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On July 28, 1866 permanent telegraphic connection between North America and Europe was established when a new Trans-Atlantic Cable was completed. It was the fifth attempt to make the connection. The first in 1857 failed.
The second attempt in 1858 did
establish a connection. Queen Victoria wired her
congratulations to American President
James Buchannan. Despite this
engineering triumph for the company launched and guided by Cyrus West Field,
that cable failed within a month when excessive
voltage was applied
while attempting to achieve faster
telegraph operation. A second attempt
that year to lay a replacement also failed.
A shore-end cross section of the innovative cable that made thie connection possible. The copper wire was wound and insulated with hemp. |
Although the
brief operation proved the project was feasible,
the great expense and technical challenges—and the intervening crisis of the American Civil War—delayed further
attempts until 1865. By that year
successful underwater cables in the Mediterranean and elsewhere led to the
development of enduring and well insulated cable. According to Wikipedia the new cable…
…core consisted of seven twisted
strands of very pure copper weighing 300 lb per nautical mile
(73 kg/km), coated with Chatterton's
compound, then covered with four layers of gutta-percha, alternating with four thin layers of the compound
cementing the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to 400 lb/nmi (98 kg/km). This core was covered
with hemp saturated in a preservative solution, and on the hemp
were spirally wound eighteen single wires of soft steel, each covered with fine
strands of manila yarn steeped in the preservative. The weight of the new cable
was 35.75 long hundredweight (4000 lb) per nautical mile (980 kg/km),
or nearly twice the weight of the old.
Advocates of modern commercial
hemp can use that in their campaigns for legalization.
The SS Great Eastern was one of the largest and most celebrated steam packets plying the Atlantic before she was converted to a cable layer and sailed to even greater fame. |
In 1865 S.S.Great Eastern captained by Sir James Anderson began laying the improved cable heading west
from Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, in western Ireland.
After 1,062 miles the cable snapped and the end was lost to the bottom of the sea. Anderson had to return to Britain and Field
had to scramble to raise new capital for another attempt the following
year. He formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, to lay a new cable and complete
the broken one and sold enough stock to try again in 1866.
This time the Great Eastern completed its task
bringing the cable to its western
terminus at Heart’s Content in
eastern Newfoundland. Displaying its usefulness the first message from the
continent in addition to praise from The Times contained word that a peace had been signed between warring Prussia
and Austria.
After a few days in port, Anderson turned the Great Eastern back to sea to try and
locate the lost end of the 1855 cable and restore it to operation. It was an epic search conducted by dragging a
grappling hook over the sea bed a mile and a half below. The cable was snagged and lost once
before it was finally recovered and spliced
to new cable in the ship’s hold. On
September 7the ship returned to Heart’s Content and two cable connections were
soon functioning.
When the Transcontinental telegraph between California and the America East coast was completed on one end and Russian telegraphy stretched to the Pacific on the other, much of the world
was connected. And London was the hub of world communications.
The completion of the cable was celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. |
Messages over the vast distance were
not instantaneous. Only eight words in a minute in Morse Code could move and took several
minutes to cross the ocean. None the
less, connection was made and valuable information—especially commercial news and stock quotations, were quickly going
back and forth.
In the next few years seven other
cables were laid by companies from Britain, the U.S., France, and Germany. By the 1870’s improved technology allowed duplex and quadruplex transmission and receiving
systems to relay multiple messages over the cable. It was then literally possible to have a conversation
with questions and answers across the ocean in hours.
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