United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You'll have to study and apply to books for full light on that subject. Nevertheless, although I cannot carry you into the subject just now, I can tell you something about it. You remember the testing-room which I showed you yesterday the darkened room between the captain's state-room and the entrance to the grand saloon?"
The commotion in the testing-room spread instantly to every part of the ship; the whole staff of electricians was at once roused, and soon afterwards the engines of the Great Eastern were slowed and stopped, while, with bated breath and anxious looks, men whispered to each other that there was "a fault in the cable." A fault!
There was still the blessed possibility of picking it up and bringing it to life again. That, however, was scarcely an appreciable comfort at the moment, and little could be seen or heard on board the Great Eastern save elongated faces and gloomy forebodings. Ebenezer Smith and his confreres worked in the testing-room like Trojans.
Then they rose en masse; cups were upset, and chairs thrown over; the cabin was crossed at racing speed, Captain Halpin leading the stair-case surmounted, and a rush made to the testing-room.
Whether we are picking it up, or paying it out; whether it is lying inert, coil upon coil, in the tanks like some great gorged anaconda, or gliding along the propelling machinery into some other tank, or off into the sea at our bow or stern; whether the dynamometer shows its tension to be great or small; whether we are grappling for it, or underrunning it; whether it is a shore end to be landed, or a deep-sea splice to be made, the cable is sure to develop most alarming symptoms, and some learned doctor must constantly sit in the testing-room, his finger on the cable's pulse, taking its temperature from time to time as if it were a fractious child with a bad attack of measles, the eruption in this case being faults or breaks or leakages or kinks.
I have heard that request in four languages already. To me it seems that by incontestable laws each actor is taking his proper place, and that each nationality is pushing out its best to the proper perspective. Ah! a siege is evidently the testing-room of the gods.
On each side of the hallway above mentioned, rooms are partitioned off and used for experimental work of various kinds, mostly phonographic, although on this floor are also located the storage-battery testing-room, a chemical and physical room and Edison's private office, where all his personal correspondence and business affairs are conducted by his personal secretary, Mr. H. F. Miller.
He shared in the weary delays that followed, and in the final triumph when the cable was fairly caught and at last brought on board, and carried to the testing-room, amid intense excitement, lest it should prove to have been damaged by its rough treatment; and his voice helped to swell the roar of enthusiastic cheering that greeted the announcement that the old cable was still alive!
But on that morning an appearance of excitement in the testing-room told that something had again gone wrong. Soon the order was given to slow the engines, then to stop them! The bursting of a thunder-clap, the explosion of a powder-magazine, could not have more effectually awakened the slumberers than this abrupt stoppage of the ship's engines.
Traversing the entire length of the deck past the houses of the sheep and pigs; past the great life-boats; past the half-closed door of the testing-room, where the operators maintained their unceasing watch in a flood of light; past the captain's cabin, a species of land-mark or half-way house; past a group of cows and goats lying on the deck chewing the cud peacefully, and past offices and deck-cabins too numerous to mention, he came at last to the fore-tank, which was so full of cable that the hands ready to act, and standing on the upper coil, had to stoop to save their heads from the deck above.
Word Of The Day