William Thomas Henley (1814–1882) was a pioneer in the manufacture of telegraph cables. He was working as a porter in

Cheapside Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London, which forms part of the A40 London to Fishguard road. It links St. Martin's Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where ...

in 1830, leaving after disputes with his employer, and working at the St Katherine Docks for six years. During those years he was determined to learn a trade and used money from an aunt to purchase a lathe, vice and lumber with which he made a work bench. With those tools he taught himself to turn wood and brass and began to experiment, including with electricity. Henley designed and built a machine in 1837 for covering wires with silk or cotton thread which is now in the

London Science Museum The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...

(Object Number: 1939-139). The machine may have been Henley's original prototype. Around 1858 Henley developed a needle galvanometer that was installed at the

Valentia Island Valentia Island () is one of Ireland's most westerly points. It lies off the Iveragh Peninsula in the southwest of County Kerry. It is linked to the mainland by the Maurice O'Neill Memorial Bridge at Portmagee. A car ferry also departs from ...

, Ireland shore end of the 1858

transatlantic telegraph cable Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data a ...

to receive the first signal from the North American terminus at Heart's Content Cable Station, Newfoundland. That instrument is also in the collection of the museum. He set up as a

submarine cable Submarine cable is any electrical cable that is laid on the seabed, although the term is often extended to encompass cables laid on the bottom of large freshwater bodies of water. Examples include: *Submarine communications cable *Submarine power ...

maker in 1857 and by 1859 he had his own factory beside the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

North Woolwich North Woolwich is an area in the London Borough of Newham in East London. It is located on the northern bank of the River Thames, across the river from Woolwich. It is connected to Woolwich by the Woolwich Ferry and Woolwich foot tunnel. De ...

. Cable cores, the electrical component and its insulation, were obtained from Stephen William Silver and Hugh Adams Silver's

India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company The India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company was a London-based company based in Silvertown, East London. It was founded by Stephen William Silver in March 1864 as Silver's Indiarubber Works and Telegraph Cable Company Ltd. However ...

or William Hooper's company.Hooper's developed its own core sheathing capability and entered the cable laying business as

Hooper's Telegraph Works The Hooper's Telegraph Works Ltd was established by William Hooper in 1870 to manufacture and lay submarine communications cable using his patented vulcanized rubber core. Before the company was formed to produce finished submarine cable Hooper h ...

, including construction of the that was the second largest ship of the time and first designed for trans Atlantic cable laying.. He went on to manufacture the shore ends of the second Transatlantic cable in 1865. The firm eventually extended operations to manufacturing

gutta-percha Gutta-percha is a tree of the genus ''Palaquium'' in the family Sapotaceae. The name also refers to the rigid, naturally biologically inert, resilient, electrically nonconductive, thermoplastic latex derived from the tree, particularly from ...

and rubber core as well as cable laying and repair. W.T. Henley's Telegraph Works Co., Ltd acquired cable ships for cables it would lay as well as manufacture. One, , was chartered by Siemens Brothers Ltd. to lay cable between Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Chuy, Uruguay after the foundered while laying the cable with loss of of cable. ''La Plata'' foundered en route to complete the lay on 29 November 1874 in the Bay of Biscay with loss of 58 crew and the cable. Other company cable ships were , . and . W. T. Henley Ltd. was acquired by AEI in 1959, and later became part of GEC following its takeover of AEI in 1967. The company was sold to TT electronics in 1997. Today the company is a division of SICAME UK Limited and relocated to a brand new factory at Hoo (near

Rochester Rochester may refer to: Places Australia * Rochester, Victoria Canada * Rochester, Alberta United Kingdom *Rochester, Kent ** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area ** History of Rochester, Kent ** HM Prison ...

) in July 2018.

Footnotes

References

*'' Dictionary of National Biography'', Henley, William Thomas (1813?–1882), telegraphic engineer, by Gordon Goodwin. Published 1891.

External links

W.T. Henley ArchivesTelegraph Museum Porthcurno
and Science Museum Archive and Library at Wroughton)
W. T. Henley's Telegraph Works advertisement listing cables manufactured (ca. 1897)Machine used for covering wires with silk and cotton, 1837
(Science Museum Group)

Henley's cable ship foundered 29 November 1874 with the loss of 58 crew
The Loss of the ''La Plata''
(''The Telegraphic Journal'', 15 December 1874) {{DEFAULTSORT:Henley, William Thomas 1814 births 1882 deaths British electrical engineers Cable manufacture in London Telegraph engineers and inventors Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery History of science and technology in the United Kingdom