Talk:Telegraph Plateau

A fact from Telegraph Plateau appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 25 May 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Telegraph Plateau was so named because it seemed to be an ideal route for a transatlantic telegraph cable?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Telegraph Plateau.

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 22:25, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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... that Telegraph Plateau was so named because it seemed to be an ideal route for the proposed transatlantic telegraph cable? Source: Rozwadoski, p. 86 "Results from Brooke's sounders confirmed Maury's initial judgement that the ocean floor at the great circle was uniquely suited for safely holding telegraph wires. Berryman's northernmost soundings, about nineteen of them, suggested to Maury the presence of a relatively shallow steppe, which he optimistically christened "Telegraph Plateau".

Reviewed: Callaghan MacCarty, 3rd Earl of Clancarty

Created by Spinningspark (talk). Self-nominated at 14:41, 22 April 2020 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Nice little article. Good to go. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:29, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Please add an inline cite for the hook fact. Yoninah (talk) 17:44, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is already an inline cite in the article. If your issue is that you wanted the cite duplicated in the previous sentence, that is a little overly bureaucratic, especially as I have quoted the source verbatim above, but I have added it anyway. If your issue is that you wanted to see the cite in the lead, that is the second time you have raised that on one of my DYKs; it has long been the practice that cites are not normally needed in the lead because it is merely a summary of the article. SpinningSpark 21:36, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for adding the inline cite in exactly the right place. Of course I didn't mean to add it in the lead. And sure, you can always remove it if you want after it appears on the main page. Look, I'm just trying to make sure all the rules are covered when I build prep sets so nothing will be challenged by a promoting administrator. Sorry I keep finding problems in your articles. Restoring tick for offline source per Gog the Mild's review. Yoninah (talk) 22:00, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Brooke's sounder[edit]

This: Brooke's sounder was designed to release the lead immediately it contacted the bottom, thus preventing more line being pulled out, though referenced, is unconvincing. For a stationary ship, the load on the line would anyway be reduced by the weight of sinker as soon as the sinker was resting on the bottom. For a moving ship, it must be assumed that the line is nevertheless vertical until the sinker strikes the bottom, or else the sounding is invalid. If the sinker then lodged stationary on the bottom, then owing to the great depth, only a minuscule amount of extra line would need to be paid out to allow for the motion of the ship without bearing the weight of the sinker.

Rather it seems that Brooke's sounder allowed for the recovery of the core sampler without the difficulty of hauling in the sinker. The sample if present would confirm that the bottom had been reached, and so would put an upper bound on the depth, without ruling out the possibility that extra line had been paid out. catslash (talk) 00:35, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

...it must be assumed that the line is nevertheless vertical until the sinker strikes the bottom. That is somewhat unlikely in 2000 fathoms (2 miles) of ocean. The ship is going to drift and almost certainly somewhere along that path down strong currents are going to pull the line into a large bow. The method will undoubtedly overestimate the depth, but nowhere near as badly as without Brooke's lead. SpinningSpark 08:18, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That is true. However the explanation currently given in the article remains unconvincing, and is at variance with every explanation that I could find. See Rozwadowski catslash (talk) 08:38, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You're beginning to convince me that the article needs amending, but can you read page 78 first before anything gets changed? SpinningSpark 09:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Deep-sea sounding is an unexpectedly fascinating subject -- I'm tempted to buy the book. After reading page 78 and several others, it's clear that a mid-depth current could keep the line taught after the sinker had struck the bottom, and probably more taught than if the sinker was released. Are there any sources that relate this to Brooke's sounder? If not then it's a wiki-sin to imply otherwise. catslash (talk) 10:16, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think you've found a wikisin. I wasn't deliberately drawing my own conclusion, it's just natural, that after the author describes the problem of line runout and then announces a new improved sounder, to run away with the idea that the sounder is to fix the problem. But on page 79 we have Maury coming up with a completely different solution to the problem – he applies some mathematics to the line velocity (perhaps transmission line theory could have helped him here!) – so maybe the two things really are unconnected. SpinningSpark 10:44, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At least it wasn't in the DYK hook. SpinningSpark 10:45, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Depth of 6 miles?[edit]

The article says that to the south of the plateau the ocean floor sharply drops to a depth of up to 6 miles, but the maximal depth of the Atlantic Ocean is only about 5.2 miles, and that depth is reached near Puerto Rico, which is quite far away from Newfoundland. So, I don't think this statement, even though it is sourced, is true. Spike (talk) 15:14, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This needs rewriting to put it in historical context – the source is from 1858 and they did not have either the accuracy or resolution that we have now. Also, the source does not say the depth drops immediately to the south of TP, but that the bathymetry of the Atlantic to the south is very varied. That can be clarified as well. I don't know enough about Brooke's survey to be able to say where exactly he thought these great depths were, but it is not wildly wrong, there are several basins and trenches in the North Atlantic in the 4–6 miles depth range. SpinningSpark 17:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]