The molecular level explanation of "cable burn-in"

Interesting story :

So when the first cable was laid under the Atlantic and people tried to make a transcontinental telephone call, the sound came out skewed in time, noisy and garbled. They checked the cable along the ocean floor and it was in perfect condition and insulated.

They consulted the best physicists out there, including one guy in England (forget his name) who was a student of Maxwell. He proposed that the cable insulation material, not the conductor, was the problem, which turned out to be true. The dielectric was distorting the sound. its the same reason high tension power lines have an air gap between them and the earth.

Most burn-in has to do with the changes that take place between the outer layers of the conductor and the dielectric, changing the speed which result in phase interferences that we hear as noise or resonance. this has been clear to real physicists since the first telephone cable... also, I saw CalTech guys talking about it on YouTube..they know, and have to know when doing ultra high end EE like semi-conductor stuff. There was even someone who talked about their elementary school class where they ran DC current into crystals and observed the changes that occurred over time, something like that.

It may have been the telegraph. regardless, theres a whole documentary on it that discusses the huge research that went into cables at the time when they designed the transatlantic one, including the papers written by the scientists (the Maxwell guys) trying to solve the distorted signal, photos from meetings they had, and how they discovered it was the material choice used for the insulation and not the conductor that caused the problem. The documentary dovetails into interviewing modern power grid engineers discussing how crucial the cable sheathing is and how they go about choosing it depending on applications for proper transmission. But im sure thats all snake oil because random people on the internet can’t hear a difference in their cables.

@cleeds

That’s not even remotely true. Why are you trying to revise history?

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on transatlantic cables. It looks historically accurate to me, and note it references reliable sources.

You think the full history of the world is summarized on a Wikipedia page?? Thats hilarious..talk about gullible!

Not going to bother talking here anymore, tried to have a light conversation and people run around with pitchforks, looking for every typo or slip up to discredit you as if this were a courtroom instead of hobbyists sharing with each other. I'm not here to prove anything, just share interesting things I've come across. What joke.

I guess if you think the whole world is out to get you, you take on this attitude in life. I don't and hopefully won't ever be like that.

Good luck