Lay The Cables

Alex Corlett shares some surprising facts about the subsea cables which allow us to share information all around the globe.

THIS year, a new cable that runs for nearly 4,000 miles along the bottom of the Atlantic will be turned on. The Grace Hopper Subsea Cable – owned by technology firm Google and named after pioneering computer scientist Grace Brewster Murray Hopper – will carry information between the United States, the UK and Spain.

Leaving the States in New York and landing at Bude in Cornwall, and Bilbao in Spain, it will provide a lightning-fast connection between the continents.

It will also join the near 750,000 mile network of such cables that already exists around the globe.

In a world where we are used to our phones, computers and tablets being wireless, it’s interesting to think that 99% of them depend on these cables to move information around.

Their history goes back to 1858, in late July, when American and British steamboats met in the middle of the Atlantic and connected the first transatlantic wire.

It was used to send a telegram from Queen Victoria to the president, James Buchanan, hailing a new era in technology.

The president, in a remarkable moment of foresight, said he believed this cable and the ones that would follow would do more for humankind than had ever been achieved by any battle.

The streets of New York erupted in scenes of jubilation.

That first message took 17 hours to make the journey in Morse code.

That particular cable would only last another month, but it was soon joined by more.

And, as the years went by, the speeds increased as fibre optics began whizzing information internationally in the blink of an eye.

It was the start of a revolution that paved the way for telegrams, then telephones and now the internet.

Let’s take a look at some fascinating facts about these undersea lifelines.