DOWNLOADS
A 224-page printable version of the text content of the Distant Writing website is available for download in safe PDF format, just click here:
It is a large file, well over 2.8MB, only suitable for broadband connections.
The text content of the download version is the same as that on the web but does not have any of the illustrations; it was last amended on February 20, 2010.
A new 230 page PDF will be available soon.
All of the pictures from the Instrument Gallery and their captions are available as a 15-page printable supplementary download in PDF, last added to on February 20, 2010, this too is over 2MB in size; click here:
LINKS
Readers of Distant Writing may also be interested in the writer’s other work on early telegraphy, the essays generously hosted by the Atlantic Cable website. Just click through to read these pieces:
The Moving Fire
A brief biography of John Watkins Brett, Father of Submarine Telegraphy. Nine episodes in the life of J W Brett, and that of his brother Jacob, based on original research into nineteenth century resources, including several newly found and unpublished letters. It deals with the formation of the many telegraph companies in which they were involved and the ultimate, unjust downfall of the “Moving Fire” that created the first world-wide web.
Troubled Parents
The struggles of the ancestors of the Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company; Heimann, Küper & Co., Glass, Elliot & Co., and the Gutta-Percha Company, as well as their competitors in telegraph cable making, Andrew Smith, R S Newall, W T Henley, S W Silver and Christopher Nickels
Nathaniel John Holmes
A short biography of the “last of the first telegraphers”, from manager of the Central Telegraph Station in London during 1848 to engineer of the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Copenhagen
George Saward
A short biography of the first manager of the Atlantic Telegraph Company
Henry Weaver
A short biography of one of the most important managers in the nineteenth century domestic and cable telegraph companies
Thomas Allan
A short biography of the inventor of the “light cable” for submarine telegraphy in 1853, now in common use, most notable for the many abortive telegraph companies that he promoted in the 1850s and 1860s, and the pioneer of the electro-magnetic engine, used to power Jules Verne’s ‘Nautilus’!
Bridging the Gap 1863 - 1870
An essay on the news telegraphs in Ireland before the completion of the Atlantic cable
Early Irish Cables
A summary of the complex history of the earliest efforts to connect Britain and Ireland
Early Domestics A chronology of the original telegraph cables between Britain and its offshore islands
UPDATES
As Distant Writing is a work in progress constant additions and corrections are being made as old documents are released and published. The website was last substantially amended on August 8, 2010.
There continue to be minor corrections to fact and grammar, prompted by comments, correspondence and research.