The 1858 cable fails
After roughly three weeks of working life and a few hundred messages in each direction, the cable stopped carrying a readable signal. The standard account attributes the failure to deterioration of the gutta-percha insulation, accelerated by the very high voltages applied in an attempt to force a signal through a line that was already weakening. The commercial consequence was severe — the enterprise had been publicly celebrated and was now widely suspected of fraud — and the technical consequence was decisive: the next attempts were preceded by a formal investigation into cable design, testing and electrical practice.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The 1858 Atlantic telegraph cable · infrastructure · North Atlantic · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
History of the Atlantic Cable and Submarine Telegraphy
Supports the 1858 cable dates (completion 5 August, first test signals 10 August, first official message 16 August, failure 18 September), the message counts of the working period, the 1866 landing at Heart's Content and the recovery of the 1865 cable, and Cyrus Field's organising role. V55 verification basis: retrieved by search, not opened. This is a specialist enthusiast-maintained archive rather than an institutional one; it is the standard working reference for this subject and reproduces primary material, but a curator should replace it with institutional citations before publication.
atlantic-cable.com (Bill Burns), with corroborating institutional accounts · Partly verified
History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy, atlantic-cable.com, including its TAT-1 and 1858 cable sections; corroborated against Linda Hall Library and RTÉ Brainstorm accounts of the 1858 cable and Cyrus Field
Recorded on The 1858 Atlantic telegraph cable
- The first Atlantic telegraph cable is completed
- The 1858 cable fails
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The first Atlantic telegraph cable is completed · 1858-08-05