Tag

telegraph-cables

• The telegraph and the first storm warningsFor the first time, news of a storm could travel faster than the storm itself.
• Father Benito Viñes, Padre HuracánA Jesuit priest in Havana who read the sky so well he issued the first scientific hurricane warning in 1875.
• Galveston 1900 and the dismissed Cuban warningsThe deadliest natural disaster in US history, and the Weather Bureau's refusal to listen to Havana.
• How a Cuban warning reached TexasThe undersea telegraph cable from Havana to Key West, laid around 1867, tied Cuba into the US wire network.
• The transatlantic cables of 1858 and 1866Cyrus Field's first cable carried Queen Victoria's message in 16 hours and died in three weeks; the Great Eastern laid the one that lasted.
• The Great Eastern and Isambard Kingdom BrunelWhy anyone built a ship five times too big, and the brilliant engineer it killed.