© Mark Ollig
Minnesota had been a state, one day shy of three months, when the first transatlantic submarine telegraph cable communicated messages.
Test messages were sent back-and-forth among telegraph dispatchers between Ireland and North America Aug. 10, 1858.
These messages, sent as coded pulses of electricity, crossed the Atlantic Ocean through copper wire cable connecting the two landmasses.
The cable itself consisted of seven individual strands of copper wire twisted together and insulated inside three layers of a rubbery latex material obtained from gutta-percha trees.
The gutta-percha substance, fashioned into a thermoplastic material, is highly resistant to seawater.
The United Kingdom had been manufacturing telegraph wires using gutta-percha since 1845.
The thought of laying a telegraph line across the Atlantic Ocean was first proposed in 1840 by Samuel Morse.
Morse, along with others, developed the telegraph during the 1830s.
In 1850, the first marine telegraph cable containing a single copper conductor insulated using gutta-percha was installed across the English Channel between England and France by two brothers – John Brett, a telegraphic engineer, and Jacob Brett.
The cable was very light. Rectangular lead weights were attached to make it sink; otherwise, it would float on the water’s surface.
Dispatchers did not understand messages sent over the cable due to electrical dispersions of the signal.
The cable, not having armor protection, was cut by an angler in a fishing boat who thought it was a new type of seaweed.
In 1851, the Brett brothers installed a new iron-wire stranded, armored-protected, four-conductor telegraph cable between Dover, England, across the English Channel, to Calais, France, 52 miles away.
The first successfully transmitted and intelligible telegraph messages were sent over the new cable between Britain and France Oct. 15, 1851.
The Brett brothers telegraph cable was in use for many years, and is the first submarine telegraph cable to connect two countries.
The transatlantic telegraph cable project began in 1854, by Frederic Gisborne, a Canadian inventor from Nova Scotia, and Cyrus W. Field, an American capitalist and financier.
Field and others originated the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, which started the transatlantic cable project.
Field contacted Morse and experts on oceanography to decide the best route for placing a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean.
After taking three weeks to load the telegraph cable in large, circular coils aboard two naval ships, named USSF Niagara and HMS Agamemnon, the expedition across the Atlantic began July 17, 1858.
The first portion of each cable end (the shallow-water shore cable) originated from a land-based telegraph station building on each side of the Atlantic.
The shallow-water shore cable is heavily armored to protect it from damage caused by rocks, boat anchors, heavy ocean currents, and waves.
The two ships began the voyage to their respective destinations; the Agamemnon to Ireland, and the Niagara to Newfoundland.
Five miles out, the shore cable splices to each ship’s ocean cable crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
The cable lies on the ocean floor, 1.7 miles from the surface.
Mechanical machinery maintained and operated by the ship’s crew controlled the speed in which the telegraph cable was paying out into the ocean from the large cable coils contained inside each vessel.
Specific cable lengths are spliced together before being lowered into the water en route across the Atlantic.
A mixture of coal-tar pitch covered the cable and its splices.
The two ships would rendezvous July 29, 1858, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and splice their cables’ ends to complete the connection between the two land-based stations.
The 2,000-mile telegraph cable now joined Heart’s Content in Newfoundland to Telegraph Field on Valentia Island, in Ireland.
Congratulatory telegraph messages were communicated Aug. 16, 1858, over the new cable crossing the Atlantic Ocean between US President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria of England.
The Huddersfield Chronicle, dated Saturday, Aug. 28, 1858, includes both messages.
The queen’s message contained the following: “The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken a great interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now already connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the two nations.”
President Buchanan’s reply included: “The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of her Majesty the Queen on the success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the skill, science, and indomitable energy of the two countries.”
The era of global electrical communications had begun.
Stay safe out there.
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| A piece of the 1858 transatlantic cable |
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| Map of the 1858 transatlantic cable route |
