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The Great Experiment

About This Item

  • Title: The Great Experiment
  • Date: 24 June 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00899
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 24 June 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Great Experiment." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00899.xml (TEI)
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THE GREAT EXPERIMENT.—

It appears to us that the N.Y. papers are over-sanguine with regard to the success of the Atlantic Telegraph.1 There is in reality a very slender chance that the enterprise will prove anything else than a repetition of the last failure. There is nothing whatever to assure us with regard to the transmissibility of the electric fluid through 2,000 miles of submerged wire, and in the next place it is a matter almost of impossibility to lay a submarine wire of such length without accident. Nothing of the kind has ever before been done without repeated failures and it is hoping too much to expect that this operation will prove an exception to the rule. We shall see.

Notes:

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