The Process Of Laying The Very First Transatlantic Cable
from the not-so-easy dept
One of my favorite Wired articles ever is Neal Stephenson's insanely long, but wonderfully entertaining account of laying fiber optic cable across oceans from back in 1997. If you've never read it, set aside a few hours and dig in. While he mentions, briefly, the first transatlantic cable laid in 1858 -- and suggests reading other accounts of what happened -- he doesn't go into much detail as to what happened. However, Shocklee points us to a (much shorter!) Wired UK piece about the laying of the first transatlantic cable. If you'd like to know the basics, it's basically two boats meet in the middle of the ocean, with each taking half the cable, and they then (slowly, carefully) head back towards their home coasts. It didn't always go smoothly:After experiments in the Bay of Biscay had been conducted, the plan was changed -- the Niagara and Agamemnos met in the centre of the Atlantic on 26 June and attached their respective cables to each other, then headed for opposite sides of the ocean. Again, the cable broke -- once after less than 6km had been laid, again after about 100km and then a third time when 370km had been laid. The boats returned to port.It's a fun read, reminding you of the massive amount of work that goes into the infrastructure that we rely on every day.
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Filed Under: cable, infrastructure
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Why start in the middle?
Anyone know why they did it that way (the article didn't offer any explanation)? My first inclination would be to start with the boats leaving from each shore and then meeting in the middle (similar to the way the first transcontinental railroad was built). The boats could then use the cable itself to communicate back to shore (and verify its integrity) as they went.
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But, according to the article, that's exactly what they did, only at the beginning instead of the end of the project.
(not to mention then getting the middle bit to the seabed)
Seem like that should be exceptionally easy: drop it. But getting the cable to the seabed was what they all along the way, anyway.
Remember, there's probably several hundred meters of pretty hefty cable and waterproofing hanging from the ships at any particular moment. That's a lot of weight for each bit of cable to be holding up.
True, but that's the case anyway and all the way back to shore.
Anyone else got any better explanation?
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At the beginning, all the weight is on the ships, easy to connect in the middle. At the end, hundreds of meters of cable are hanging off the boats, pulling and tugging, much harder to join. Not to mention all the wasted cable from both ships to seabed. Hundreds of yards of cable spooled on ocean floor after connecting and releasing from ship. These cables aren't $0.03/foot.
Tie pieces of rope to two trees and try to tie them together tight. Now untie from trees and try tying the ropes together. Rope is much lighter than cable.
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OK, I can see the cost saving on cable. But after going across the entire ocean, I wonder how significant that is, percentage wise.
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The ships weren't big enough to carry the whole cable. That first cable failed pretty quickly. The first lasting cable was laid by the Great Eastern a few years later. The Great Eastern was big enough to carry the whole cable on its own - making the whole process much more straightforward. Even so it took two attempts.
Amazingly a year or so later they actually fished up the end of the cable from the first attempt, spliced in and completed it. The story is on Wikipedia here
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Do you really think they sent the ships out with enough cable on one spool to reach all the way back to shore? Those would be some pretty big spools! I rather suspect that they used smaller spools and spliced them "in the MIDDLE of the Atlantic ocean". Besides, either way you still wind up with a splice in the middle.
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To answer myself, after reading the Wikipedia article, it seems that they indeed did! It wasn't on spools, but coiled in the hold.
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After that he tried a second time and it was the one that succeeded, also by that time he had a big boat that came about by chance(The SS Great Eastern).
With that big boat he could put all the cable needed in one ship.
Source: Wikipedia - Transatlantic Telegraph Cable
Really fascinating story about how things got done and maybe the greatest asset they had was ignorance, they didn't know it was so difficult others had laid cables undersea and they didn't think it was going to be difficult to lay a bit more, that is good ignorance you have something that could work because it had a proved concept and it worked in the end despite all the problems.
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That'll be next week.
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Modern Marvels
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=90971557975187655#
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...and the last
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- The Great Transatlantic Cable (The history of the first copper cable in the Atlantic)
- Project-X Laying Transpacific Undersea Cable (The history of the first Japanese cable laying operation that brought prices down in Japan. It describes in great detail all the problems faced with laying those cables for which snapping cables are only a problem if the terrain below is rough)
- How undersea cables are repaired
- Very rare video - Underwater cable laying - Must watch
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Ask who is the owner of that cable now LoL
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Yes, the application of IP and invention
I think it was "harvy" or one of the big names in electronics at that time who developed a 'mirror galvinometer", that was so sensitive, that the better could be a thinbal full of lemon juide, and an electrode, creating a VERY small voltage, but could be picked up and read on the other side of the atlantic..
Yes, it is a facinating story..
Full of IP, and inventions, and patents :) would not have been possible without them...
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pshh..
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