Morning journal and courier., 1884-07-28
OVERHEAD WIRES.
The View of Professor Sylvanus P.
 Thompson.

AAOUhPSOHs
 From the Pall Mall Gazette.
 Overhead wires are 8 permanent and abso- Iute source of danger, because every wire of whatever kind-galvanized iron, bronze, or other-deteriorates more or less slowly under atmospheric influences, and especially in the smoky and sulphur-laden air of cities. Those best qualified to speak on the subject from long experience agree that the life of every wire is limited, and none can tell how or when wire may snap. The internal flaws do not reveal themselves when the line is erected, nor can they be detected after the line has been put up except by the actual breaking of the line. Professor Hughes, F. R. S., the welI-known inventor of the printing telegraph and of the microphone, who has made thousands of experiments on wires, has established the fact that every vi bration imparted to a wire brings it 8 stage nearer to state of internal specialization, when it snaps short, its flbrous structure hay ing completely degenerated. When this con dition is arrived at it's strength is gone. Pro- lessor Hughes has even measured the number of vibrations which determine the length of life of wires of different kinds, and finds the number different for different ma terials, but in every case, even with the best and most perfect material, limited number. O1N01 dG llISG b W1Io O1 lOcd1 J01lOSO1Ol1j WAOA it has swayed to and fro it's allotted number of hundreds of thousands of times in the breeze, it must snap. But no such wire is attainable; all are more or less faulty, and cannot be relied on, even with the most dili- gent inspection, when once set up in the smoky air It is said sometimes no accidents have ever yet happened except that one in Dalston, about five years ago, when an omni- bus driver was decapitated by the falling of wire. There is, on the other hand, the statement made by no less eminent an author ity than MT. Preece, that numerous accidents have arisen from the falling of wires. Most of the existing telephone wires are, however, only five or six years old; another five years and there will be fine crop of accidents to report. True, the danger to life and property might to some extent be minimized if it were possible for wires always to cross streets at right angles and in short spans. This is, however, impossibie-frst because the streets of city not usually all laid out at right angles to one another, and, secondly, because there is no law to compel owners of property on one side of the street to permit the cree tion of poles on the housetop at point exact ly opposite some house on the other side of the street where pole is erected. Moreover, the erection of lines at short spans at right angles to the main throughfares is exactly what the telephone companies have not done
 They have aimed at carrying their trunk lines as much as possible along the main highways of commerce; and in long spans, so as to have the expense of fewer poles and fewer way leaves. Even now the price expected by householders and occupiers in London and other cities is rising to high price. Owners of property are finding that with the risks that are run in permitting the fixing of stand ards, and the necessary difficulty of finding suitable points to which to attach wires, a rental of e10 per annum is not to much to ask from a telephone company for the right r,f 1,o but one ending; it will tend to make the poles few and the spans long and dangerous.
 Common sense, therefore, suggests an obvious remedy that already adopted in other great cities, such as Paris and Berlin, namely, channels under the road or curbway, exactly as is done already for telegraph wires in Lon don and in many cities. In 1881 the tele- phone wires ran overhead; they are now all buried underground. In Newcastle-on-Tyne the whole of the telephone wires in the city run underground. In Birmingham large portion are likewise underground, and though it is not generally known by the public, 1t IS a fact that in the metropolis the telephone wires run by the postofice authorities to con- nect the government offices with one another are carried underground. The postofhce, in deed, though for it's own purpose it runs it's telephone wires underground, still runs them overhead in the majority of cases where 1t IS only the long suffering public who are to use them. The constant annoyance of having lines interrupted by repairs or fracture, and of having telephonic conversation inter rupted by the overhead wire of one subscrib- CT coming in contact with that of another subscri iber, would be avoided by putting all underground. The somewhat.3greater prime cost would be met in very short tune by the counter gain in having practically no renew als or repairs, and no deterioration of any moment in the wires laid underground. It would take an earthquake to dislocate or break them. The insulation would be equal ly good in all weathers. They would never stretch or come into cross contact Were underground wires properly laid, each wrap ped in it's own coating of insulating material, interruptions from the causes that now so frequently occur would be completely stop ped, and much annoyance and delay in the