© Mark Ollig
While looking through a box of old pictures, I found a late 1960s photo regarding Winsted Lake.
As most of my readers know, I lived and worked in Winsted for many years.
In 1968, the local telephone company placed just over one-half mile of underwater marine copper-paired (submarine) cable along the bottom of Winsted Lake to provide telecommunication services for new homes being built on the east side of the lake.
This event occurred years before cellular telephones or fiber optic cables arrived on the scene; technicians physically spliced a telephone line to a pair of copper wires.
Why install a submarine cable?
It was decided this would be the quickest (and least expensive) way to get telephone service to the new homes. In addition, it was thought the submarine cable would operate reliably underwater until the telephone company trenched a permanent telephone cable into the ground going around the lake.
The submarine cable route started in Winsted near the east end of McLeod Avenue and the corner of Kingsley Street.
That day, Winsted Telephone Company employees Frank Roufs, Jim Ollig, and Tom Ollig placed a metal stand holding a large wooden reel of submarine cable in the pontoon boat they would be traveling on across the lake.
“When we first loaded the cable reel onto the pontoon, we thought it was going to sink. The reel had to be perfectly centered on the pontoon, so it didn’t tip over,” recalled Tom Ollig, who was one of the three people reeling off the submarine telephone cable into the lake on the pontoon that day.
The telephone crew guided the pontoon as they slowly made their way across Winsted’s most famous body of water, traveling in a west to an easterly direction.
Being carefully pulled off the reel by hand, the submarine cable was prepared to be lowered into the water.
“Another concern was making sure the submarine cable was weighted down correctly, so it didn’t float to the top of the water,” Tom added.
As it was gently lowered into the lake’s murky depths, about every 10 feet, the telephone crew securely strapped a heavy steel bolt onto the submarine cable to weigh it down.
The three successfully placed the submarine cable across the lake.
The west end of the submarine cable was trenched underground into the metal pedestal enclosure fastened to a telephone pole located about 40 feet from the lake at the end of McLeod Avenue East.
Next, a telephone technician spliced the submarine cable’s copper wired pairs to an aerial telephone cable terminating at the central office of the local telephone company.
The east end of the submarine cable was terminated in an above-ground pedestal enclosure about 50 feet from the shoreline where the new homes were being built.
Winsted Telephone Company technicians opened the outer casing of the submarine cable. Then, they spliced the copper pair wires to wires from the telephone “drop” lines feeding into the new homes.
Phones in the new homes were wired to the submarine cable directly attached with the dial tone from the local telephone office at 171 2nd Street South.
“I remember cutting in the new phone lines using the submarine copper cable pairs for Jerry Sterner and Jack Littfin,” said Mike Ollig, a former Winsted Telephone Company technician. He recalled his memories of the submarine cable with me.
For many years, the submarine cable provided reliable telecommunications service to homes on the east side of Winsted Lake.
However, as we know, nothing lasts forever.
During the early 1980s, some of the submarine cable’s copper wire pairs had begun to fail, and there was growing concern about the remaining good spares.
And so, during the mid-1980s, the local telephone company installed a new underground telephone cable around the lake to replace the aging submarine cable.
I suspect a few of you are wondering about the fate of the abandoned submarine cable on the bottom of Winsted Lake.
After disconnecting both ends of the submarine cable, we (I was employed at the telephone company) attached the east end to our Ditch Witch tractor/trencher and slowly removed (pulled) it from the lake.
The trencher drove in an easterly direction until the entire length of the previously submerged submarine cable was out of the water and lying on the ground.
We rolled up the old submarine cable (with assistance from a John Deere tractor) onto a large wooden cable reel. We then transferred it onto a cable trailer, where it was driven to and stored inside the telephone company’s warehouse.
The submarine cable was later recycled for its copper.
Today, the improved construction of submarine cables (using fiber-optic pairs) has given them an average lifespan of 25 years.
Currently, 487 fiber-optic submarine cables traverse the oceans of the world. The total length of these cables is 807,782 miles. They pass through 1,304 above-ground landing stations and are spliced into telephone cables providing internet, voice, video, and data communications to thousands of cities, towns, and villages.
Fiber-optic submarine cables connect to every continent on the globe, except for Antarctica.
To view and interact with the world submarine cable map from TeleGeography, visit https://www.submarinecablemap.com.
This article was originally published Nov. 23, 2018. However, I was recently asked about it by one of my readers. As a result, this column includes moderate updates in its content by the writer.
across Winsted Lake. L2R: Frank Roufs, James Ollig, and Tom Ollig.
(1968)
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