Thanksgiving is here and we do have a lot to be thankful for. Our lives are easier today then they have ever been in the past and we have access to information and technology that would have made our ancestors’ heads spin. While that may not always be a good thing we’ve come a long way just in our lifetimes. The ability to communicate with potentially anyone around the world and to receive information from around the world is no big deal for us today but there was a time that it was. In the past we have highlighted some of the great technological innovations of all time so as you wait for Thanksgiving dinner to be ready or as you wait for the stores to open for Black Friday we offer up another one, the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph cable.
Today news from anywhere in the world can be consumed in a matter of seconds thanks to the Internet and social media. There was a time where that was not possible. In the mid-1800s news took 10 days to go from Europe to North America as that was how long it took a ship to traverse the Atlantic Ocean. Keeping up with current events was certainly not easy and getting a quick answer to a problem was impossible.
The Telegraph
There was a solution that was proposed. In 1839 the idea of laying an undersea cable to take advantage of Samuel Morse’s new telegraph was proposed. Morse himself was behind the idea and a decade later the idea seemed feasible as an undersea cable was laid between England and France in 1850.
Cyrus Field
American entrepreneur Cyrus Field was the person to put his money where his mouth was and set out to try to link the two continents with his new Atlantic Telegraph Company. The first step was to complete a line linking Newfoundland to the Canadian mainland and that had been Field’s original plan but a meeting with competitor that had gone bankrupt convinced him that laying a cable across the Atlantic Ocean was possible.
The Newfoundland telegraph was completed in 1856 linking Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. It took two attempts as the first one was interrupted by a gale and the ship laying the cable had to cut the line to avoid sinking. Now Field turned to laying a cable across the ocean and began raising funds to do that.
The Wire
The cable available consisted of seven copper wires with three coats of gutta-percha (a resilliant latex found in the sap of Palaquium trees) wound with tarred hemp over a sheath of 18 strands of seven iron wires. All told it weighed about 550 kg per km. For all of the weight it was flexible and it could withstand several tons of pressure. The length required was so much it had to be made by two different English manufacturers.
Enthusiasm for the project was high. Parliament even supplied Field with a ￡1,400 subsidy (about $177,000 today) and loaned two Royal Navy ships for use in laying the cable. A subsidy was also acquired from the United States but Congress was less enthusiastic about the project passing the Senate by a single vote. That was enough for President Franklin Pierce to sign the bill into law.
Try, Try And Try Again
The first attempt was tried in 1857 starting near Ireland. Within a day the cable snapped but the crews were able to grapple it from the bottom of the ocean and repair it. The cable continued to be laid until it broke once again but this time the cable could not be grappled as it was about 10,500 feet deep.
At the time the true depth of the ocean was unknown. The deepest that was known was about 12,000 feet deep but the cable would reach depths of over 20,000 feet where the water temperature is around 39° Fahrenheit and about 8,900 psi of pressure were applied. It is understandable that the effects of that depth would be unknown. The Challenger Expedition, which would be tasked with the first true deep sea exploration, would not be launched until 1872.
Not to be deterred Field made another attempt was made the following summer. The two ships were to meet in the middle of the ocean and at that point the cables would be spliced together and the ships would head off in the opposite direction towards Newfoundland and Ireland. The cable broke three times within the first 200 nautical miles and the attempt was abandoned.
Success
The third time would prove to be the charm a few weeks later but by this point though there was waning enthusiasm among ship crews. Again the splice was made but unlike the past this time everything went smoothly. When the ships arrived at their respective destinations in Valentia Island, Ireland and Trinity Bay, Newfoundland they were connected to the telegraph network and on August 10, 1858 the first messages were sent between the continents. As to be expected the first messages were test messages and within 3 days both sides had successfully sent and received messages. The system was working and the two continents could speak to each other in near-real time, or at least much faster than it took a ship to traverse the ocean.
On August 16 the first official message was sent from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan offering congratulations and offering mutual friendship. The message in total was 98 words in length and took 16 hours to reach its destination. Despite that, the response was more than enthusiastic. A grand salute of 100 guns was fired in New York City, streets were decorated, flags unfurled and church bells were rung before a parade was held. In England Field’s chief engineer Charles Bright was knighted.
Issues Emerge
Problems began from the beginning. The engineers on either side of the ocean had different ideas about how to operate the system. Lord Kelvin in Newfoundland wanted to use low voltage to detect the edge of the current flow and used his own invention, the mirror galvanometer to observe the change in current to detect when a message was coming in. In England Wildman Whitehouse, a medical doctor by profession, believed that a high voltage source should be used and wanted to use his own telegraph recorder that he had patented. In the end Lord Kelvin would prove to be correct but Whitehouse won out.
Within 7 days of flooding the line with high voltage current the cable insulation began to deteriorate. While this was happening it was taking as long as a day to send a page of text. In September of 1858 after about 30 days of operation the cable failed. After the inquiry following the failure Whitehouse was found to be responsible as was the company for employing someone in that position with no qualifications.
Despite the failure, there were some successes. The cable had never been opened for public use but it had been used to send reports of a collision between two ships and a message countermanding the order for 2 regiments in Canada to embark for England saving lives and money. In total 732 messages were sent.
Undaunted
Field was undaunted and despite the failure of the Atlantic Telegraph Company during the Panic of 1857 as well as his near bankruptcy he set out to raise funds to try again. It took until 1864 to do so. More experience had been gained as new cables had been laid across the Mediterranean Sea. Field had a new cable constructed with increased insulation and increased strength. It took eleven months and 250 workers to create the cable.
In 1865 the first attempt to lay the new cable took place but one thousand miles out the cable snapped and it was unable to be recovered. The next attempt came the following year and proved successful. The first test message announced a peace treaty between Prussia and Austria. The lost line was eventually grappled and repaired making two working telegraph lines.
The new cable proved to be a winner. The 1858 cable could transmit .1 word per minute but the 1866 cable could transmit 8 words per minute. That is an 80x increase! Like going from dial-up to modern high-speed Internet. London became the communications center of the world and now they could link the capitol to the rest of their Empire. Field received international fame but on his return to the US made some poor investments and he lost most of his fortune before dying in 1892.
The Other Effort
The Trans-Atlantic cable was not the only effort to link the world. Amercian entrepreneur Perry Collins saw another opportunity. He had visited Russia and had learned that Moscow was building a telegraph line eastwards through Siberia. One look at the map gave him an idea. He approached Hiram Sibley, the head of the Western Union Telegraph Company to propose an idea in 1861. With a completed trans-continental telegraph in the US it seemed like easy work to connect the two. Russia at the time was closer as Alaska was a Russian territory and an overland route offered what they assumed would be an easier task. Maintenance on it would certainly be easier.
Even during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln saw the opportunity and gained the right-of-way to the Canadian border. He also put two US Navy vessels at Collins’ disposal. The former Superintendent of Military Telegraphs Charles Bulkley was hired as chief engineer. Francis Pope was sent ahead into British Columbia to explore and find a route with Russian nobleman Serge Abassa was working to lay the line in Siberia.
Race To The Bering Strait
Construction crews were divided into groups to construct different segments of the line from the Bering Strait to the American border with Canada. Work began in 1865 with the entire route surveyed by 1866. Work started during the winter months and the crews were unprepared for the harsh Alaskan winter. The ground had to be thawed before laying posts and sled dogs had to be used to haul all supplies so work was slow to begin.
Which town in British Columbia would be the terminus of the line was a major competition. It came down to either the colonial capitol Victoria or New Westminster and New Westminster was selected amid much celebration there. The first segment constructed from the US reached there in April 1865 and the first message to arrive told of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Quickly Obsolete
Work progressed quickly reaching the Fort Fraser in central British Columbia by 1867. It was there that the success of the trans-Atlantic cable was learned and the project was stopped, declared obsolete. It had taken over a year for news of that to reach them ironically.
While the project was stopped there was some good that came out of this. The exploration of Russian Alaska by Americans spurred the move for the purchase of the territory that year. While Secretary of State William Seward would be lampooned for it, the purchase has proved to be one of the best in American history. Several small towns along the route were founded and still exist today. They proved to be beneficial during the Klondike Gold Rush in the 1890s and the survey of the route proved to be indispensable for those heading into the north. A telegraph line did eventually extend into the Yukon around the turn of the century.
Today undersea cables stretch all over the world and are vital to our modern communications. They still link the continents together and connect us all. When one of these cables get cut it proves to be almost catastrophic. So, be thankful that all of those cables are working today, that someone had the idea and that the crews put in the work to make it possible. Who knew that this technology is the legacy of the telegraph.