JENKIN, FLEEMING. - A PIONEER WORK ON SUBMARINE CABLES.

Experimental Researches on the Transmission of Electric Signals through Submarine Cables. - Part I. Laws of Transmission through various lenghts of one Cable. Received May 20,- Read June 19, 1862. (Incl.) Appendix. Received January 14, 1863.

(London, Taylor and Francis, 1863). 4to. No wrappers as extracted from "Philosophical Transactions" 1862 - Vol. 152 - Part II. Pp. 987-1017. Clean and fine.

First appearance of a main paper in the electrical theory of submarine cables.

"An important paper of thirty quarto pages published in the ‘Transactions of the Royal Society’ for June 19, 1862, under the title ‘Experimental Researches on the Transmission of Electric Signals through submarine cables, Part I. Laws of Transmission through various lengths of one cable, by Fleeming Jenkin, Esq., communicated by C. Wheatstone, Esq., F.R.S.,’ contains an account of a large part of Jenkin’s experimental work in the Birkenhead factory during the years 1859 and 1860. This paper is called Part I. Part II. alas never appeared, but something that it would have included we can see from the following ominous statement which I find near the end of Part I.: ‘From this value, the electrostatical capacity per unit of length and the specific inductive capacity of the dielectric, could be determined. These points will, however, be more fully treated of in the second part of this paper.’ Jenkin had in fact made a determination at Birkenhead of the specific inductive capacity of gutta-percha, or of the gutta-percha and Chatterton’s compound constituting the insulation of the cable, on which he experimented. This was the very first true measurement of the specific inductive capacity of a dielectric which had been made after the discovery by Faraday of the existence of the property, and his primitive measurement of it for the three substances, glass, shellac, and sulphur; and at the time when Jenkin made his measurements the existence of specific inductive capacity was either unknown, or ignored, or denied, by almost all the scientific authorities of the day." (William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in "Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin" by Robert Louis Stevenson).

Jenkin, a British engineer, served as secretary of the British Association's Electric Standards Committee (formed in 1861), which was responsible for setting and naming the standard units of electrical quantity and resistance.

Order-nr.: 42775