Transatlantic telegraph cable

Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean used for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data are still carried on other transatlantic telecommunications cables. The first cable was laid in the 1850s across the floor of the Atlantic from Telegraph Field, Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland. The first communications occurred August 16, 1858, reducing the communication time between North America and Europe from ten days—the time it took to deliver a message by ship—to a matter of minutes.

Cyrus West Field and the Atlantic Telegraph Company were behind the construction of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.[1] The project began in 1854 and was completed in 1858. The cable functioned for only three weeks, but it was the first such project to yield practical results. The first official telegram to pass between two continents was a letter of congratulations from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom to President of the United States James Buchanan on August 16. Signal quality declined rapidly, slowing transmission to an almost unusable speed. The cable was destroyed the following month when Wildman Whitehouse applied excessive voltage to it while trying to achieve faster operation. It has been argued that the faulty manufacture, storage and handling of the 1858 cable would have led to premature failure in any case.[2] The cable's rapid failure undermined public and investor confidence and delayed efforts to restore a connection.

The second cable was laid in 1865 with much-improved material. The cable was laid with the ship SS Great Eastern, built by John Scott Russell and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and skippered by Sir James Anderson. More than halfway across, the cable broke and after many rescue attempts, they had to give up.[3] In 1866 a third cable was laid with Great Eastern and connection completed and the cable put into service on July 28, 1866. The 1865 cable was also retrieved and spliced so two cables were in service.[4] These cables proved more durable. In the 1870s duplex and quadruplex transmission and receiving systems were set up that could relay multiple messages over the cable.[5] Before the first transatlantic cable, communications between Europe and the Americas took place only by ship. Sometimes, however, severe winter storms delayed ships for weeks. The transatlantic cable reduced communication time considerably, allowing a message and a response in the same day. [[Category:A]]