It was in 1851 that an electric cable was actually laid in the open sea, and worked successfully; and the wire which then connected Dover with Calais was beyond question the first important line of submarine telegraph ever attempted. In the year 1850, Mr. Brett obtained a concession from the French Government for effecting this object,--an object regarded at the time as one purely chimerical, and decried by the press as a gigantic swindle. The cable which was made for the purpose consisted of a solid copper wire, covered with gutta percha. When tested by Mr. Woollaston, it was found to be so imperfect from air holes in the gutta-percha, that the water found its way to the copper wire,--an imperfection which was however shortly repaired. This cable was manufactured at the Gutta Percha works, on the Wharf Road, City Road, under the superintendence of the late Mr. Samuel Statham; was then coiled on a drum, and conveyed by steam-tug to Dover, and in the year 1850 was payed out from Dover to Calais. The landing-place in France was Cape Grisnez, from which place a few messages passed, so as to comply with the terms of the concession and test the accuracy of the principle. The communication thus established between the Continent and England was, after a few hours, abruptly stopped. A diligent fisherman, plying his vocation, took up part of the cable in his trawl, and cut off a piece, which he bore in triumph to Boulogne, where he exhibited it as a specimen of a rare seaweed, with its centre filled with gold. It is believed that this "pescatore ignobile" returned again and again to search for further specimens of this treasure of the deep: it is, at all events, perfectly certain that he succeeded in destroying the submarine cable.
This accident caused the attention of scientific men to be directed to the discovery of some mode of preserving submarine cables from similar casualties, and a suggestion was made by Mr. Küper, who was engaged in the manufacture of wire ropes, to Mr. Woollaston and to Mr. T. R. Crampton, that the wire insulated with gutta-percha should form a core or centre to a wire rope, so as to give protection to it during the process of paying out and laying down, as well as to guard it from the anchors of vessels and the rocks, and to secure a perfect electrical continuity.