The 1858 Atlantic telegraph cable

node · earth · North Atlantic

The first cable to carry a message between Europe and North America, and a failure that established the whole subsequent industry. Laid by the Atlantic Telegraph Company after unsuccessful attempts in 1857 and earlier in 1858, with the ships meeting in mid-ocean and paying out in opposite directions, it was completed on 5 August 1858 between Valentia Island in Kerry and Trinity Bay in Newfoundland. Test signals passed from 10 August; the first official message — the directors' announcement that "Europe and America are united by telegraph" — went on 16 August, followed by a much-publicised exchange between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan. Then the signal decayed. Over about three weeks of working life the cable carried a few hundred messages in each direction, and it failed on 18 September 1858, probably because very high voltages had been applied in an attempt to force a signal through insulation that was already deteriorating. The lesson taken from the failure — that the problem was electrical and material rather than a matter of will — produced the 1865 and 1866 attempts, the recovery of the lost 1865 cable from the seabed, and a permanent link. It also produced the industry's first understanding that a cable is a system with a physics that has to be respected.