Jenkin used excellently the valuable
opportunities for experiment allowed him by Newall, and his partner
Lewis Gordon, at their Birkenhead factory. Thus he began definite
scientific investigation of the copper resistance of the conductor,
and the insulating resistance and specific inductive capacity of
its gutta-percha coating, in the factory, in various stages of
manufacture; and he was the very first to introduce systematically
into practice the grand system of absolute measurement founded in
Germany by Gauss and Weber. The immense value of this step, if
only in respect to the electric telegraph, is amply appreciated by
all who remember or who have read something of the history of
submarine telegraphy; but it can scarcely be known generally how
much it is due to Jenkin.
Looking to the article 'Telegraph (Electric)' in the last volume of
the old edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' which was
published about the year 1861, we find on record that Jenkin's
measurements in absolute units of the specific resistance of pure
gutta-percha, and of the gutta-percha with Chatterton's compound
constituting the insulation of the Red Sea cable of 1859, are given
as the only results in the way of absolute measurements of the
electric resistance of an insulating material which had then been
made.
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