The first transatlantic telegraph cable

Date

1858 and 27 July 1866

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

North Atlantic (Ireland to Newfoundland)

Era

Modern

Significance

After years of effort led by the American financier Cyrus Field, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on 5 August 1858, and on 16 August Queen Victoria and President James Buchanan exchanged congratulatory messages, the first telegrams ever sent between the continents.

That cable failed within weeks after excessive voltage destroyed its insulation, but the demonstration spurred renewed attempts. Using the vast steamship Great Eastern as a cable-layer, engineers landed a durable, reliable cable at Heart's Content, Newfoundland, on 27 July 1866, establishing the first permanent telegraphic link between Europe and North America. News that had taken ten days or more to cross the ocean by ship could now travel in minutes. The achievement, a feat of industrial-age engineering combining mass-produced cable, powerful steamships and advances in electrical science, knit the Atlantic economy together and inaugurated the era of global instantaneous communication, with cables soon extending to India, the Far East and around the world.

Empires active in 1858 and 27 July 1866

• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
  24 November 1859
• Third Plague Pandemic begins in Yunnan
  1855 (origin in Yunnan); global spread from 1894
• Maxwell formulates the theory of electromagnetism
  1865–1873
• Opening of the Suez Canal
  17 November 1869
• Bell Patents the Telephone
  1876
• Edison's Electric Light and Central Power
  1879 (Pearl Street 1882)

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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