The History of building Telegraph lines - IELTS reading practice test

A

The idea of electrical communication seems đồ sộ have begun as long ago as 1746 when about 200 monks at a monastery in Paris arranged themselves in a line over a mile long, each holding ends of 25 ft iron wires. The abbot, also a scientist, discharged a primitive electrical battery into the wire, giving all the monks a simultaneous electrical shock. “This all sounds very silly, but is in fact extremely important because, firstly, they all said ‘ow’ which showed that you were sending a signal right along the line; and, secondly, they all said ‘ow’ at the same time, and that meant that you were sending the signal very quickly, “explains Tom Standage, author of the Victorian Internet and technology editor at the Economist. Given a more humane detection system, this could be a way of signaling over long distances.

B

With wars in Europe and colonies beyond, such a signaling system was urgently needed. All sorts of electrical possibilities were proposed, some of them quite ridiculous. Two Englishmen, William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone came up with a system in which dials were made đồ sộ point at different letters, but that involved five wires and would have been expensive đồ sộ construct.

C

Much simpler was that of an American, Samuel Morse, whose system only required a single wire đồ sộ send a code of dots and dashes. At first, it was imagined that only a few highly skilled encoders would be able đồ sộ use it but it soon became clear that many people could become proficient in Morse code. A system of lines strung on telegraph poles began đồ sộ spread in Europe and America.

D

The next problem was đồ sộ cross the sea. Britain, as an island with an empire, led the way. Any such cable đồ sộ be insulated and the first breakthrough came with the discovery that a rubber-like latex from a tropical tree on the Malay peninsula could bởi the trick. It was called gutta-percha. The first attempt at a cross channel cable came in 1850. With thin wire and thick installation, it floated and had đồ sộ be weighed down with a lead pipe.

E

It never worked well as the effect of water on its electrical properties was not understood, and it is reputed that a French fisherman hooked out a section and took it trang chủ as a strange new sườn of seaweed. The cable was too big for a single boat sánh two had đồ sộ start in the middle of the Atlantic, join their cables and sail in opposite directions. Amazingly, they succeeded in 1858, and this enabled Queen Victoria đồ sộ send a telegraph message đồ sộ President Buchanan. However, the 98-word message took more than vãn 19 hours đồ sộ send and a misguided attempt đồ sộ increase the tốc độ by increasing the voltage resulted in the failure of the line a week later.

F

By 1870, a submarine cable was heading towards nước Australia. It seemed likely that it would come ashore at the northern port of Darwin from where it might connect around the coast đồ sộ Queensland and New South Wales. It was an undertaking more ambitious than vãn spanning an ocean. Flocks of sheep had đồ sộ be driven with the 400 workers đồ sộ provide food. They needed horses and bullock carts and, for the parched interior, camels. In the north, tropical rains left the teams flooded. In the centre, it seemed that they would die of thirst. One critical section in the red heart of nước Australia involved finding a route through the McDonnell mountain range and the finding water on the other side.

G

The water was not only essential for the construction team. There had đồ sộ be telegraph repeater stations every few hundred miles đồ sộ boost the signal and the staff obviously had đồ sộ have a supply of water. Just as one mapping team was about đồ sộ give up and resort đồ sộ drinking brackish water, some aboriginals took pity on them. Altogether, 40,000 telegraph poles were used in the Australian overland wire. Some were cut from trees. Where there were no trees, or where termites ate the wood, steel poles were imported.

H

On Thursday, August 22, 1872, the overland line was completed and the first messages could be sent across the continent; and within a few months, nước Australia was at last in direct liên hệ with England via the submarine cable, too. The line remained in service đồ sộ bring news of the Japanese attack on Darwin in 1942. It could cost several pounds đồ sộ send a message and it might take several hours for it đồ sộ reach its destination on the other side of the globe, but the world would never be the same again. Governments could be in touch with their colonies. Traders could send cargoes based on demand and the latest prices. Newspapers could publish news that had just happened and was not many months old.