IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MODE OF GENERATING ELECTRIC CURBENTS, MANUFACTURING SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH CABLES, & THE MODE OF TRANSMITTING SIGNALS
Year: 1860

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to William Peter Piggott, of 16, Argyll St., Regent
St., London, for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MODE OF
GENERATING ELECTRIC CURBENTS, MANUFACTURING SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH
CABLES, & THE MODE OF TRANSMITTING SIGNALS."
Sealed the 28th May 1861, and dated the 3rd December 1860.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said William Peter Piggott
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 3rd December 1860.
I, WILLIAM PETER PIGGOTT, of 16, Argyll St., Regent St., London, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Iuvention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
MODE OF GENERATING ELECTRIC CURRENTS, MANUFACTURING SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH
CABLES, & THE MODE OF TRANSMITTING SIGNALS," to be as follows:-
The manufacture of a cable composed of two or more copper wires as
a centre or core embedded or worked into well tarred hemp or other
fibrous material which shall be covered with a coating of iron wire, &
then by connecting two of the inner or copper wires with a recording
instrument at the receiving station, & bringing either end of the same in
contact with the outer wires of the cable at the sending station, signals
will be immediately transmitted.

page_text: SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed
by the said William Peter Piggott in the Great Seal Patent Office
on the 3rd June 1861.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME I, WILLIAM
PETER PIGGOTT, of No. 16, Argyll Street, Regent Street, London, send
greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the Third day of December, in the year of our
Lord One thousand eight hundred and sixty, in the twenty-fourth year
of Her reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant
unto me, the said William Peter Piggott, Her special licence that I,
the said William Peter Piggott, my executors, administrators, and
assigns, or such others as I, the said William Peter Piggott, my
executors, administrators, and assigns, should at any time agree with,
and no others, from time to time and at all times thereafter during the
term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise,
and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
the Channel Islands, aud Isle of Man, an Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
THE MODE OF GENERATING ELECTRIC CURRENTS, MANUFACTURING SUBMARINE TELE-
GRAPH CABLES, AND THE MODE OF TRANSMITTING SIGNALS," upon the condition
(amongst others) that I, the said William Peter Piggott, my executors
or administrators, by an instrument in writing under or their,
or one of their hands and seals, should particularly describe and ascer-
tain the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same was
to be performed, and cause the same to be filed in the Great Seal
Patent Office within six calendar months next and immediately after
the date of the said Letters Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said William Peter Piggott, do hereby declare
the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be
performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement:- -
This Invention has for its object improvements in the mode of obtain-
ing or generating electric currents in combination with telegraph cables
or wires.
It has hitherto been the practice to generate the electric
currents required for submarine cables by means of a battery or
magnetic apparatus at the sending end, the galvanic or magnetic current
evolved being of sufficient force to produce its effects on an instrument

page_text: at the other end of the cable or receiving station. Now currents of
electricity or magnetism, as is well known, in their passage through the
wire exite within it a resistance which increases according to certain
ratio between the distance and force. Thus however well a cable or
wire may preserve its insulation for a short distance, when the electric
charge has to be augmented in order to reach a station more remote, the
resistance consequent upon this increase of the force produces a leakage,
and thence sooner or later the failure of the current to arrive at the
distant station.
My mode of remedying this defect consists in the novelty of so con-
structing the cable that it shall at all times retain a static electric
charge, or in other words, so that a cable, or the wire or wires of a
telegraph cable may co-operate as agents with the generating surface,
by which means such cable or wire or wires will be kept in a constant
static condition, and consequently will require but very small power
for the production of the required force.
In carrying out the Invention I employ various elements, and com-
bination of elements for the production of voltaic currents, and these
may be varied according to the circumstances. In the mode of con-
structing a cable capable of generating currents of electricity, and of
effecting reverse currents when required, I propose to make a copper
or other wire circuit in the cable, placing the instrument or galvano-
meter in such circuit at the distant station; this wire circuit to be
partially insulated, and each half of the circuit to be separate one from
the other, and from metallic contact with each other, and worked into
a strand or strands of hemp saturated with a solution of the chlorides
of one of the following salts, videlicet, calcium, lithium, or magnesium,
or any other deliquescent salt, and afterwards passed through powdered
lime or gypsum.
The cable so far constructed may then have a cover-
ing of a metal wire or wires of a different electric property or condition
from that of which the metal circuit is made producing in this manner
a static condition of such cable. The outer wires may be covered with
hemp or jute, thoroughly tarred or otherwise coated with any partially
insulating material. Now, this cable is capable of producing-its effects
at a distant station by bringing either end of the wire circuit in contact
by means of a commutator with the other elements of the cable, and
which may be either the wire covering or the core of the cable, such
cable being at all times in a static condition, a battery of small power
(and which I prefer to be an insulated one) having the inner-circuit-of

page_text: the cable in connection with one pole of it, and the other pole of the
battery being made to make and break contact with the other element
of the cable, signals will be transmitted through it from end to end.
Another mode of carrying out this 'invention is by means of a single
line wire, and this I term my ganglionic cable, and it differs from the
previous arrangements, inasmuch as instead of making the whole length
of the cable a generator I form it in ganglions or a series of nodules
analagous to nervous centres, which act as generators from one to the
other along the whole line of cable, and at such distances as will keep
the line statically charged. In this case I bring the ends of my cable
to earth plates, as in the ordinary method. I use a wire coated with
any insultating material, and afterwards worked into a hempen cable,
which may be coated with iron, or in any of the ordinary ways, but I
do not require the same insulation as when the current of electricity
is forced by a powerful battery as has hitherto been the case. In this
cable the static charge requires but very slight power to give it the force
requisite for telegraphic purposes; further, I can combine any number
of wires and generators in the same cable so as to be able to send
several messages and in each direction at one and the same time. My
generators are constructed either cylindrical, or of any other convenient
form; they are composed of two or more plates of dissimilar metal
separated by a compost formed of chalk or gypsum, or other calcarious
earth well ground with a solution of one or more of the chlorine salts,
either used separately or combined and enclosed in a partially or
wholly insulated case, which may be made of bitumenized paper, gutta
percha, india-rubber, stoneware, glass, or metal, the inside of which
may be lined with some insulating material.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS.
Figure 1 represents a cable in section shewing how it generates
through its whole length. The red lines marked A shew the metallic
circuit; the blue lines marked B is the opposite metal, and which I
prefer to be of tinned iron or galvanised iron, and may be either internal
·

page_text: Witness,
H. S. ROSSER.
WILLIAM PETER PIGGOTT. (L.S.)