Morning journal and courier., 1884-05-13
Making the New Cable.

Two Thousand Miles Already Made Fifty Miles Produced Each Day.
 From the Psll Mall Gazetse.l
 The New York Herald has proved itseli
 more accurate at prophecy than Mir. Presi
 dent Fender, Cable King on this side though he be- It is not so many months since MT
 Fender congratulated the Atlantic csble com panies on freedom from the dread of more cables'' at least for some considerable period On the other hand, the Herald. for a some.
 what longer time, has been persistently prom
 isipg that, as result of the irritating mo- nopoly of Mir. Jay Gould, the early summer would see another cable laid across the west. ern ocean. Thanks to the courtesy of MT. Gordon Bennett conveyed through his London representative, MT. P M. Potter, we | were enabled the other day to witness the making of the cable, or, rather, couple of cables, in course of manufacture by Messrs. Siemens for the Mackay Bennett combina- tion, and within the next week or two the
 Faraday will have started afresb, with ,500
 miles of cable on board, on her mission of cable laying between Dover Bay and Valentia Going to Messrs. Siemens' works, you land at the little station of Charlton, one station in advance of Woolwich, and walk of half a mile or thereabout amid Black Country surroundings brings you to the im- posiDg-looking manufactory. Here more than 2, 800 men and lads are employed, quite 1 700 of whom are engaged upon cable work.
 Oar object was to 'thow tEe cable is
 made, D so to this business the relation of our
 visit to Messrs. Siemens' extensive works must on this occasion be confined A cable,
 the visitor soon learns is marked throughout it's length by several variations of diameter,
 fixed to meet the varying circumstances of the ocean bottom, although the constituent formation of the cable has always remained the same. When once laid down in deep water, cables are in no serious danger-the temperature, the chemical qualities of the sea and bottom, and the movement of the water, exercise next to no influence upon them, and if well-nade cables be properly laid, cable authorities now acknowledge there is no reason why any short estimate of their life should be formed. The shore ends, as everybody knows, are necessarily built much thicker than the body of the cable; but even shore sides are only subject to ''chafe,' and shore end, competent judge tells us, ought to last from thirty to forty years. Three sections of the cable in process of manufsc- ture are placed in our hands, as we start upon our tour of examination, by an intelligent cicerone, Mir. Schramm, who has had long experience in cable manufacture and cable laying. The first is section of shore line; this is 2& inches in diameter, which is the maximum diameter of the cable. The other sample is section of the great body of the cable; this is inch across which is the max imum diameter. The third serves as a type of the links which connect the shore ends and the deep set portions of the .ble To assist to comparison of size we may mention that an ordinary land line is two-tenths of an inch in diameter. Armed thus, we begin our in- spection, with the reminder that the broad principles which were observed in the con- struction of the first submarine cable laid down between Dover and Calais in 1851, mark submarine cables yet-in the center you have the conductor, around it the insulator, and over it, finally, the outer covering. First, we are shown the cooper center' of the deep sea part of the cable in process of man. ufacture, It is formed of thirteen wires- twelve wires of small size coiled around one wire one-tenth of an inch in thickness The conductor thus created is two-tenths of an inch in diameter, or just the size of an ordi- nary telegraph wire. This work of binding the copper wires together is performed by a small ''stranding machine," which grasps the principal wire as it is driven through an ori- flee, and fastens the twelve wires around it;