The Arkansas in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Arkansas Telegraph Company
In Response To: Re: Arkansas Telegraph Company ()

Hugh

Yes, I am familuar with the Hindman Telegraphs in the Peter Wellington Alexander papers.

If you are an engineer then you fully appreciate what I am talking about as one of the lesser considered factors of providing communications. This expense of equipment, particularly wire and electricity, had to have determined where those wire were installed.

It didn't require very much electricity to run a local station maybe, one 6 volt battery. But, with the necessity of providing that same amount of electricity to run ever mile of wire, the wire had to have been run the shortest distance possible between two stations.

Having studied and constructed a simulated (non working) Daniell's Cell Galvanic Battery of the period and in fact set up a two station field telegraph system for a distance of 100 yards, I have come to the conclusion that maintaining those batteries where a headache.

That would have been their biggest problem. I am not sure how they would have handled this ohms resistance line loss problem between stations. It would have requird a massive Battery bank at each station to maintain the needed electricity to run lines over a long distance of 10's of miles. Or they would have had to established battery stations along the line.

This would have required someone to periodically ride the lines and maintain the batteries along that line refilling the batteries with Copper sulphate solution and sulphric acid and replacing worn out cells.

So it just wasn't a General walking over to the telegrapher and giving him a piece of paper.

Sorry for the length.

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