Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 January 1889 — CABLES FOR UNDERGROUND. [ARTICLE]

CABLES FOR UNDERGROUND.

The Interesting Invention of a Pittsburg Physician. Glass cables as a solution of the underground telegraph problem is the novel invention of Dr. W. C. Penney of. Pittsburg. The results of twenty years’ experiments with electricity are embodied in this device. The new idea underlying it is the perfect insulation of each wire, and the means to be employed in carrying it out is a compact layer of plates of grooved glass. A plate about half an inch in thickness and of any desirable length or breadth is grooved to a depth varying with the size of the wire, in each groove a single wire is placed and cemented in place with pitch, which is as perfect a non-conductor as glass and the only other insulator used. A second layer of glass plates is secured to the first by the same adhesive material and tire grooves in it likewise filled, and so on until the conduit contains the desired number of wires. The whole is then boxed in wood and afterward cemented on all sides, with the exception of the openings left for the purpose of making connections. At every twenty-five feet, or greater or less distance-if desired, the grooves bend at right angles and the wires extend outside their glass enclosure; without being broken they then return, leaving, a curve of wire about an inch and a half in length, which is bent down close to the side'of the compact mass, This is true of each and every wire, and at any time the exposed portion can be cut and a battery attached. The convenience of this plan of connecting is greatly increased by the acourate registry of the wires which the discarding of all coils facilitates. The number of ordinary electric wires which can be laid by this method is 100 to the square of four and one-half inches. ~ We find nothing so good for colds as Rinehart’s Cough Balsam. 25c. F. B. Meyer.