Today in Technology History
(To receive "Today in Technology History" by e-mail, click here. To read past issues click here.)
August 2
The effort to wire the world faced a setback on August 2, 1865.
In the mid-1800s, a group of businessmen and engineers came together to lay the first telegraph cable under the Atlantic Ocean. Although they successfully placed one small cable in 1858, it only lasted three months. A bigger, stronger cable was needed.
Their first difficulty was getting funding. Investors were skeptical, since many believed it would be more sensible to connect Europe to America the other way -- over the Bering Strait and across Asia.
Next, they had to find a route for laying the cable. Fortunately, the U.S. Navy had recently discovered a shallow plateau under much of the North Atlantic that would suffice.
Another major challenge was protecting the cable from the rigors of the ocean; they decided to insulate it with a recently discovered rubber known as "gutta percha."
Finally, they needed a ship large enough to hold 2,300 miles of cable. For that purpose, they commissioned the world's biggest ship, the Great Eastern, designed by the brilliant engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
It took five months' work just to stow the cable aboard. In July 1865, the Great Eastern left Ireland bound for Canada, carefully and patiently unreeling the cable. It was on this date, August 2, after having laid more than a thousand miles, that the cable snapped, slipped and sank into the sea. They had to start over the next year.
The next year's voyage was a success and the first permanent transatlantic line was established by mid-1866. Eventually, they found the lost 1865 cable and mended it. It wasn't long before hundreds of messages were racing across the Atlantic every day.
Related links:
Click here to read the history of the first few transatlantic cables.
Click here to read about the Great Eastern's later cable-laying work.
Click here to read about gutta percha, used as cable insulation.
Click here and here to read about the history of the Great Eastern and the transatlantic cable.
| Biotechnology | Convergence | Creativity | Culture | E-conomics | Education |
| Equity | Gov't & Politics | Innovation | National Security | Personal Security |
For errors, broken links, questions or comments,
contact webmaster@tecsoc.org.
