Les Câbles Sous-Marins Fabrication

Abstract

THE author of this little book, as we are informed on the title-page, is an engineer in the employment of the Société industrielle des Téléphones, the leading French firm for the manufacture of submarine cables. The volume is one of a series appearing under the name of “Encyclopédic scientifique des Aide-memoire,” edited by M. Léauté, who is also, we understand, connected with the Société industrielle des Téléphones. From the title of the series we gather that this publication is designed to serve as a pocket text-book for submarine cable engineers, though the style in which it is written and the absence of an index—a fatal omission for any work of reference—make it resemble a popular treatise on the subject of cable manufacture rather than a scientific handbook. One example will serve to justify this view. In his reference to the Wheatstone Bridge—the most usual form of testing the conductor resistance of a cable—the author makes no attempt to explain the theory of the test, but merely gives the connections and the formula for obtaining the result. A book on cable testing which evades an explanation of the Pont de Wheatstone is as great a curiosity as a treatise on Euclid which omits all reference to the Pons Asinorum.

Les Câbles Sous-Marins. Fabrication.

Par Alfred Gay. Pp. 203. (Paris: Gauthier Villars et Fils, n.d.