Transatlantic submarine cable
By the 1850s, Europe and America were crisscrossed with telegraph wires connecting major cities and towns. In about a decade, communication had gone from being at the speed of the fastest horse to nearly instantaneous. However, messages between the two continents were still only as fast as a ship's sail across the Atlantic. That same decade, American Businessmen and British Engineers joined forces to attempt to lay a wire across the ocean. Their brave attempts failed many times; inclement weather snapped the cables time and again. Eventually, through cable design improvements and a lot of grit, they managed to splice two ends of two cables in the middle of the Atlantic after six days of routing—one coming from Newfoundland and one coming from Valentia Island. The connection was made on 29th of July 1858. The formal message of congratulations was sent on August 16, 1858 from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan: “Europe and America are united by telegraphy. Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men.” Unfortunately, a problem with the connection was noticed almost immediately; it took sixteen hours to transmit this first message. The electrical signals received were blurred beyond recognition—making it hard to tell dots and dashes apart—and the problem was getting worse. Wildman Whitehouse mistakenly believed that he could force better signals by increasing the voltage; they tried, and the cable stopped working altogether. Through this monumental blunder, the scientific community started to realize that their fluid analogy was not perfect. Electricity didn’t flow quite like water. A more theoretical approach was needed to improve the cable design. It took eight years to reveal and apply the wonders of stranding and twisting. A new generation of cable was made, and on July 27th 1866 a message was sent from Ireland to Newfoundland, clear and crisp! Once more, the world was made a smaller place.
Source: Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity, presented by Jim Al-Khalili, BBC, 2011
Public Domain
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!