Sir, Yours truly, C. M. Lampson, Vice-Chairman.’ – A message from the board of the Atlantic Telegraph Company to Professor Thomson, the day after Whitehouse was fired (18 Aug 1858) Newspapers covered the event as the eighth wonder of the world. Parades were held all over. More than anybody else, Cyrus West Field was held up as a saint. It was heralded as the greatest technological event since the invention of the wheel. Queen Victoria knighted Charles Bright within a week of its completion. Unfortunately for the life of the cable, Whitehouse was instilled with a conviction that currents of very high strength were the best for signaling, and he had enormous induction coils. Five feet long, yielding electricity estimated at about two thousand volts. Whitehouse would constantly increase the power to no purpose. The insulation could not bear the strain, and the signals gradually failed.
What was celebrated worldwide soon became dread as the realization sat in that the cable wasn’t going to work anymore. Investors were quick to pull out. Nobody wanted to work on the project anymore, and newspapers blasphemed Whitehouse’s name in black and white all over England, Europe, and the United States. Whitehouse was the center of all the blame. Despite all the negative attention, he continued to try to get his job back. It is not clear if he was fighting to get his job back or if he was fighting to get his £10,000 a year salary. In an issue of Harper’s Weekly, they tell the story of how Whitehouse has to be physically thrown out of the telegraph station. “We must observe at the outset that any proposition coming from Mr. Whitehouse should be received with caution. By skillful management, at the outset of the telegraph enterprise, Mr. Whitehouse contrived to obtain from the managers an engagement as chief electrician and in the event of the success with the cable, a pleasant salary of $50,000 a year. When shortly after laying the cable, it became evident that Mr. Whitehouse could not make it work, it was actually necessary to use force to disengage his grip on the enterprise and its instruments. He was turned out of the Valencia Telegraph house with violence and contumely. When therefore, he sets forth a scheme that conditions precedent of which is that he should be reinstated
in possession and authority, caution should be exercised and entertaining it.”
Whitehouse’s defense In a lengthy article published in the London Morning News (Sept 20, 1858) titled ‘The Atlantic Telegraph Cable,’ Whitehouse opens, claiming that success was unexpected, which is strange for the Chief Electrician for the most expensive technological endeavor in history to say. His rebuttal is dated September 18, 1858, within weeks of the cable’s failure. In it, he tells the entire story of The Atlantic Cable, from the first time Professor Samuel Morse published the idea in 1842 to the most recent failure he was connected to. “The excitement, consequent upon the unexpectedly successful laying of the Atlantic Cable, and the realization of electric communication with America— followed as it has been at so early a time by a painfully ominous silence of many days — leads me to believe that a succinct outline of the scientific part of the undertaking would be valued.” - Whitehouse In October, he filed a patent titled ‘A New (or Improved) Mode of Protecting Insulated Telegraph Wires,’ attempting to demonstrate a higher knowledge of the problem, but it didn’t work. The following months had to be hard for Whitehouse. Newspapers worldwide were printing libelous
The cable is a failure
The last complete message received was on September 1st, 1858, at a rate of four letters a minute, starting one the largest failure analyses in history. Seven hundred thirty-two messages were sent across the cable before it was abandoned and considered hopeless before the end of the year.
we get technical
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