THE WORLD'S SUBMARINE CABLES.
The world's submarine cables now number more than 1,300, according to the recent presidential address to the London Institution of Electrical Engineers. They have an aggregate length of 162,000 nautical miles, over half of them being less than 5 miles long, while 8 of them exceed 2,000 miles. They represent a total expenditure of about $200,000,000, about 75 per cent of which is British capital. A fleet of 41 repair ships is maintained. The electrician can localize the breaks in a cable closer than the captain can sail his vessel, yet a break in one of the Anglo-American lines cost almost half a million dollars to mend, this being probably the most expensive repair record in the world. It is possible to transmit nearly 50 words of 5 letters each per minute on the Atlantic cables by an automatic transmitter.