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To: COUNTrecount
Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale.

How did it wipe out telegraph wires?

I can believe that it disrupted telegraph communication, at least for a while. But, I'm having a hard time believing that it "wiped out" the actual wires.

21 posted on 08/27/2010 9:08:53 AM PDT by justlurking (The only remedy for a bad guy with a gun is a good WOMAN (Sgt. Kimberly Munley) with a gun)
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To: justlurking
Gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up and ate breakfast at 1 a.m., thinking the sun had risen on a cloudy day. Telegraph systems became unusable across Europe and North America.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bracing-for-a-solar-superstorm

42 posted on 08/27/2010 9:18:02 AM PDT by Orange1998
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To: COUNTrecount
I can believe that it disrupted telegraph communication, at least for a while. But, I'm having a hard time believing that it "wiped out" the actual wires.

Ah, here we go:

http://www.solarstorms.org/SRefStorms.html

August 12, 1880 - Shortly after 9:00 AM, telegraph lines in Hartford, Connecticut began to show disturbances. With the battery removed, messages could still be sent and received from Boston. By 11:00 AM the wires were working as normal. No aurora were seen at night.

November 18, 1882 - The Transit of Venus Storm - It produced a compass bearing deflection of nearly 2 degrees, All telegraphic transactions east of the Mississippi River and north of Washington D.C came to a halt. The Chicago stock market was severely affected all day. A large sunspot was then seen covering an area of more than three thousand millions of square miles. Simultaneously with the appearance of the spot, magnetic disturbances at the observatory in Greenwich increased in frequency and violence, other symptoms were noticed throughout the length of the British Isles. Telegraphic communication was greatly interfered with. The signal bells on many of the railway lines were rung, and some of the operators received shocks from their instruments. Lastly, on November 17, a superb aurora was witnessed, the culminating feature of which was the appearance, at about six o'clock in the evening, of a mysterious beam of greenish light, in shape something like a cigar, and many degrees in length, which rose in the east and crossed the sky at a pace much quicker than but nearly as even as that of sun, moon, or stars, till it set in the west two minutes after its rising. The daily press was burdened with accounts of widespread magnetic disturbance, in some places telegraphic communication was suspended. In Milwaukee the carbons in the electric lamps were lighted, rendered incandescent by currents of electricity flowing on the wires. At other locations, switchboards in telegraph offices were set on fire and sending keys were melted, while electric balls were seen hovering on the telegraph in Nebraska.

September 10, 1898 - The telegraph lines in Chicago were disabled by a 'daytime aurora borealis'. The effects were seen on telegraphs in Omaha, Tennessee, Washington. The shocks produced 280 volts on the lines.

November 1, 1903 - Telegraph systems of Western Union were affected from 2:00AM to afternoon. This was identified as most severe storm since 1888 according to Chief Electrician for WU. Transatlantic cables were also affected.

March 2, 1905 - Electrical disturbances on telegraph lines from Chicago to Sioux City affected telegraph lines.

September 25, 1909 - Telegraph lines throughout US were affected. Some wires carried 500 volts of electricity and lit incandescent 'resistance lamps' in telegraph circuits.

March 9, 1918- Telegraph lines from New York to Buffalo were disrupted. Motors providing electricity for the telegraph wires were acting strangely. No one could understand how 'atmospheric electricity' could affect motors.

August 11, 1919 - Surplus of atmospheric electricity is blamed as the cause of telegraph disruptions along Atlantic seaboard as far south as Georgia. 'Scientists' quoted as saying that aurora have nothing to do with telegraph line problem.

March 22, 1920 - American Telephone and Telegraph telegraph service disrupted. Atlantic cable traffic reduced from 30 massages per day to one.

May 13, 1921 - The New York Railroad Storm - The prelude to this particular storm began with a major sunspot sighted on the limb of the sun vast enough to be seen with the naked eye through smoked glass. The spot was 94,000 miles long and 21,000 miles wide and by May 14th was near the center of the sun in prime location to unleash an earth-directed flare. The 3-degree magnetic bearing change among the five worst events recorded ended all communications traffic from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi. At 7:04 AM on May 15, the entire signal and switching system of the New York Central Railroad below 125th street was put out of operation, followed by a fire in the control tower at 57th Street and Park Avenue. No one had ever heard of such a thing having happened during the course of an auroral display. The cause of the outage was later ascribed to a 'ground current' that had invaded the electrical system. Railroad officials formally assigned blame for a fire destroyed the Central New England Railroad station, to the aurora. Telegraph Operator Hatch said that he was actually driven away from his telegraph instrument by a flame that enveloped his switchboard and ignited the entire building at a loss of $6,000. Over seas, in Sweden a telephone station was 'burned out', and the storm interfered with telephone, telegraph and cable traffic over most of Europe.


OK, I think you get the point. The solar storm didn't "wipe out" the wires. It mostly disrupted communication, although there were some instances where the wires effectively channeled the energy into connected equipment and caused problems of varying severity.

Kinda like an EMP. :-)

43 posted on 08/27/2010 9:18:16 AM PDT by justlurking (The only remedy for a bad guy with a gun is a good WOMAN (Sgt. Kimberly Munley) with a gun)
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To: justlurking
Run a wire through a magnetic field and a current is produced. Run a big enough magnetic field through a long enough wire and a LOT of current is produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetically_induced_current

51 posted on 08/27/2010 9:21:24 AM PDT by rednesss (fascism is the union,marriage,merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power)
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