Results: The History of News and Communication * Part Nineteen * The History of Radio Technology * Continues with the Story of the Trans Atlantic Cable

In the mid-nineteenth century, before the cable was laid, there was no direct communication between continents. No message could travel faster than the fastest steamships, which required at least 10 days to make the sea voyage between America and Europe. The submarine telegraph cable reduced communication time from days to hours. A world that had seemed infinite was reduced overnight to human proportions. Can you imagine waiting 10 days for a message?

In 1854, Frederic N. Gisborne, a Canadian inventor, traveled to New York to raise money for a project to link Newfoundland to the United States by telegraph. Part of this line was to include a submarine cable across Cabot Strait, the body of water which separates Newfoundland from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. While in New York, Gisborne met Cyrus W. Field, a man who had made his fortune in papermaking, to explain his project. As Gisborne was describing the idea of a submarine cable across the Cabot Strait, Field consulted a large globe to understand the scale of Gisborne's proposed enterprise. Were you aware of Frederic N. Gisborne prior to this survey?

Field stared at Newfoundland on the globe, a much bolder enterprise came to Field. Looking at the great expanse of water separating North America from Great Britain, Field suggested to Gisborne that the telegraph line to Newfoundland be extended across the Atlantic Ocean to Britain. And so was born the 12-year project to span the Atlantic with a telegraph cable, and perhaps the greatest business and technological undertakings of that the 19th century. Were you aware of Cyrus Field prior to this survey?

Enormous sums of money had to be raised and a host of new scientific and engineering challenges had to be overcome. Unlike the bare wires strung on poles over land, a single, long insulated cable immersed in sea water raised new scientific and technical issues about the movement of electrical currents. Werner von Siemens invented a machine to insulate wire. Were you aware of Werner Von Siemens prior to this survey?

The greatest oceanographer of the period, U.S. naval officer Mathew Fontaine Maury, was brought in to provide data on the composition and topography of the Atlantic seabed. New machinery had to be developed that could smoothly lay out so much cable. Then there was the enormous navigational challenge of keeping the ship on the required course to match the desired track over the seabed. Were you aware of Matthew Fontaine Maury prior to this survey?

Like the space program in the 20th century, the Atlantic cable extended the limits of the technology of its time. And like the space program, the American side of the effort was authorized at the highest level of government. President Franklin Pierce signed the Atlantic Cable Act in 1857 in the last day of his term. The government's backing of the cable authorized no more than two ships and seventy thousand dollars per year for a term keyed to the contractors' profits. Today there is the Franklin Pearce Centre for Intellectual Property. A Division of the University of New Hampshire. Were you aware of Legal College specializing in Intellectual Property Law?

The Atlantic cable was unique only for its length. Underwater cables had been investigated since Morse began experimentation in 1852. By 1858 a large number of submarine cables were already in operation over shorter distances. Gulfs, harbors, lakes, and other sizable bodies of water were already spiderweb bed with them. They could be regarded as intermediate stages of development leading to the transatlantic cable. The frontiers of engineering, science, and mathematics were challenged; advances were made in electronics and physics that echo to the present day. Were you aware of the complexity of the construction and laying out of the Trans Atlantic Cable?