The transatlantic cables of 1858 and 1866
Cyrus 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 dream
Before the cable, news between Europe and America took about ten days by fast steamship. Cyrus Field, an American businessman, set out in the 1850s to run a telegraph wire along the floor of the Atlantic, about 2,000 miles from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Newfoundland.
1858: the first cable
After failed attempts (the cable snapped and was lost), two ships, the British HMS Agamemnon and the American USS Niagara, met in mid-ocean, spliced their halves together and sailed in opposite directions, paying out cable. In August 1858 it worked.
Queen Victoria sent a message of congratulations to President James Buchanan. It was about 98 words long and took about 16 hours to transmit, because the signal was so faint and smeared. There were fireworks and parades in New York (part of City Hall caught fire from the celebrations).
Then, after about three weeks, the cable died. The electrician Wildman Whitehouse had tried to push the weak signal through with very high voltage, which burned out the insulation. Public celebration turned to suspicion that it had all been a hoax.
1866: the cable that lasted
The Civil War delayed everything. Then Field had the perfect ship: Brunel's giant Great Eastern, the only vessel big enough to carry the whole cable, about 2,300 nautical miles of it, in one load. A 1865 attempt failed when the cable broke two-thirds of the way across. In July 1866 the Great Eastern landed a working cable at Heart's Content, Newfoundland. Then she went back, grappled the lost 1865 cable from the sea floor two miles down, spliced it and completed a second line.
Messages that had taken ten days now took minutes. The physics that made it work came partly from William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), who worked out how signals travel through long cables.
Key facts
- 1858 first transatlantic cable (Cyrus Field): Victoria's message took 16 hours, died in 3 weeks
- 1866 lasting transatlantic cable laid by the Great Eastern; Havana to Key West cable about 1867
- The cable ran from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Newfoundland
- Too much voltage killed the 1858 cable