Communication · 1858

Transatlantic telegraph cable

A copper cable on the Atlantic floor cuts Europe-America news from ten days to minutes.

The first cable of August 1858 carried a message from Queen Victoria but failed after three weeks. The durable 1866 cable, laid by the steamship Great Eastern and informed by William Thomson's theory of signal propagation, began a global submarine network that still carries most intercontinental traffic.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

What it led to 1

TAT-1 telephone cable 1956

Watch

The Disastrous History of the First Transatlantic Cable - World History - Extra HistoryExtra History · YouTube

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Telegrams sent in the UK Latest: 5.7M telegrams per year (1983) Source: Our World in Data

Merchandise exports as a share of world GDP Latest: 24.2 % of GDP (2014) Source: Our World in Data