Charles Todd

Sir Charles Todd (born July 7, 1826 in Islington , London , † January 29, 1910 in Adelaide ) was a British communications scientist and astronomer .

Life

Charles Todd was the son of a grocer and tea merchant. At the age of 15 he came to the Royal Greenwich Observatory to study communications and astronomy , where he remained for seven years; then he worked from 1847 to 1854 at Cambridge University as an assistant. In 1855 he was transferred to the Adelaide Observatory in the colony of South Australia at the suggestion and mediation of the university .

He and his then 18-year-old wife Alice arrived in Adelaide on November 5, 1855 . His tasks lay in the construction and supervision of astronomical and meteorological observation stations, but his main interest was telegraphy . After he had succeeded in setting up several smaller telegraph lines in the years 1856-1859, he first expressed his idea to Governor Sir Richard MacDonnell in 1859 that it should be technically possible to build a complete south-north overland line through the central Australian outback of Port Augusta to build after Darwin .

In January 1863 , Todd turned to the Philosophical Society of Adelaide with his plans. In 1870 the colonial government created the legal basis and Charles Todd Superintendent ( Postmaster General ) for this project.

Todd's assistants, who were supposed to find suitable terrain on the trail of the route that John McDouall Stuart had discovered through the Red Center in 1862, encountered great logistical problems in the desert. In some teams, workers perished and had to give up. In the tropical north, the rainy season blocked work; Termites ate the wooden telegraph poles and steel poles had to be imported from Great Britain.

The name Charles Todd became popular in the city of Alice Springs . Here his colleague William Whitfield Mills had discovered a watering hole in a dry river bed, which he named after Todd's wife Alice; a source, as was first suspected, was in reality not. The local telegraph station, which later led to the founding of the city, was built on this valley, which does not have permanent water. The Todd River , which rarely carries water, was named after him.

Despite all difficulties, Todd's plan succeeded; the 3200 km long south-north line was completed on August 22, 1872 and was connected to a British submarine cable in Darwin in October of the same year . On October 22nd, 1872, the first telegraphic message was exchanged between London and Adelaide.

This achievement made Charles Todd known in Great Britain. In 1889 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the Royal Society and two other Royal Societies ( Royal Meteorological Society and Society of Electrical Engineers ) in London . Since 1895 he was an honorary member ( Honorary Fellow ) of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . On June 3, 1893, he was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG). Charles Todd retained his position as postmaster general until the end of the colonial period and in 1901 entered the service of the Commonwealth of Australia , which, after the dissolution of the colonies, bundled responsibility for the telegraph network. Although he had passed the age limit of 70, the government made an exception for him to be able to stay in the civil service as long as he wanted. He only resigned at the age of 78 (1905) and died on January 29, 1910 in his summer home in Semaphore near Adelaide.

Web links

• Publications by C. Todd in the Astrophysics Data System
• GF Dodwell: Sir Charles Todd. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Volume 71 (1911), p. 272 ​​(obituary, English)

literature

• Dictionary of Australian Biography (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Todd, Sir, Charles (1826-1910) in the Archives of the Royal Society , London
2. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 17, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Knights and Dames: SW-WAL at Leigh Rayment's Peerage