BRIGHT, SIR CHARLES TILSTON Eng lish telegraph engineer, who came of an old Yorkshire family, was born on June 8, 1832, at Wanstead, Essex. At the age of 15 he became a clerk under the Electric Telegraph Company. In 1852 he was appointed engineer to the Magnetic Telegraph Company, and superintended the laying of lines in various parts of the British Isles, including in 1853 the first cable between Great Britain and Ireland, from Portpatrick to Donaghadee. His experi ments convinced him of the practicability of an electric submarine cable connection between Ireland and America; and having in 1855 already discussed the question with Cyrus Field, who with J. W. Brett controlled the Newfoundland Telegraph Company on the other side of the ocean, Bright organized with them the Atlan tic Telegraph Company in 1856 for the purpose of carrying out the idea, himself becoming engineer-in-chief. The story of the first Atlantic cable is told elsewhere (see TELEGRAPH), and it must suffice here to say that in 1858, after two disappointments, Bright successfully accomplished what to many had seemed an impossible feat. Within a few days of landing the Irish end of the line at Valentia he was knighted in Dublin. Subsequently Bright super vised the laying of submarine cables in various regions of the world, and took a leading part as pioneer in other developments of the electrical industry. In conjunction with Josiah Latimer Clark, with whom he entered into partnership in 1861, he invented improved methods of insulating submarine cables, and a paper on electrical standards read by them before the British Association in the same year led to the establishment of the British Associa tion committee on that subject, whose work formed the founda tions of the system still in use. From 1865 to 1868 he was Liberal M.P. for Greenwich. He died on May 3, 1888, at Abbey Wood, near London.
See Life Story of Sir C. T. Bright, by his son Charles Bright (re vised ed. 1908).