OUR ISLAND STORY

THE EIGHTH CHAPTER Communication by Telegraph

Since. the year 1727, when Stephen Gray discovered that a wire seven hundred feet long could be so charged as to make it attract light bodies at a distance, and since the year 1749—~the year of Franklin’s successful experiment with thekite—many great and wonderful things have been accomplished by means of electricity. One of the first of these was the sending of mess— ages by wire over considerable distances. , It is stated that, early in the nineteenth century, Francis Ronalds constructed a telegraph line eight miles long and offered it to the British Gov- ernment—and that theioffer was rejected with contempti Not until the let day of November, 1852 was the first submarine cable laid in America, and it was laid. between Cape Tormentine . in New Brunswick and Cape Traverse in Prince Edward Island.-

In the year 1850 the late Hon. William H. Pope obtained from the Legislature a charter conferring the right to operate an electric telegraph in this island by means of a company. But before operations were begun by this company, its Charter-was purchased by a company named the ”Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island Electric Telegraph Company.” This COmpany was incorporated by the Legislature of the Island in the session , of 1852. On the 17th of September in that year “The Islander” newspaper contained this paragraph: _

“We are much pleased to be enabled to announce to our readers that 350 bundles of telegraph wire arrived at this port on Thursday last in the bark Clasina from Liverpool. This wire is intended to connect this Island with Cape Tormentine, in the

shape of a submarine telegraph, and next spring, We understand, will be carried from East Point to Newfoundland.”