NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: John D. Howard
Date: 2018 May 24, 04:51 -0700
Peter,
The short answer is no, the first cable was not good enought for the job.
A very good book that has several chapters on the subject is " Longitude by Wire " by Richard Stachurski. It is about the formation of the Coast Survey ( early 1800s ) and the develement of what would become known as the American System using the then new telegraph to determine longitude.
The Coast Survey thought the USNO was run by Navy men, not astronomers or surveyers and did not do good work. Many battles for goverment money etc. over the next many years.
In October, 1866 a team in Newfoundland and another in Ireland exchanged signals, calabrated their clocks, shot overhead stars, etc. They finished in the last week of December and went back to Harvard College to do the math. The transit telescope at Harvard was determined to have moved by about 34 feet. ( They had allready exchanged hundredes of chromenters with Greenwitch years before. )
A very good book, published in 2009 so will be easy to find.
John H.
