Another try

Disappointment brought disagreement. The board chairman recommended abandonment of the project and some members agreed with him. Some resigned. But Field pushed on and won the day. The fleet put to sea again on July 17. The cable was spliced in mid-ocean on July 29 and without further ado it was laid successfully, both ships reaching shore on August 5. During the subsequent celebrations the roof of the New York City Hall was set on fire by fireworks.

Signalling through the cable was nev­er easy and after only one month and 732 messages the insulation failed. Probably several factors were involved, including Whitehouse's use of too high a voltage. But to have achieved any suc­cess at all on such a venture when practice was so primitive was remarkable in itself. Though the success was short lived, Bright as chief engineer and Field as chief proponent had proved that telegraphic communication could be achieved across the Atlantic.

Financial backing for a third attempt proved much harder to find. After other expensive submarine cable also failed a British Board of Trade inquiry was set up to look into the technology and methods used. Bright was amongst those consulted. It reported its findings in 1861 and many improvements resulted. Inevitably a new attempt was made, with Bright as consultant to the project. In 1865 the Great Eastern laid cable all the way from Ireland to within 600 miles of Newfoundland before it broke. The next year complete success was achieved with yet another new cable and the 1865 cable was grappled, spliced and also completed.

Five years before the 1866 success. Bright had resigned from the Magnetic Telegraph Company to go into business as an independent consultant in partnership with Latimer Clark, another famous engineer of the time. They experimented with the insulation of wires and are remembered for "Bright and Clark's compound", a bituminous sealant used with later cables.

Bright was consultant to many telegraph companies needing major sub­marine cables including the Anglo-Indian, the Anglo-Mediterranean, the British-Indian Extension, and the China Submarine Telegraph Company. It was he who broke the jinx of failure in the deep waters of the Mediterranean. Also he was instrumental in setting up the British Association committee on electrical standards, on which he served with other distinguished scientists and engineers such as Maxwell and Wheat-stone. It was this committee which established electrical units such as the ohm and the farad.

Into Parliament

For three years from 1865 Bright pursued a completely different career, as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Greenwich. Late in his life he was involved in an unsuccessful mining ven­ture in Serbia.

He received honours, naturally. As well as the knighthood from the British government, the French granted Bright membership of the Legion d'Honneur. He was a member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers (later the Institu­tion of Electrical Engineers) from its inception and was its president for the year 1886/87.

It was soon after his presidency that Bright died, suddenly, on May 3, 1888 of heart disease at his brother's home in Kent. He was buried in Chiswick churchyard. Though a marble bust was made of him, his lasting memorial is the fact that he was engineer-in-chief of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He linked the New World with the Old.