Chapter 13:

Lord Kelvin:

But the baron did not only immerse himself in pure research: he also had a practical bent. It was the time when the Atlantic Telegraph Company was just about to connect Ireland and Newfoundland with a cable for transatlantic telegraphy. Kelvin participated in the hazardous underwater cable-laying expeditions and at this occasion had a major row with the company’s chief electrician, Dr. Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse. Whitehouse, who was actually a medical doctor and “probably trailed [Kelvin] by a good 50 or 100 IQ points,” pooh-poohed a device that Kelvin proposed, claiming that practical experience refuted his theoretical findings. The problem was that the cable was very, very, very long. As a consequence, the signal at the other end was very, very, very weak. The doctor though that this obstacle could be overcome by increasing the voltage of the telegraphic signals. Subsequently, he designed and patented induction coils that would be capable of sending 2000 volts down the wire. Kelvin, on the other hand, claimed that instead of increasing the voltage at one end, more sensitive equipment should be used to detect the signal at the sending end. But the directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company accepted Whitehouse’s view, the cable was laid, and Morse code started going back and forth between the Old World and the New. Queen Victoria sent a polite “Hello” to President Buchanan, Buchanan sent a “Hi there” back, and Whitehouse was vindicated. Or so he thought. In the midst of one of these fascinating messages, the 2000 volts burnt a gaping hole into the cable’s insulation, somewhere between Ireland and Newfoundland. In one fell swoop, 3,700 kilometers of cable had become useless junk. As it turned out later, even the “Hello” and “Hi there” messages had been deciphered using Kelvin’s patented mirror-galvanometer. Whitehouse strenuously denied this, but his credibility had already taken a beating and the Atlantic Telegraph Company fired him. From then on, it was Kelvin’s contraption that was used for transatlantic telegraphy.

Thus Kelvin also managed to give a counterexample to the commonly accepted notion that true scientists don’t make any money. He filed seventy patents for transatlantic telegraph devices, electrical instruments, mariners’ compasses and the like. He was as comfortable talking finance to business people as he was expounding physical theories to academic listeners. His measuring instruments were marketed worldwide and the wealth he accumulated allowed him the purchase of a fine house with a surrounding estate, and a 126 ton yacht. Lord Kelvin was truly one of the first telecommunication zillionaires.