Report of the Chief Signal Officer, United States Army, to the Secretary of WarU.S. Government Printing Office, 1903 |
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aggregate Alaska Alaskan cable American amount Army and Navy cable companies cable operations cable ship Capt Captain Russel Cavalry cent charge Chief of Artillery Chief Signal Officer cipher bureau civil government clerks coast defenses code word Colonel commanding commercial steamer connection with Army construction Department telegraphic code detached Detailed division duty in Cuba Edgar Russel efficient Egbert electrical engineers electrical installation ending June 30 fire-control installations fire-control system fiscal year ending foreign service Fort Egbert Fort Myer Fort Riley Haines Mission important Infantry instruments July June 30 Juneau Lake Lanao land lines Lieut Liscum Manila Michael miles in length military telegraph lines Myer Navy maneuvers necessary Nome repair Safety Harbor Seattle Secretary Secretary of War Sept Signal Corps Post Sitka Skagway southeastern Alaska station submarine cables Tanana tariffs tele telegraph and cipher telegraph system telephone tion transfer United valley War Department wireless telegraphy Yukon
Popular passages
Page 25 - War, of all military signal duties and of books, papers, and devices connected therewith, including telegraph and telephone apparatus and the necessary meteorological instruments for use on target ranges and for other military uses; of the construction, repair, and operation of military telegraph lines and the duty of collecting and transmitting information for the Army, by telegraph or otherwise...
Page 4 - ... the Signal Corps is entitled to unstinted praise for .its arduous and successful labours. The winter months were found to be the best working season, though the mean temperature is below zero and the snow is deep. Practically no wagon roads exist in the country traversed, and the material had to be sledded into the interior in midwinter or carried by pack animals over the roughest imaginable trails. Many hardships might have been escaped if it had not been found that the cold and snow of winter...
Page 30 - WAK 1903— VOL 2 23 In addition to important experimental work in the Signal Office, Captain Russel made, through the courtesy of the Safety Insulated Wire and Cable Company, of New York, and of the Simplex Electrical Company, of Boston, valuable experiments on the various rubber compounds used as insulators of submarine and other cables. These experiments indicate that the higher insulation resistances correspond to increased percentages of Para rubber, that the mineral ingredients give mechanical...
Page 10 - That the President be, and is hereby, authorized to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, an officer of the Signal Corps as chief of the telegraph and cipher bureau of the Executive Office, who shall have, while so serving, the rank, pay, and allowances of a major.2 Id.
Page 4 - In the interior, while the snowfall was very much less, being only 4 feet 4 inches at Egbert, yet continued and terrible cold made camp life and construction work almost insupportable. The mean temperature at Fort Egbert from November to February, inclusive — a period of four months — was 2° below zero. There were prolonged periods of extreme low temperature when the mercury remained frozen, the minimum of 61° below zero occurring in January. While the past winter is believed to have been the...
Page 4 - ... interior in midwinter or carried by pack animals over the roughest imaginable trails. Conditions were so difficult that some coils of wire were carried 145 miles by pack. The magnitude of the work may be inferred by the statement that from Fort Egbert alone, between November 20, 1902, and June 30, 1903, no less than 220 tons of supplies and material were sledded or packed into the interior, it being impossible to move a ton by wagon. The construction parties, consisting almost entirely of enlisted...
Page 9 - ... communication, over purely American lines, with the department commander, yet it is now impossible to reach any garrison west of the one hundred and forty-first meridian except by means of the Canadian government lines, extending from the international boundary near Skagway to the one hundred and forty-first west meridian near Fort Egbert. The inclosed map shows the situation, the shaded portion indicating the region of the Canadian lines on which the Government of the United States is necessarily...
Page 26 - Corps' detachments from Maine, Massachusetts, and New York. during the maneuvers, necessarily abandoning other special important work connected with the Alaskan system with which he was then charged. In this cooperation not only was every available Signal Corps man in the country sent to Portland, but every officer detached from the Office of the Chief Signal Officer except the "one in charge. WAR DEPARTMENT TELEGRAPHIC CODE. Under paragraph 1741, Army Regulations, the Chief Signal Officer of the...
Page 8 - Burnside laid 40 miles of cable to Juneau without any repairs. Through the resourcefulness of the Engineer Department, and particularly of Chief Engineer AJ Kick, repairs were made at Juneau, and later of a more permanent character at Sitka. As soon as the weather permitted the Burnside resumed cable operations from Juneau, and laying the cable successfully opened a cable office at Sitka on October 2, thus bringing the nearest port of the American continent on the Asiatic coast into telegraphic communication...
Page 13 - Coal, $22,068; salaries of officers and crew, $41,082; food and stewards, $25,851. This entails a daily expense for the ship upon the Quartermaster's Department of about $165, which makes the aggregate expenditure, exclusive of repairs, $15,345 for the 93 days' use of the ship. It demonstrates the economy of using for cable-repair purposes an available transport, rather than resorting to the costly and unreliable plan, recommended during the year, of repairing military cables by ships flying a foreign...