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, and within a few days of landing the Irish end of the
line at Valentia he was knighted in Dublin. Subsequently Sir Charles Bright
supervised 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 Association committee on that subject, whose work formed the
foundations of the system still in use. From 1865 to 1868 he was Liberal
M.P. for Greenwich. He died on the 3rd of May 1888, at Abbey Wood, near
London.

See _Life Story of Sir C. T. Bright_, by his son Charles Bright (revised
ed. 1908).

BRIGHT, JOHN (1811-1889), British statesman, was born at Rochdale on the
16th of November 1811. His father, Jacob Bright, was a much-respected
Quaker, who had started a cottonmill at Rochdale in 1809. The family had
reached Lancashire by two migrations. Abraham Bright was a Wiltshire
yeoman, who, early in the 18th century, removed to Coventry, where his
descendants remained, and where, in 1775, Jacob Bright was born. Jacob
Bright was educated at the Ackworth school of the Society of Friends, and
was apprenticed to a fustian manufacturer at New Mills. He married his
employer's daughter, and settled with his two brothers-in-law at Rochdale
in 1802, going into business for himself seven years later. His first wife
died without children, and in 1809 he married Martha Wood, daughter of a
tradesman of Bolton-le-Moors. She had been educated at Ackworth school, and
was a woman of great strength of character and refined taste. There were
eleven children of this marriage, of whom John Bright was the second, but
the death of his elder brother in childhood made him the eldest son. He was
a delicate child, and was sent as a day-scholar to a boarding-school near
his home, kept by Mr William Littlewood. A year at the Ackworth school, two
years at a school at York, and a year and a half at Newton, near Clitheroe,