![]() ![]() The typical historicization is that biology had begun to describe organisms in terms increasingly amenable to physics-that mechanical explanations took over materialist ones. The cable also casts a peculiar shadow over the stock understanding of the conceptual links between physics and biology, as defined in the era of Darwin’s rise to prominence. ![]() 1 The endeavor combined industrial and naval feats and made large contributions to marine exploration, physics, and global politics (especially the military reach of the British Empire), including many shared congratulations, such as between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan. ![]() Differing ideas about the proper design and operation (in terms of power level, construction materials, signal detection) and ever higher costs finally led to the completion of a fully functioning cable in 1866. The construction drama involved the support of elaborate economic syndicates and drew notable physicists such as Lord Kelvin into its service. The project had a short-term success lasting just over a month in 1858, followed later by a redesign and many more failures. Soon after, the first of many attempts to construct a transatlantic telegraph cable began as a joint venture between the US, Canada, and England, funded largely by Cyrus West Field, an American businessperson who had been consolidating telegraph companies for years. Captain Dayman of the Cyclops, who was also instructed to take samples for scientific research, reported a curious sludge on the sounding device’s rope. Thus the region kept its name: Telegraph Plateau. In 1857, at Maury’s request, the British HMS Cyclops expanded the search, and in its soundings supported Maury’s earlier claim of flatness. Berryman found the region far more geologically uneven than Maury had believed, much to the latter’s displeasure. Dragging a partially hollowed cannonball fitted with hooks-a custom device designed by the military engineer John Mercer Brooke-across a great swath of the bottom of the ocean in a method called sounding, the crew mapped a massive and (supposedly) flat region previously studied by the American oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. In 1853, the aging brig USS Dolphin, under the command of Otway Henry Berryman, tested the depths of the sea in a region of the North Atlantic. ![]()
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