¹ On the first Atlantic cable, see the accounts in Bright, Charles, Submarine Telegraphs, Their History, Construction, and Working, London, 1898, 38–54Google Scholar; Thompson, Silvanus P., The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, 2 vols., London, 1911, i, 325–96Google Scholar; Dibner, Bern, The Atlantic Cable, Norwalk, 1959, 5–45Google Scholar; and Smith, Crosbie and Wise, M. Norton, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, Cambridge, 1989, 667–75.Google Scholar

² On the economic and political effects of cable telegraphy, see Headrick, Daniel R., The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945, Oxford, 1991Google Scholar; and Coates, Vary T. and Finn, Bernard S., A Retrospective Technology Assessment: Submarine Telegraphy – The Transatlantic Cables of 1866, San Francisco, 1979.Google Scholar

³ Hunt, Bruce J., ‘Michael Faraday, cable telegraphy and the rise of field theory’, History of Technology (1991), 13, 1–19.Google Scholar

⁴ For a characterization of Whitehouse as a ‘practical man’, see, for example, Smith, and Wise, , op. cit. (1), 664, 676.Google Scholar On the conflict between scientists and practical men later in the century, see Hunt, Bruce J., ‘“Practice vs. theory”: the British electrical debate, 1888–1891’, Isis (1983), 74, 341–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on its eventual partial resolution, see Hong, Sungook, ‘Forging electrical engineering: John Ambrose Fleming and the Ferranti effect’, Isis (1995), 86, 30–51, especially 50–1.Google Scholar

⁵ See Bright, , op. cit. (1), 6n.Google Scholar

⁶ Among the few extant obituaries and biographical notices of Whitehouse, see the brief ‘Obituary Notice’ in the Electrician (1890), 24, 319Google Scholar; the entry in the 1865 and 1879 editions of Routledge's Men of the Time; and the entry in Poggendorff, J. C.'s Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch zur Geschichte der Exacten Wissenschaften, Leipzig, 1898, iii, pt 2, 1438.Google Scholar Whitehouse's approach to electrical experimentation paralleled in many ways that of the ‘electricians’ of the 1830s and early 1840s discussed in Morus, Iwan Rhys, ‘Currents from the underworld: electricity and the technology of display in early Victorian England’, Isis (193), 84, 50–69Google Scholar, but I have found no evidence linking Whitehouse directly to the earlier group.

⁷ See Whitehouse's testimony, 15 December 1859, in Report of the Joint Committee on the Construction of Submarine Telegraphs, British Parliamentary Papers, 1860, LXII, London, 1861, 69Google Scholar; Brett, J. W., ‘Atlantic telegraph’ (letter), Engineer (8 10 1858), 6, 267Google Scholar; and Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, The Atlantic Telegraph – The Rise, Progress, and Development of its Electrical Department, London, 1858, 6Google Scholar, also published in Engineer (24 09 1858), 6, 230–2.Google Scholar On the discovery and early study of retardation, see Hunt, , op. cit. (3).Google Scholar

⁸ Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, Report on a Series of Experimental Observations on Two Lengths of Submarine Electric Cable, Containing, in the Aggregate, 1, 125 Miles of Wire, Being the Substance of a Paper Read Before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Glasgow, Sept. 14th, 1855, Brighton, 1855, 6.Google Scholar A copy of this rare, privately printed work, inscribed ‘March 4, 1856 Sam. F. B. Morse from Cyrus W. Field, Esq.’, is in the Olin Library at Cornell University. A report of the paper was published in Athenaeum (22 09 1855), 1091–2Google Scholar, and a brief abstract appeared under the title ‘Experimental observations on an electric cable’ in the 1855 British Association Report, Section A, 23–4; excerpts were published in ‘The Atlantic telegraph’, Engineer (30 01 1857), 3, 82–3.Google Scholar

⁹ Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 3.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 5.Google Scholar

¹¹ Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 10–11.Google Scholar Whitehouse gave a fuller account of his methods (with illustrations) in ‘Experiments on the retardation of electric signals, observed in submarine conductors’, Engineer (23 01 1857), 3, 62–3.Google Scholar

¹² Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 21.Google Scholar

¹³ Whitehouse, , ‘Experimental observations’, op. cit. (8), 24Google Scholar, and Report, op. cit. (8), 20.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 22.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Field was certainly aware of Whitehouse's work by March 1856, when he sent Morse a copy of Whitehouse's 1855 Glasgow paper; see note 8, above.

¹⁶ Brett, , op. cit. (7), 267Google Scholar; Bright, , op. cit. (1), 28.Google Scholar Field, Brett and Charles Bright joined together on 29 September 1856 as the initial ‘projectors’ of the company; Whitehouse was added as an equal member of the group a short time later, before legal registration of the Atlantic Telegraph Company on 20 October 1856.

¹⁷ Thomson, William, ‘On the theory of the electric telegraph’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (1855), 7, 382–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Thomson, , Mathematical and Physical Papers, 6 vols., Cambridge, 1884, ii, 61–76Google Scholar, hereinafter cited as MPP.

¹⁸ Thomson, William, ‘On peristaltic induction of electric currents in submarine telegraph wires’, British Association Report (1855)Google Scholar, Section A, 22, reprinted in Thomson, , MPP, op. cit. (17), ii, 77–8.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, ‘The law of squares – is it applicable or not to the transmission of signals in submarine circuits?’, British Association Report (1856), 21–3Google Scholar; also published in Athenaeum (30 08 1856), 1092.Google Scholar

²⁰ Whitehouse, , Atlantic Telegraph, op. cit. (7), 6.Google Scholar

²¹ Whitehouse, , op. cit. (19), 21.Google Scholar No such committee was ever formed.

²² See the letters from Thomson, William, ‘Telegraphs to America’, Athenaeum (4 10 1856, 1219Google Scholar, and 1 November 1856, 1338–9), and Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, ‘The Atlantic telegraph’, Athenaeum (11 10 1856, 1247Google Scholar; and 8 November 1856, 1371), and the discussion in Smith, and Wise, , op. cit. (1), 661–4.Google Scholar

²³ Thomson, , 1 11 1856, op. cit. (22), 1338–9.Google Scholar

²⁴ Whitehouse, , 8 11 1856, op. cit. (22), 1371.Google Scholar

²⁵ Thomson, William to de la Rive, Auguste, 17 12 1856Google Scholar, in Tunbridge, Paul, Lord Kelvin: His Influence on Electrical Measurements and Units, London, 1992, 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomson, William, in discussion of Window, F. R., ‘Submarine telegraphs’, Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (13 01 1857), 16, 210–11Google Scholar; Thomson, William, ‘On Mr. Whitehouse's relay and induction coils in action on short circuit’, British Association Report (1857), 21Google Scholar; Thomson, William to Stokes, G. G., 7 11 1857Google Scholar, in Correspondence between Sir George Gabriel Stokes and Sir William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (ed. Wilson, D. B.), 2 vols., Cambridge, 1990, i, 226.Google Scholar Thomson had taken up James Joule in a similar way in the late 1840s, but with very different eventual results.

²⁶ Whitehouse, , Atlantic Telegraph, op. cit. (7), 6.Google Scholar

²⁷ Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 22Google Scholar, and ‘On the construction and use of an instrument for determining the value of intermittent or alternating electric currents for purposes of practical telegraphy’, Engineer (26 09 1856), 2, 523Google Scholar; abstract in British Association Report (1856), 19–21.Google Scholar

²⁸ Whitehouse, , ‘On the construction’, op. cit. (27), 523.Google Scholar

²⁹ Whitehouse, , Report, op. cit. (8), 22Google Scholar, and ‘On the construction’, op. cit. (27), 523.Google Scholar

³⁰ , R. J. M., The Atlantic Telegraph – A History of Preliminary Experimental Proceedings, and a Descriptive Account of the Present State and Prospects of the Undertaking, London, 1857.Google Scholar The author of this 69-page pamphlet is identified as Mann, R. J. in Dibner, , Atlantic Cable, op. cit. (1), 95.Google Scholar Although Whitehouse was widely believed to have been its author – no doubt because it praised him so lavishly – he later said he had only given advice to the ‘talented popular writer’ hired to write it; see Whitehouse, , ‘The Atlantic telegraph’ (letter), Engineer (26 11 1858), 6, 410.Google Scholar

³¹ Whitehouse, , ‘On the construction’, op. cit. (27), 523.Google Scholar

³² Whitehouse, , 8 11 1856, op. cit. (22), 1371.Google Scholar

³³ Thomson's testimony, 17 December 1859, in Report of the Joint Committee, op. cit. (7), 115.Google Scholar

³⁴ Whitehouse, , ‘On the construction’, op. cit. (27), 523.Google Scholar On standardization, replication and networks of credibility, see Latour, Bruno, Science in Action, Cambridge, MA, 1987, especially 247–57Google Scholar, and O'Connell, Joseph, ‘Metrology: the creation of universality by the circulation of particulars’, Social Studies of Science (1993), 23, 129–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ ‘Statement of the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company’, Engineer (8 10 1858), 6, 267–8Google Scholar; Thompson, , op. cit. (1), i, 370Google Scholar; Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, ‘A brief description of the instruments employed on the opening of the Atlantic Line’, Engineer (29 10 1858), 6, 329.Google Scholar

³⁶ Whitehouse, , Atlantic Telegraph, op. cit. (7), 18–22.Google Scholar For more on the 1857–58 expeditions, see the works cited in note 1. de Cogan, D., ‘Dr. E. O. W. Whitehouse and the 1858 trans-Atlantic cable’, History of Technology (1985), 10, 1–15Google Scholar, contains some useful information but is marred by several errors.

³⁷ Thompson, , op. cit. (1), i, 367–8.Google Scholar

³⁸ Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, ‘Reply to the Statement of the Directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company’, Engineer (15 10 1858), 6, 287–8.Google Scholar Whitehouse also published this ‘Reply’, dated ‘Royal Institution, Sept. 27, 1858’, as a pamphlet, excerpts from which are reprinted in Dibner, , op. cit. (1), 91–3.Google Scholar

³⁹ Thompson, , op. cit. (1), i, 374–7.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Whitehouse, E. O. Wildman, ‘A few thoughts on the size of conductors for submarine circuits’, Engineer (29 10 1858), 6, 329.Google Scholar All six of the papers Whitehouse read before the Mathematical and Physical Section at Leeds on 28 September 1858 were published in the Engineer, 329–30Google Scholar; one of them, ‘On some of the difficulties in testing submarine cables’, also appeared in Athenaeum (30 10 1858), 553Google Scholar; but only the general title, ‘Contributions on the submarine telegraph’, with no text, was given in the British Association Report (1858), 25.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See the Electrician obituary, op. cit. (6), and Bright, , op. cit. (1), 63n.Google Scholar Although Whitehouse was a founding member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers in 1870, he never took an active part in its affairs.

⁴² Smith, and Wise, , op. cit. (1), 675–7Google Scholar; Whitehouse's testimony is in the Report of the Joint Committee, op. cit. (7), 69–82.Google Scholar

⁴³ A Telegraph Engineer and Practical Electrician, ‘The Atlantic telegraph’ (letter), Engineer (5 11 1858), 6, 355.Google Scholar I have not been able to identify the author; the style and content resemble some of Latimer Clark's writings, but it could have been written by any of a number of other telegraph engineers.

⁴⁴ A Telegraph Engineer and Practical Electrician, ‘The Atlantic telegraph’ (letter), Engineer (19 11 1858), 6, 391–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Whitehouse, , op. cit. (30).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Telegraph Engineer, op. cit. (43). The word rendered here as ‘feared’ reads ‘found’ in the original, but this appears to be a mistranscription; Broad Street, in the City of London, was the location of the offices of the Atlantic Telegraph Company.

⁴⁷ Telegraph Engineer, op. cit. (43).

⁴⁸ A Telegraph Engineer and Practical Electrician, ‘The Atlantic cable’ (letter), Engineer (3 12 1858), 6, 431.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Telegraph Engineer, op. cit. (44), 392.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The work of the British Association Committee on Electrical Standards played an especially important role in this process; see Hunt, Bruce J., ‘The ohm is where the art is: British telegraph engineers and the development of electrical standards’, Osiris (1994), 9, 48–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Schaffer, Simon, ‘Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentation: “A Manufactory of Ohms”’, in Invisible Connections: Instruments, Institutions, and Science (ed. Bud, Robert and Cozzens, Susan E.), Bellingham, WA, 1992, 23–56.Google Scholar