much longer blue cable, wound into a drum, in fact.
0:15:10 > 0:15:13What you can see here is that
0:15:13 > 0:15:19the short black cable produces very nice, clean on-off signals
0:15:19 > 0:15:22but when we plug the blue cable in,
0:15:22 > 0:15:26which is in this case 40 metres long,
0:15:26 > 0:15:27you can see two things happen.
0:15:27 > 0:15:30First of all, the signal becomes smeared out,
0:15:30 > 0:15:33and it's not actually as large a signal.
0:15:33 > 0:15:35It's attenuated.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39The problem that the long-distance telegraphers had
0:15:39 > 0:15:41was the transatlantic cable
0:15:41 > 0:15:45wasn't 40 metres long, it was 4,000 kilometres long,
0:15:45 > 0:15:49so these problems became 100,000 times worse.
0:15:49 > 0:15:53But with public interest and financial pressure mounting,
0:15:53 > 0:15:56the company ignored Thomson's theoretical reservations
0:15:56 > 0:16:00and pressed ahead with Whitehouse's cheaper, thinner,
0:16:00 > 0:16:04and ultimately inferior, design.
0:16:04 > 0:16:09We have here a sample of the original transatlantic cable.
0:16:09 > 0:16:12This cable is barely wider than the width of my thumb,
0:16:12 > 0:16:16so you can really see the engineering challenge this posed.
0:16:16 > 0:16:19This cable was based on Whitehouse's original design
0:16:19 > 0:16:21and there are couple of features
0:16:21 > 0:16:23of this that Thomson had reservations on.
0:16:23 > 0:16:26One of them was the smallness of the core here,
0:16:26 > 0:16:28because that made it very difficult to send a signal all the way
0:16:28 > 0:16:31through the cable and be detected at the other end.
0:16:31 > 0:16:34The other was around the basic integrity of the copper,
0:16:34 > 0:16:39because the purer the copper was, the easier the electrical signal would travel through it.
0:16:39 > 0:16:43Even Whitehouse's cheaper design
0:16:43 > 0:16:47still cost £225,000 to manufacture,
0:16:47 > 0:16:51equivalent to almost £16 million today.
0:16:51 > 0:16:53And at more than a tonne per mile,
0:16:53 > 0:16:58the full cable weighed over 2,500 tonnes.
0:16:58 > 0:17:01No ship in existence could carry such a load
0:17:01 > 0:17:05but the solution was simple - they used two.
0:17:05 > 0:17:07The British HMS Agamemnon
0:17:07 > 0:17:10and the American USS Niagara
0:17:10 > 0:17:13would each carry one half of the massive cable.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17It still took 30 men three weeks to load each ship.
0:17:17 > 0:17:21But in August 1857, off the southern tip of Ireland,
0:17:21 > 0:17:24the two ships anchored side-by-side
0:17:24 > 0:17:28and the separate halves were joined and tested.
0:17:29 > 0:17:34As the signal flowed successfully through the 2,500 miles of cable,
0:17:34 > 0:17:39everyone involved must have breathed a huge sigh of relief.
0:17:39 > 0:17:43One end was brought ashore on Valentia Island
0:17:43 > 0:17:46and the two ships began their expedition to Newfoundland
0:17:46 > 0:17:50with that cable paying out from behind the Niagara.
0:17:50 > 0:17:53Among those on board were Cyrus Field,
0:17:53 > 0:17:57Samuel Morse and our own William Thomson.
0:18:00 > 0:18:02You could be forgiven for thinking it was just
0:18:02 > 0:18:06a simple matter of spooling out the cable as they went,
0:18:06 > 0:18:10but as they were soon to discover, there's a little more to it than that.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13As the cable pays out from the back of the ship,
0:18:13 > 0:18:16two forces tug on it, creating tension.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19First, there's the pull of the water on the cable
0:18:19 > 0:18:21from the forward motion of the ship,
0:18:21 > 0:18:25then there's the physical weight of the cable itself.
0:18:25 > 0:18:27It starts out easily enough
0:18:27 > 0:18:30in the shallow waters near the coast
0:18:30 > 0:18:32but as the sea becomes deeper,
0:18:32 > 0:18:38those forces increase rapidly, pulling on the cable.
0:18:38 > 0:18:41To counter that, they had a breaking mechanism, of course,
0:18:41 > 0:18:45but applying this created even more tension in the cable.
0:18:45 > 0:18:51With the ocean floor of the Atlantic as much as 2½ miles below,
0:18:51 > 0:18:53it wasn't long before the inevitable happened.
0:18:53 > 0:18:57Suddenly, 400 miles out to sea,
0:18:57 > 0:19:01the cable snapped and was lost for ever
0:19:01 > 0:19:03in the depths of the Atlantic.
0:19:03 > 0:19:07There was no way to retrieve the lost cable
0:19:07 > 0:19:11but despite the cost, the intrepid Projectors
0:19:11 > 0:19:14simply manufactured more and tried again.
0:19:14 > 0:19:16The first attempt at spanning the Atlantic
0:19:16 > 0:19:21had been based on a play out the cable from one side and head straight across.
0:19:21 > 0:19:25That was unfortunately a failure and then they adopted
0:19:25 > 0:19:27a new approach - to join the two ships in the middle,
0:19:27 > 0:19:30splice the cable and then play out the cable
0:19:30 > 0:19:33as both of them moved to their respective shores.
0:19:33 > 0:19:35Their efforts were hampered by storms,
0:19:35 > 0:19:39passing icebergs and even inquisitive whales.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42But on the 5th of August, 1858,
0:19:42 > 0:19:45exactly a year after the first attempt,
0:19:45 > 0:19:48the cable from the Agamemnon came ashore at Valentia,
0:19:48 > 0:19:51stretching all the way back to the Niagara
0:19:51 > 0:19:53at Newfoundland.
0:19:53 > 0:19:55As the messages began to flow,
0:19:55 > 0:19:59there was a flurry of excitement on both sides of the Atlantic
0:19:59 > 0:20:03with firework displays and a 100-gun salute in New York.
0:20:03 > 0:20:06Queen Victoria telegraphed her congratulations
0:20:06 > 0:20:09to the US President, James Buchanan,
0:20:09 > 0:20:13himself a man of Ulster-Scots heritage.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17But the celebrations were to be short-lived.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22Over a course of days, the rate of signalling declined,
0:20:22 > 0:20:25so the health of the cable was not good.
0:20:25 > 0:20:30Queen Victoria's message was getting there at the rate of 0.1 words per minute,
0:20:30 > 0:20:34so her original message of congratulations to the US took 16 hours to cross.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37So it was by no means anywhere within the current thinking of what
0:20:37 > 0:20:40speed-of-light communication is.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44They didn't have the instruments yet to receive these very feeble
0:20:44 > 0:20:47messages, the signals that came across.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51Indeed, they didn't understand
0:20:51 > 0:20:53what was happening in the cable to the signal.
0:20:53 > 0:20:57So the tiny signals coming out of the end of the transatlantic cable
0:20:57 > 0:21:00really tested Thomson's inventiveness to the limit.
0:21:00 > 0:21:04He came up with solutions to detect those tiny signals
0:21:04 > 0:21:07and one of them, the mirror galvanometer,
0:21:07 > 0:21:09we have a display version of here.
0:21:09 > 0:21:11What this does is detect
0:21:11 > 0:21:14very small amounts of electricity,
0:21:14 > 0:21:16just enough to move the needle of that meter.
0:21:16 > 0:21:19You could make that needle much bigger,
0:21:19 > 0:21:22but that would make it much more difficult mechanically to move.
0:21:22 > 0:21:24Thomson's inventive step
0:21:24 > 0:21:27was to shine a beam of light off a little mirror attached
0:21:27 > 0:21:30to the base of the needle and project that on a wall.
0:21:30 > 0:21:33By doing that, you would see a much bigger effect
0:21:33 > 0:21:37for a small signal.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39Now in a state of near-panic, however,
0:21:39 > 0:21:43Whitehouse rejected Thomson's elegant solution
0:21:43 > 0:21:47and opted for something altogether more brutal.
0:21:47 > 0:21:50He started to use devices like these.
0:21:50 > 0:21:53This is an induction coil which produces thousands of volts
0:21:53 > 0:21:57and he used induction coils like this to increase the signal
0:21:57 > 0:21:59going into the cable.
0:21:59 > 0:22:01But the problem with doing that was
0:22:01 > 0:22:04that these devices are so powerful...
0:22:04 > 0:22:05ELECTRICITY CRACKLES
0:22:05 > 0:22:09..actually what he was doing, without realising it, perhaps,
0:22:09 > 0:22:13was burning away the insulation of the cable itself.
0:22:14 > 0:22:18Inevitably, just weeks after the first message was sent,
0:22:18 > 0:22:20the cable spoke no more.
0:22:20 > 0:22:24This was a crushing blow to everyone involved
0:22:24 > 0:22:26in the Atlantic cable project,
0:22:26 > 0:22:30but for Whitehouse in particular it was an instant career killer.
0:22:30 > 0:22:34With his reputation in shreds, he was ignominiously dumped
0:22:34 > 0:22:36as the Chief Electrician.
0:22:36 > 0:22:38And, even worse,
0:22:38 > 0:22:41he was soon replaced by his arch rival,
0:22:41 > 0:22:45the now-exonerated William Thomson.
0:22:45 > 0:22:48Then they had to begin thinking, "Where do we go from here?"
0:22:48 > 0:22:51"How do we build on the back of this?"
0:22:51 > 0:22:53It would take a period of some eight years
0:22:53 > 0:22:59before they would be able to ultimately have a successful retry
0:22:59 > 0:23:00at bridging the Atlantic.
0:23:02 > 0:23:04It's amazing they got as far as they did
0:23:04 > 0:23:09and what's even more amazing is that, having failed in 1858,
0:23:09 > 0:23:11they were able to come back and say,
0:23:11 > 0:23:14"All right, we dumped a lot of money into the Atlantic,
0:23:14 > 0:23:16"but we can now raise some more money
0:23:16 > 0:23:19"and go back and do it again," and they did.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23With the silence of the previous failures still ringing
0:23:23 > 0:23:24in investors' ears,
0:23:24 > 0:23:27Field sold his interest in the paper trade
0:23:27 > 0:23:30and put his remaining finances and efforts
0:23:30 > 0:23:32into the Atlantic cable.
0:23:32 > 0:23:36Even so, the whole project could still have been abandoned
0:23:36 > 0:23:39had it not been for the advent of another
0:23:39 > 0:23:42colossal achievement of the Victorian age.
0:23:46 > 0:23:50Built by engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
0:23:50 > 0:23:54the 22,500-ton Great Eastern
0:23:54 > 0:23:59was quite simply the world's largest ship by far
0:23:59 > 0:24:03and would remain so for almost half a century.
0:24:03 > 0:24:07If you were to stand it upright on its stern,
0:24:07 > 0:24:10the Great Eastern would have been 70 storeys high.
0:24:10 > 0:24:15That's three times the length of this elegant vessel behind me.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19It was so massive that its construction actually drove up
0:24:19 > 0:24:21the global price of iron.
0:24:21 > 0:24:24It was such an immense undertaking
0:24:24 > 0:24:26and took such a toll on Brunel's health
0:24:26 > 0:24:30that shortly before its maiden voyage, at the age of 51,
0:24:30 > 0:24:33he collapsed and died.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36Just before his untimely demise, however,
0:24:36 > 0:24:39the great engineer had given Cyrus Field
0:24:39 > 0:24:41a tour of the enormous vessel,
0:24:41 > 0:24:46telling him, "Here is the ship to lay your cable."
0:24:46 > 0:24:49All that was needed now was a cable as mighty
0:24:49 > 0:24:51as the Great Eastern itself.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54So, by comparison,
0:24:54 > 0:24:57this is a sample of the cable Thomson designed
0:24:57 > 0:25:00for the later cable-laying expeditions.
0:25:00 > 0:25:02This is much better in various ways.
0:25:02 > 0:25:04It has much more armoury, so it's more robust.
0:25:04 > 0:25:06It was easier to lay without breaking it,
0:25:06 > 0:25:08but it also has a much thicker core
0:25:08 > 0:25:11which lets the electricity flow through it much more easily.
0:25:11 > 0:25:13It has more insulation,
0:25:13 > 0:25:18so, overall, this was the cable that would lead to the success of the project.
0:25:20 > 0:25:23The now mainly British-funded project
0:25:23 > 0:25:25had a purpose-built cable,
0:25:25 > 0:25:27the largest ship on Earth
0:25:27 > 0:25:31and a new wave of optimism and expertise behind it.
0:25:31 > 0:25:32Surely this time
0:25:32 > 0:25:35the Atlantic would be conquered at last.
0:25:37 > 0:25:40I would love to tell you this new, improved venture
0:25:40 > 0:25:44was a complete success, but, alas, no.
0:25:44 > 0:25:46This time they got almost all the way,
0:25:46 > 0:25:49but once again, the cable snapped.
0:25:49 > 0:25:54It took another 12 months and another 2,500 miles
0:25:54 > 0:25:56of shiny new cable,
0:25:56 > 0:25:58but in July, 1866,
0:25:58 > 0:26:02after a departure that fell on Friday the 13th,
0:26:02 > 0:26:06their luck, and the cable, finally held.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12Almost a decade after her previous message to the US president,
0:26:12 > 0:26:16Queen Victoria sent another, this time to Andrew Johnson,
0:26:16 > 0:26:19who, coincidentally, was also of Ulster-Scots heritage,
0:26:19 > 0:26:22but the Ulsterman who would receive the lion's share
0:26:22 > 0:26:28of national recognition and royal reward was William Thomson.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32The success of the 1866 cable
0:26:32 > 0:26:35meant a big elevation in status,
0:26:35 > 0:26:38in social status, for William Thomson.
0:26:38 > 0:26:41Queen Victoria knighted him for all his efforts
0:26:41 > 0:26:43and subsequently he became the first British scientist
0:26:43 > 0:26:45to be elevated to the House of Lords.
0:26:45 > 0:26:51He'd come a long way from the origins in Belfast
0:26:51 > 0:26:53and it was clearly linked to a project
0:26:53 > 0:26:56which took on national importance.
0:26:56 > 0:27:00Hailed by The Times as, "the most wonderful achievement
0:27:00 > 0:27:02"of this victorious century",
0:27:02 > 0:27:07Kelvin's cable signalled the arrival of a communications revolution.
0:27:07 > 0:27:10A full ten years before Alexander Graham Bell
0:27:10 > 0:27:12made the very first phone call,
0:27:12 > 0:27:15information could now flow freely
0:27:15 > 0:27:17and almost instantaneously
0:27:17 > 0:27:20between the two mightiest nations on Earth.
0:27:20 > 0:27:24It was really important, especially to commerce.
0:27:24 > 0:27:26It connected the markets
0:27:26 > 0:27:28in New York and Chicago
0:27:28 > 0:27:31with those in Liverpool and Paris and so forth.
0:27:31 > 0:27:34Prices of raw materials, particularly cotton prices,
0:27:34 > 0:27:38both in the United States and also in India,
0:27:38 > 0:27:40were communicated by cable.
0:27:42 > 0:27:43Within another six or seven years,
0:27:43 > 0:27:48all of the major countries of the world were joined by these cables.
0:27:48 > 0:27:52Countries as far apart as Malaya, Singapore,
0:27:52 > 0:27:55Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand,
0:27:55 > 0:27:59even across the Pacific by the 1890s.
0:27:59 > 0:28:01There's a complete chain of developments
0:28:01 > 0:28:04right across the world from those early scientific days.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07You had the land telegraph, the submarine cable,
0:28:07 > 0:28:10radio and TV, the second generation of information,
0:28:10 > 0:28:13and now you have the digital information revolution.
0:28:13 > 0:28:16We have the internet, we have all sorts of ways
0:28:16 > 0:28:19of sending messages to one another almost instantaneously.
0:28:19 > 0:28:21But that's part of a story,
0:28:21 > 0:28:24and I think Kelvin's contribution at the beginning of that story
0:28:24 > 0:28:27was pretty pioneering and pretty fundamental,
0:28:27 > 0:28:29so we shouldn't forget that.
0:28:52 > 0:28:55Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd