The presentation of a Royal Society of Arts Gold Medal to William Montgomerie meant he was regarded, at least by himself, as the person officially recognised as having introduced gutta percha to Britain. It was unfortunate the doctor appears to have been mistaken but, even if the medal had been for his gutta percha initiative, it is doubtful if Jose d’Almeida would have felt aggrieved as there appears to have been no personal rivalry between the two men and nothing was at stake financially. This was not always the case in the more intensely developing fields of science and industry. Inventors had to tread carefully so as not to offend and, if they themselves were offended, consider reacting promptly.
The field of electrical development was one area where sparks might fly when generated by a perceived slight but it was by no means the only one. Someone who fell foul of such a culture was, perhaps surprisingly, the mild mannered Michael Faraday. Faraday came from a humble background but was fortunate to be offered a post at the Royal Institution as a laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy, the most esteemed scientist in Britain in the first decades of the C19th. In 1815 the two men worked for many weeks, sometimes in virtual isolation, intent on creating a lamp that could be used in coal mines where there might be explosive gasses. The investigations themselves were dangerous but as the boundaries of scientific knowledge were expanded laboratory explosions were often seen as an unavoidable risk and there was certainly more than one bang at the Royal Institution. The result of the concentrated efforts by Davy and Faraday proved worthwhile but when the ‘safety lamp’ was introduced to the public Davy was accused of plagiarism by the railway engineer George Stephenson who had devised a similar device. The feud, between two of the most famous men in the country, neither of whom had a retiring nature, festered for some time with Faraday staunchly defending his mentor and Davy subsequently praising Faraday for his contribution to the lamp development.
Faraday proved to be an able researcher, developing initiatives that were reflected in a growing reputation in scientific circles but this seems to have generated some resentment in Davy. Matters came to a head when Faraday published an article about electromagnetism in which he did not give, as convention demanded, credit to others who deserved it. Despite their previous close co-operation, Faraday was accused of plagiarism by Davy and, according to rumour, the deterioration of their relationship may have led to a dangerous experiment which Faraday undertook at Davy’s suggestion. This involved potassium chlorate, sulphuric acid, a glass tube and heat and the result was an explosion that could have been lethal. Fortunately, Faraday survived although his face was lacerated with glass. We will never know if there was some malevolence when Davy proposed this experiment but it is clear he later attempted to stall his assistant’s professional progress by blocking his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society. Eventually, when this and other obstructive tactics were swept aside, Faraday’s professional trajectory was able to right itself although, until Davy’s death in 1829, Faraday tended to avoid working on electromagnetism. However, in the 1830s he returned to the field, soon creating the first dynamo, which paved the way for the development of useful electric motors.
Tension in the world of magnets and currents was also apparent in the United States. The son of poor Scottish immigrants, John Henry had similar youthful financial struggles to Faraday but he too, when given the opportunity, proved to be a brilliant scientific researcher although he was not above inventing small items of domestic convenience. To him we owe the substitution of the rat-a-tat-tat of the door knocker by the less aggressive sound of the electric doorbell, something that may have been welcomed by a sleeping doctor at the end of a telekouphanon. Henry was particularly knowledgeable in the field of electromagnetism and assisted in the development of Samuel Morse’s telegraphic proposals at critical times. However, when Morse eventually found success Henry felt his contributions were not sufficiently acknowledged.
Meanwhile, back on the other side of the Atlantic, as the electric telegraph emerged in Britain, bad feeling grew between Cooke and Wheatstone who, despite holding a joint patent, seemed to be at odds with each other more often than not. But they guarded their newly registered rights jealously and threatened legal action against one inventor who devised and exhibited a system bearing some resemblance to theirs. Litigation was avoided only when the challenger fled to Australia after a breakdown of his marriage leaving his equipment behind. When an interested party went in search of this kit they found it had been sold for scrap, something regretted by the family gardener who said ‘twas such a pity, as there was as much mechanism about them as would fit up a hundred clocks. As with the expensively produced Congreve’s lock, if no-one had any use for innovative equipment then monetary value just lay in the redundant metal. Even that fraction would be reduced by the cost of carting it away.
The deterioration of relationships, at least between Faraday and Davy and Henry and Morse were more to do with professional acknowledgement than financial advantage. Where money, and potentially large amounts of money, were involved, upset and bitterness could run much deeper. In later life Morse had to fight a long battle against someone who accused him of using his ideas. The motivation of that claim might just have been a desire to see an input recognised or it may have been a first step in trying to get a cut of the profits. Anyway, the claim failed. In this kind of fractious atmosphere perhaps it was almost inevitable that, given the scramble to patent gutta percha innovations, disputes would eventually surface over the use of that raw material too and was why, to try and avert friction, Bewley, Hancock, Nickels and Keene signed their pooling agreement.
After the pooling agreement took effect, Hancock, although not a partner in the Gutta Percha Company, continued to work at the Wharf Road factory, essentially as a researcher and inventor but accepting that if he patented a new process he was obliged to lodge it with the pooling trustees. He would have been as well informed as anyone about the expanding uses of gutta percha and almost certainly followed the development of telegraph systems keenly. Given the importance of insulation, particularly in underwater or underground situations, he may have conducted his own experiments to assess the possibility of gutta percha being used in place of India rubber and tarred hemp. Others had certainly tried for, as early as 1840, Wheatstone had suggested a submarine cable to link England and France and had subsequently experimented with underwater transmission in Swansea Bay. When gutta percha came to his attention Wheatstone tried to use it as an insulator but abandoned the idea on finding the application too difficult. Wrapping sheets of gutta percha around a copper conductor would not do as water ingress would eventually occur through the seal.
The need to find a satisfactory way of coating a transmission wire became all the more acute after the Electric Telegraph Company, established to serve both the public and railway companies, was formed in 1846. The company used the patented Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph system both in Great Britain and Belgium, a country that, as a modern state, had been born in the 1830s. Meanwhile, down the coast the electric telegraph was also taking hold in France, but from almost the beginning the French government maintained a monopoly and it was made an offence to operate a system privately. Nonetheless, these developments added pressure to link the telegraph systems on either side of the English Channel through a submerged cable. Despite that, the first successful attempt to use gutta percha as insulation on a long distance telegraph line in Europe was not to take place between England and France but between two German cities.
In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, the victors in the war against Napoleon rewarded themselves and their allies with territorial acquisition. Prussia certainly increased in size and, crucially, absorbed the area that came to be called the Ruhr, which would grow in importance as the industrial revolution developed in northern Europe. In the same year the German Confederation was also formed. This was a new political entity, replacing the Holy Roman Empire that had been dissolved by Napoleon. It comprised of nearly 40 states, big and small, that, for the most part, were German speaking. The largest state in the north was Prussia and that in the south, Austria. The leaders of the victorious powers hoped the changes applied after the Congress would damp down revolutionary ideas but the genie was out of the bottle and so, although the maps were redrawn, the political ambitions fanned by the events of 1776 in America and 1789 in France would not be extinguished by shuffling borders. All over Europe the post war period saw bitter confrontation between the more conservative, not to say reactionary, ruling classes and liberal movements that looked forward to the establishment of constitutions that recognised some, albeit limited, form of democracy.
If Britain’s constitutional monarchy was admired by many so was the progress the country had made, and continued to make, in industry, which included the development of steam power. It is not surprising that when plans were made to manufacture locomotives in Prussia, engineers copied an engine that had been built in Yorkshire. Unfortunately, the two machines produced in Berlin in the year of Waterloo could not be made to work properly and were eventually used as stationary engines. However, Prussia continued to industrialise quite steadily, helped by the Zollverein, a customs union between many German states created in 1834. The first railways to adopt steam locomotives were relatively short coal lines but it was not long before passenger trains were operating on tracks laid in a number of states in the German Confederation and these were followed by the development of trunk connections linking major cities.
As might be expected progressive elements within the German Confederation supported this modernisation of the transport system, the liberal economist Friedrich List extolling the virtues of a method of transport that would bring many benefits to the German population, helping, in his opinion, to reduce the possibility of famine, stabilise food prices and bring talent and skill more easily to market. He also pointed out that a national rail network would help in defending the realm by facilitating the movement and concentration of the army. He was right in that and the idea had already been considered, in detail, in an army that had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the exiled French emperor.
In the reign of Frederick the Great, Prussia had developed a superb army but the quality had not been maintained in the years after his death. Nonetheless, the defeat at the hands of Napoleon in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt was a great shock to Prussia and the subsequent occupation of Berlin a national humiliation. In the following years the army was rebuilt and played a crucial role at Waterloo but following the Congress of Vienna it was once again the focus of reform. In the 1830s, after the posthumous publication of On War by Carl von Clausewitz, who was a veteran of the Napoleonic campaigns, the Prussian Army adopted new techniques and attitudes. These included a drive for literacy in the ranks combined with some form of military service for all male adults and a movement towards encouraging initiative in the field rather than a rigid adherence to battle plans. By the late 1840s the army was returning to being probably the premier armed force in continental Europe. Ominously, for those states that had borders with Prussia, von Clausewitz had put forward the view that there were two types of war, one of which was merely to make some conquests on the frontiers of a country engaging in armed struggle. Such territorial conquests would either be retained permanently or used to negotiate a peace settlement. Doubtless the military planners in neighbouring states took notice of this opinion and may well have been concerned as the railways crept close to their borders. As in Britain the permanent way would be supplemented by wires and systems that could carry military messages and reports with great speed. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the development of the electric telegraph in Prussia and the use of gutta percha as insulation came to lie mainly in the hands of an army officer. His name was Werner Siemens.
Werner Siemens was born in Lenthe, near Hanover, in 1816. His introduction to the necessary use of force came early because, as he recorded in later life, when he was about five years old he was instructed to escort his elder sister to a local parsonage where she was being given knitting lessons. Unfortunately, the way had recently been barred by an intimidating gander and as Matilda could not be coaxed into going alone Werner was given a big stick, bigger than himself so he remembered, to drive the monster away. Sure enough as the pair came towards the parsonage the gander came towards them at which point Werner closed his eyes and began flailing the stick wildly. The counter attack worked perfectly and the gander, with associated geese, fled.
Despite this triumph Werner’s family did not remain in Hanover more than a few years because of a dispute with the authorities. After the Congress of Vienna the Kingdom of Hanover had been established. This had a direct link with the court of George 111 where, during his father’s incapacity, the Prince Regent essentially acted as the monarch. Despite his support for building the Regents Canal, the prince was generally regarded as a reactionary with little real concern for welfare of the great majority of his subjects. As Werner recollected, it was a similar situation in Hanover for he wrote;
The English princes who then kept court in the Hanoverian capital troubled themselves but little about the welfare of the country which they chiefly regarded as a hunting ground.
It followed that, as in England, the game laws were strict and after Werner’s father fell foul of them the family moved away from the ‘Royal Hanoverian Province of Great Britain.’
As Werner grew up it was clear juvenile courage was matched by intelligence but although he progressed well at grammar school family resources would not stretch to supporting an education beyond that. Consequently, Werner applied and was accepted by the Prussian Army to study engineering. Although a good student he was not above breaking the rules if he thought it necessary or, indeed, honourable. Fighting duels was against army regulations but Werner became involved in one as a second. The duellers were subsequently court marshaled and so was Werner but before he began his term of imprisonment he said he made an arrangement with a chemist to have chemicals and apparatus smuggled into his cell. His work in this unusual laboratory paid dividends because he was able to experiment with electrolysis, a subject in which he had become very interested. So successful in fact that he was to say it was one of the happiest moments of his life when he observed a German teaspoon, which he had dipped into a beaker filled with a chemical solution change in a few minutes into ‘a golden spoon of the finest and purest lustre’. On release from prison Werner was able to exploit his innovation and recruited his younger brother, Wilhelm, who also had a fascination with engineering and electricity, to take the process to England to try and sell the rights.
It would appear that at least some of the details about the way the electroplating process had been developed were fanciful and one of the happiest moments of Werner’s life actually took place before he was sent to prison, when he was experimenting at home. At home or in prison, the process that Werner had developed was, in the opinion of both brothers, an improvement on the one patented by the Birmingham based Elkington company. It was decided Wilhelm would travel from Germany to that city with a view to selling the rights to the innovation. Only a few years earlier the journey to Birmingham from the port of entry would have been by stagecoach but the London to Birmingham Railway facilitated a much quicker journey, an economic benefit that confirmed the views of Friedrich List. Once in England Wilhelm seems to have moved easily in society, no doubt helped by a generally pro-German attitude that was evident after the marriage between Queen Victoria and her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Prince Albert became well regarded in both in court circles and beyond, being seen as someone who had Britain’s interests at heart.
Once in Birmingham Wilhelm, after tough negotiations, was able to sell the improved electroplating method, which must have given him the confidence to call again. One of his subsequent successes as a salesman was, in tandem with Werner, promoting anastatic printing, a method of making very high quality facsimiles. The process depended on original material being placed face down on zinc plates that had been coated with chemicals. When pressure was applied to the back of the originals, whether they be illustrations or handwritten texts made with a certain type of ink, an image would be transferred to the plate. From this plate prints could be taken.
Facsimiles produced by anastatic printing impressed Michael Faraday who by now had become probably the most prestigious scientist in Britain. So enthused was Faraday that he gave a public demonstration of the process at the Royal Institution. No-one could hope for a better introduction to British scientific circles than this and perhaps some interpreted Faraday’s commendation as implying that no further investigation of the invention was needed. This was unfortunate because when the technology crossed the Atlantic it was used to make a facsimile of the original, hand-written Declaration of Independence, at which point the effect of the harsh chemicals needed for image transfer appears to have caused a reaction in the ink used in that document. The result, according to some modern experts, was significant fading.
The responsibility for damaging important documents could not be set at the feet of either Faraday or the Siemens brothers but it appears that Wilhelm now had access to a number of Faraday’s associates from one of whom, although it is not quite clear which one, he acquired a gutta percha sample. As Walter Hancock had passed a small quantity on to his brother so Wilhelm did the same. On receipt of the gutta percha, Werner, now making a name for himself in the Prussian Army as an expert electrical engineer, immediately saw the potential of the substance, realising how valuable it might be as an insulator for telegraph conductors. However, like Wheatstone and Charles Hancock he faced the problem of applying a sheath that would make a perfect, waterproof seal. His first experiments, made in 1846, were simply to cover a short length of conducting wire with heated gutta percha and as this process seemed to work he arranged for gutta percha to be coiled round a copper conductor and laid by a railway track as a telegraph line. Unfortunately, the results proved somewhat disappointing as over time the coiled insulator simple unwound but Werner then developed a kind of screw press by which, he said, heated gutta percha was cohesively pressed around the copper wire under the application of a high pressure. This method worked perfectly and a gutta percha insulated cable was laid between Berlin and Grossbeeren, a distance of over 10 miles, in the summer of 1847.
Obviously the amount of gutta percha needed for this quantity of insulation would have been greater than a small box of samples and for a cable of a much longer length substantial further supplies would be needed. There was always the possibility this could be acquired at auction in London or bought from the Gutta Percha Company from its surplus stock but it is also possible plans were made to bring it directly from Singapore through the hands of a German shipping agency. One, and probably the most successful, was the firm of Benh, Mayer and Co which had been established in the free port in 1840 largely on the capital raised by the sale of cargo from three ships that had carried cotton from Bombay to an American firm in Whampoa. This was at the point when Anglo-Chinese relationships were deteriorating but Augustus Benh, originally a supercargo of a Bremen firm, had taken advantage of an agreement that ships flying a neutral flag would be allowed to land without hindrance and the little convoy sailed in under the flag of Hamburg.
Establishing an agency in Singapore was one thing but building up a successful business quite another. Fortunately, when Valentin Meyer joined with his friend Benh to form their company he brought with him a portfolio of references from firms in Europe and Asia including Manchester, Calcutta and Batavia. Benh himself was, moreover, a skilled networker and certainly energetic. Returning to Germany in 1843 to get married to Valentin’s younger sister, he filled the five months between his official engagement and marriage with a business trip that saw him making calls in three cities in Holland, four in both France and England, three in Scotland and one in Switzerland. This was on top of more than twenty in the German Confederation. When Benh returned to Singapore he took his new bride with him.
Benh, Mayer and Co began to import goods from Germany via Hamburg and Bremen via agents in both ports. Imported cargoes, which included manufactured goods, were taken on a consignment basis but the composition of the return cargoes was left largely to the discretion of Benh, Mayer and Co. Had the firm been given an order for gutta percha they would no doubt have tried to fulfil it but not enough material of high quality had reached Germany by the end of the decade to meet a spike in demand caused by the outbreak of a war and the creation of a long distance telegraph line.
Able to combine a military career with one in business Werner Siemens started to look closely at the opportunities offered by telegraphy when it was being introduced in Germany by the Prussian Army. It was at this time that he experimented with gutta percha but he also developed an improved version of the Cooke and Wheatstone pointer system, a prototype of which was produced by a skilled precision engineer named Johann Halske. In 1848 Siemens and Halske set up their own telegraph construction firm although, initially, it could only trade under Halske’s name as Werner was still a serving officer. However, Werner’s military background would offer him an opportunity to experiment with the use of insulated cable in detonating a weapon. When war broke out between Prussia and Denmark over a dispute involving the border duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, Siemens was sent to help in the defence of Kiel. It so happened that his sister, Matilde, was living in that port at the time and we might wonder if she remembered Werner’s last defensive action near the parsonage! Although her brother’s deployment did not last long there was enough time for him to devise a submersible electric mine that could be detonated through a gutta percha insulated wire. Then, after about three months, Siemens was withdrawn from Kiel and ordered to begin work on a telegraphic link between Berlin with Frankfurt am Main. He had clearly impressed the authorities.
To link Berlin to Frankfurt by telegraph Werner made plans for a line to be laid underground adjacent to the connecting railway. The pointer units produced by his own firm would be used and as he also had a contract with the cable manufacturer he was in a position to closely control the installation. He decided that if the conductor of the telegraph line, which would be made of copper, could be protected purely by gutta percha there would be no need for supplementary insulation. Unfortunately, the best kind of gutta percha was no longer available and so Werner decided to vulcanise that which he did obtain in order to strengthen the insulating qualities of the sheath. This would also, he thought, improve the resistance to external damage. The process of gutta percha vulcanisation, which required the addition of sulphur, had recently been developed in England, but had not been widely employed. Nonetheless, Werner gave orders that it should be used and through the rest of 1848 and into 1849 he supervised the construction of this long and important telegraphic link, which many in authority thought was most important given a deteriorating political situation.
Even before Werner Siemens had been sent to Kiel there had been disturbances in the streets of Berlin, where barricades were set up and demands made for political changes, actions replicating those seen elsewhere in Europe. The first inkling of events that would turn 1848 into a year of revolutions had appeared in January when reports arrived of trouble in Sicily and as the weeks went by it was clear demand for reform, backed by insurrection, was spreading. Some revolts were to lead to major political changes, such as the abdication of King Louis Philippe in France, whilst both anxiety and hope were generated right across the continent. In Britain news items such as one which appeared in the press about prisoners being released from jail so they could pounce like wolves on the city of Palermo, did little to pour oil on troubled waters. What may have been perceived as one stream of a potential revolutionary flood was to pass along City Road, not far from the Gutta Percha Company factory and no doubt some local residents feared London’s pouncing wolves might jump out from this too.
Back to Chapter 9 On to Chapter 11
When London Became An Island
Gutta Percha comes to the Metropolis
Chapter 10 - Trial and error troubles
Commanders and clippers
Prussia in the 1840s
Siemens pointer telegraph