(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



New Day Cafe - Saturday: "Great Babe," And More [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-22

Good morning, Newdists. Please grab a cuppa and join us.

Do you talk to your friends in other countries on email and telephone? Can you imagine the extent of cables that are down on the ocean floors that allow this modern miracle of instant communication? Here is a vid of that.

x Animated map reveals the 550,000 miles of cable hidden under the ocean that power the internet pic.twitter.com/XFjelOKqBE — Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) February 19, 2018

The project of long distance communication began in 1854. The drive for the Transatlantic Communications Cable to connect one side of the Atlantic to the other. The ship SS Great Eastern started out of Ireland in July 13, 1866 and got to Newfundland in July 27, 1866.

The ship was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

x Probably one the most memorable 19thc photographs. Isambard Kingdom Brunel. One of the publicity photographs taken of the building of the SS Great Eastern at Millwall in 1857

Photograph taken by Robert Howlett, who had been commissioned by the Illustrated Times. pic.twitter.com/xmMS0cwvKX — Professor Amanda Vickery (@Amanda_Vickery) January 24, 2024

Honestly, what an unusual sequence of names. He oversaw the building of the ship in 1857.

As an aside, in 1857, while Britain was building an extraordinary ship on the Millwall Ironworks on the River Thames, on the other side of the world Britain was busy putting down a a violent revolt known as the Indian Mutiny. Brutal response was met by brutal response. But that’s not the topic of my diary. I’m still enamored of the oceanic cable and the ship that was built as the largest passenger ship, but would eventually be used to lay communication cable on the ocean floor — The SS Great Eastern: an iron hulled steamship, one of three designed by Brunel. He referred to this ship as the Great Babe.

At it’s peak while building this ship:

[...] around 200 riveting gangs were at work on the ship, working a minimum of 12 hours per day. A riveting gang consisted of two riveters or ‘bashers’ as they were known, a ‘holder on’ and two boys. One boy heated the rivets the other caught the white hot rivet, thrown to him by the first boy, he then placed it in the relevant hole, the holder on then kept the head of the rivet tight up against the inside of the plate while the bashers, striking alternately, hammered the other end into shape. One such gang could fit 400 rivets per day. When the outer hull was being riveted the holder on and the second boy worked between the two hulls in a space just 2 ft.10 inches wide.

When it finally was put out on the water, there were all sorts of problems like the boiler exploding which then had to be fixed. It wasn’t until 1860 that she finally reached NY. In 1861, she was put to use carrying troops to Quebec for Canadian defense, because the American Civil War had begun. Even though it was designed originally as a passenger ship that could carry 4000 people, there were too many operational challenges and it was eventually used for laying the Atlantic telegraph cable.She was too big and that caused all kinds of structural issues:

The pss Great Eastern was designed as a vast passenger liner that could carry over 4000 passengers around the world. Her enormous size and complex construction meant that she failed to achieve success as a passenger liner. The challenges of constructing and launching a ship so large coincided with Brunel’s declining health and his death in 1859. After just a handful of voyages she was sold to a telegraph cable laying company in 1864 for a fraction of the price of what she had cost to build. However, it was in this new guise that the ship played a crucial role in advancing global communication.



Messaging between Britain and US was in minutes instead of days.

x SS Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel,was the lrgst ship ever built when it was completed in 1858. It cld transport up to 4K passengers frm England to Australia wout refueling,making it a technical masterpiece of its time. pic.twitter.com/UK3H5RCV8n — Edward Elderman (@edwereddie) December 18, 2024

Scenes and Critters —

x Lake Tekapo, New Zealand pic.twitter.com/IXw8HuZoPs — Neil Thin (@NeilThin) February 21, 2025

I did nawt take your fishes!

x There are animals that look at you, and there are animals who look past your physical self and manage to probe the deep recesses of your frail human consciousness. This Dalmatian pelican is definitely the latter. There is something primal in the bird and myself that creates a… pic.twitter.com/hjsNkMV446 — Mark Smith Photography (@marktakesphoto) January 17, 2025

Frens helping out.

x Helping its friend out of the rain



pic.twitter.com/EbkLmVztYD — Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 14, 2025

Food —



New Day Cafe is an Open Thread

What do you want to talk about today?

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/22/2305431/-New-Day-Cafe-Saturday-Great-Babe-And-More?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/