It has been 166 years since the first transatlantic telegram was sent out from Kerry’s Valentia Island to Heart’s Content in Newfoundland, laying down the foundations for global communications. Raymond Hughes looks at how a single telegram in 1858 represents one of the major milestones in global communications, and the birth of our modern telecommunications age.

 

On August 16, 1858, Britain sent the United States an inaugural message via a transatlantic telegraph cable. In it, Queen Victoria congratulated President James Buchanan on their countries’ mutual success at building the very cable she was using to talk to him. Newspapers covered the event as an important and exciting technological achievement with massive potential. News would spread faster. Nations would communicate and coordinate more quickly around evolving world events. Business and trade would accelerate.

The great enterprise began in America with Samuel Morse who revolutionised communication with his Morse Code. It accelerated information transmission by using the electric telegraph wire in the 1840s, first in the USA and later in many parts of the world. Building a truly global telegraph network required a cable under the Atlantic Ocean.

Morse first suggested linking America and Europe by undersea cable in 1849. Step forward Cyrus Field of New York City who had made his vast fortune in paper. In 1854 he was assured that once a telegraph cable connecting New York and Newfoundland was established it could be extended across the Atlantic. Businesses in London and Europe salivated at the prospect of dealing speedily with America, a growing economic giant.

A route directly to the USA was too rugged and a lot longer. The US navy had recently identified a suitable course from Newfoundland, the closest land-fall to Europe, a distance of almost 1,800 miles. It would bring any cable to the west coast of Ireland. The high-risk venture was costed at well in excess of $1 million. ($45 million+ today).
Where would the cable come ashore? Valentia Island, off Kerry, lobbied and won. It had an excellent deep-water harbour and linkage to 10,000 miles of telegraph lines throughout Ireland, Britain and Europe via Killarney. Cable had already been laid under the shallow Irish sea and English Channel, a much easier undertaking than what was planned.

Sir Peter Fitzgerald, 19th Knight of Kerry, ex-banker and former member of Robert Peel’s government, was the resident landlord on Valentia and led the bidding. Sir Peter was extremely well connected and very persuasive. He lavishly entertained all those involved with the enterprise. Schmoozing worked then as it still does.

The cable’s core consisted of seven copper wires, each as thin as a small pin. The electrical circuits conveying the messages in Morse code passed through these. This core would be subject to the crushing pressure exerted by over two miles of ocean and therefore required an insulator which could withstand this.

Gutta-Percha, a unique rubber recently discovered in the Malayan jungles, was a far superior insulator to the regular type. It made the whole enterprise possible. The insulated core was then covered in tarred hemp and wrapped with iron wire (see photo) About 2,500 nautical miles (2,700 miles) of cable was needed. Each nautical mile of cable weighed over a ton, thereby guaranteeing it sank to the ocean floor.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own