Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1894 — A NETWORK OF OCEAN CABLES. [ARTICLE]

A NETWORK OF OCEAN CABLES.

Submarine Wires About Everywhere In the World Except in America Waters. The world is now so netted with cable, great and small and new ones are laid so frequently that there is much demand lor the services of the cable-laying ships, says the New York Sun. A list of the world’s cables, long and short, set down in tabulated lorm, occupies twenty large and closely printed pages. The cable map of the world prepared by the Unitea States navy department shows that the Mediterranean is thickly netted with cable west of Malta. So is the North Atlantic between the thirty-eight and fifty-fifth parallels. The North Sea, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Sea have many cables. The only great unbridged spaces are the Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the great stretch of the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Australia. There is no considerable cable north of Stockholm or south of Nelson, New Zealand. The Blade Sea is completely girdled by land lines and crossed by one cable. The Gulf of Mexico is crossed, though not at its widest, by several cables, and the waters of the West Indies are becoming thickly netted with short cables. Coast communications in the United States and Europe are maintained mainly by land lines, but in Africa, South America, and much of Asia the same thing is maintained by means of long or short cable loops. It thus happens that this country, although more thoroughly equipped with telegraphic lines than any other in the world, has a comparatively small amount of cable withia her own waters. This may perhaps account in part for the fact that cable making is only just beginning to be an important industry in the United States. The navy of the United States, however, has doae a vast deal for the art of cable laying. Commander Sigs bee has invented a highly affective sounding machine for ascertaining the depth of the ocean—an absolutely necessary preliminary to cable laying. Lieutenant Commander L. Tanner of the navy has devised an ingenious case for deep sea thermometers and also improved a thermometer frame invented by an Italian uaval officer. The navy department has also issued an elaborate treatise for the proposed Pacific cable route.