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It’s amazing to consider all the technological innovation within a relatively short amount of time, and the resulting impact on our lives from this technology. It was only 150 years ago since the first Atlantic submarine cable was completed, connecting Trinity Bay via Newfoundland to Valentia Island in Ireland. Although the subsea cable laying is still an arduous, expensive and sometimes dangerous task as it was then, the key differences in today’s cable is the quality and the sheer quantity of information that can be sent through links underwater. 

 

In August of 1858, the first transatlantic message was sent over the new link from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom to the United States President James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States, who served right before President Abraham Lincoln. The message was 99 words and took 12 hours to send. The cable that carried this message sent only 400 messages before it began to fail, just 23 days after it initially went live. Today, Hibernia Atlantic (News - Alert), a privately held Trans-Atlantic submarine cable network that provides "Security through Diversity" to European and U.S. customers, can send the entire Library of Congress in only 63 milliseconds over one of their fiber optic submarine cable links and can carry 30 million simultaneous phone calls at a single time. This is modern fiber optic cable system at its best. But modern cables haven’t always linked the continents. The history of the first cable is a fascinating story, almost forgotten if it wasn’t for companies like Hibernia Atlantic that routes its network within the history of the industry.  

 

The first transatlantic submarine cable system was born from a gentleman named Cyrus Field. He was born in 1819 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and to this day is considered to be the ‘father’ of the Atlantic sub-sea cable systems. Initially working in the paper industry with his family, he was fascinated with telegraphy, which is how he got the idea for a transatlantic telegraphic cable. In 1854, with friends and associates, Cyrus Field formed the New York, New Foundland and London Telegraph Company that raised $1,500,000, a lot of money especially at that time. The company secured landing rights for the American side of the Ocean and set out to install the first transatlantic sub-sea cable.

 

One of Cyrus Fields very close friends was Samuel Morse, who in 1832 had the first ideas of the electromagnetic telegraph with his Associate Dr. Charles T. Jackson. Just 4 years later, Mr. Morse demonstrated his recording Telegraph. The following year, in 1837, he successfully relayed a message through ten miles of wire, on reels. In 1842, after further developing telegraph communications, he began experiments with underwater transmissions on the two- mile stretch between the Battery in lower Manhattan and Governors Island in New York Harbor where he was successful at sending signals. In 1843, Congress voted to grant $30,000 to install an experimental telegraph line from Washington DC to Baltimore, Maryland. Unfortunately, the lead pipes that were installed did not work so they converted the telegraph lines to above ground poles. By 1845, two years later, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was created to extend cables from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York. By 1849, it was estimated that there was 12,000 miles of telegraph lines run by twenty different companies in the US. In 1856, the Western Union (News - Alert) Telegraph Company was formed by a number of small companies. 

 

This brings us back to the years of 1854-1858, during the early times of transatlantic cabling. Samuel Morse was an electrician for Cyrus Field during the first attempts to lay the cable across the Atlantic.

 

An interesting turn of events occurred when Cyrus Field went to England to recruit assistance for the commission of the first transatlantic submarine cable. There he met Dr. Whitehouse, originally trained as a surgeon though by this time, his interests were more focused on the advancements of telegraphy.

 

When planning to build the system, Samuel Morse and Dr. Whitehouse decided together that the cable should be constructed as thinly as possible. This was in opposition to others on the project that included Lord Kelvin and Charles Bright. Cyrus Field ‘broke the tie’ (three to two, agreeing with Samuel Morse and Dr. Whitehouse) and set out to install a thin wire to lay the cable. 

 

Other gentlemen on the project included Lord Kelvin and Charles Bright. Lord Kelvin introduced ‘kinetic energy’ in 1856 and joined the Cyrus Field project to lay the cable where he applied his analogy of heat flow to the flow of electricity. Lord Kelvin was heavily involved with the project. He assisted in improving the design of the cables. He also invented the mirror galvanometer to act as a long distance telegraph receiver and supervised the laying of the galvanometers. On the seas, Kelvin improved the way mariners worked with the invention of an improved gyrocompass, a new sounding equipment, and a tide-prediction, chart-recording machine. In 1866, Lord Kelvin was knighted for his achievements in submarine cable laying. When he died in 1907, he was buried next to Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.

 

The other gentleman was Sir Charles Tilston Bright, who in 1856, at the age of 26, became the youngest person knighted at the time, Sir Bright was known in England as the man who first laid a complete system of wires under the streets of Manchester, at age 19. After this feat, he became the Chief Engineer of the Magnetic Telegraph Company where he extended these lines from Manchester throughout the United Kingdom. He later established the first connection from Great Britain to Ireland propelling Lord Kelvin to proclaim him as the ‘first to lay a cable in deep water.’ This was the feat, laying the first Atlantic cable that earned him his title as knight in 1856. Sir Bright was an inventor, and one of his earliest inventions was as system that tested the insulated conductors to localize faults from a distance point, by means of a series of standard resistance coils of different values, brought into circuit successively by turning a connecting handle. This became the best way to test land and submarine telegraphs. 

 

After appointing Lord Kelvin as the Chairman of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, the ability to influence the development of transatlantic oceanic cable connectivity was realized. As the Chief Engineer of the project, it was Charles Bright who suggested a much thicker line, that would weigh 460 tons and would have had 3.5 more power in conducting speed, be used; however, this idea was passed over for Mr. Whitehouse’s much thinner copper cable.

 

So back in 1857-58, with a vote of three to two, these gentlemen set out to connect two continents with a thin cable. They began in Vanetia Harbor, Ireland on August 5, and six days later, with limited rate of descent and with just 3580 miles laid, the cable snapped. After returning to shore, an extra 700 miles of cable were made and the second attempt was made on June 25.   This time two ships met each other in mid-Atlantic where they joined their respective ends—and the cable broke almost immediately.   Again the two ships made anther splice, and after another 40 miles, the cable broke again. The fourth time they had laid 145 miles before the cable snapped again.

 

The ships returned to Ireland and the men decided that despite the loss, there was still enough cable for one more attempt. On July 29, the crew set out for one final, fifth attempt, starting from the midpoint. This time, it was a success- and on August 5, 1858, the two continents were connected.

 

Unfortunately, this success, which garnered much celebration and fanfare, was short-lived. Dr. Whitehouse overloaded the system by applying very high voltages rather than the very weak currents that had been tested during the cable laying. Within three weeks, the damage from the high voltages became apparent and the cable stopped working. In addition, the dots and dashes of Morse code ended up smearing out over such a long haul. The failure of this cable was so catastrophic that the creation of the Committee of Inquiry was formed in England to investigate the cause. As a result, Dr. Whitehouse lost credibility and his career spiraled downward.   To successfully construct a second working transatlantic cable system, Cyrus Field had to employ others instead.

 

After several other cable snaps and failed attempts, and an additional $2,500,000 funding, the Great Eastern cable was pulled ashore a tiny fishing village in Newfoundland on July 27, 1866. The distance was 1868 nautical miles and the Great Eastern averaged 120 miles a day while paying out the cable.

 

Perhaps the story of the first cable system would have ended differently if Sir Charles Tilston Bright’s thicker, copper cable were installed. But nonetheless, the enhanced communications it provided between Europe and North America were unfounded at the time. The transatlantic cable was considered ‘The Great Scientific Achievement of the Century’; the laying of cable in open sea was a feat of strength, endurance and wonder.

 

Today, there are several cable systems interconnecting North America and Europe. However, there is only one company that offers a similar route to the first transatlantic cable system, and that is Hibernia Atlantic. This cable system connects Halifax, Nova Scotia directly to Dublin, Ireland – the only modern sub-sea cable system that connects directly to Ireland. 

 

In January 2009, the company announced that they would be connecting Northern Ireland at Portrush onto the northern spur of the existing Hibernia Atlantic submarine system, providing the first modern submarine cable link connecting Northern Ireland directly to Europe and North America. The name assigned to this undertaking is Project Kelvin, named after Lord Kelvin and his significant role in the first undertaking. Project Kelvin is expected to be completed by the summer of 2009 and will be available to carry traffic in and out of Northern Ireland by the Fall of 2009. Only 150 years ago, the first transatlantic submarine cable system was painstakingly deployed. Today billions of bits of data are transmitted every minute between North America, New Foundland, Ireland and Europe, connecting the world with high-speed capacity.