The discussion centers on the historical significance and technological challenges of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, completed in 1866. Participants explore various aspects of this achievement, including its impact on communication, the corporate environment of the time, and comparisons to other technological advancements.
Participants generally express a mix of admiration for the achievement and skepticism about its significance compared to other technological advancements. There is no clear consensus on the overall importance of the transatlantic telegraph cable relative to other innovations of the time.
Some discussions highlight the limitations of early cable technology and the unresolved challenges that engineers faced, including the failure rates of earlier cables and the scientific inquiries that sought to understand these failures.
This discussion may be of interest to those studying the history of technology, telecommunications, and the socio-economic impacts of technological advancements in the 19th century.
The first commercially successful transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 18 July 1866. The lasting connections were achieved by the ship SS Great Eastern, captained by Sir James Anderson.[11] Earlier transatlantic submarine cables installations were attempted in 1857, 1858 and 1865. The 1857 cable only operated intermittently for a few days or weeks before it failed.
The telegraph lines from Britain to India were connected in 1870 (those several companies combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872).
Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin.[12] This brought news reportage from the rest of the world.[13]
mgb_phys said:It's amazing that in 1860 there was the same sort of corporate infighting, VC scams, publicity campaigns, spin, discrediting technical experts that are silicon valley today.
Information moves, or we move to it. Moving to it has rarely been popular and is growing unfashionable; nowadays we demand that the information come to us. This can be accomplished in three basic ways: moving physical media around, broadcasting radiation through space, and sending signals through wires. This article is about what will, for a short time anyway, be the biggest and best wire ever made.
As of 1861, some 17,500 kilometers of submarine cable had been laid in various places around the world, of which only about 5,000 kilometers worked. The remaining 12,500 kilometers represented a loss to their investors, and most of these lost investments were long cables such as the ones between Britain and the United States and Britain and India (3,500 and 5,600 kilometers, respectively). Understanding why long cables failed was not a trivial problem; it defeated eminent scientists like Rankine and Siemens and was solved, in the end, only by William Thomson
Try visiting the North Atlantic in a sailing ship. It's a risky proposition just getting across alive, doing it while trying to lay out 1000s of tons of cable is decidedly tricky.ideasrule said:What's so amazing about making a long copper wire and laying it out on the sea?
ideasrule said:What's so amazing about making a long copper wire and laying it out on the sea? The 19th century saw much more impressive technological achievements: precise machining, precise scientific instruments, trans-continental radio communication, the internal combustion engine, batteries, electrical generators, telephones, gramophones, synthetic chemistry...
In the early Atlantic cables the weight of the conductor was 300 to 400 lb and in the latest one not less than 600 lb a nautical mile.