The history of cables under the sea

Satellites didn’t use to exist in the early days of telecommunications. Instead, countries
used to be connected by telegraph cables. In 1850, the first cable was laid across the
English Channel, and it connected France and England. Some companies tried to lay cables
across the Atlantic to connect Europe and North America, but it was problematic. The first
transatlantic cable wasn’t completed until 1858. To celebrate this historical moment,
Queen Victoria sent a telegraph of congratulation to the president of the United States.

The message was sent by an operator using Morse code. It was a lengthy process because
the reception was very bad. It took two minutes to transmit a single character. That meant
that the Queen’s 99-word message was transmitted in 18 hours! However, it was much
quicker than delivering her message by ship, which was the only way to do it before. That
used to take weeks! It wasn’t until the 20th century that telegraph messages to and from
America were transmitted at speeds of 120 words a minute.

During the 20th century, the telegraph cables were replaced by telephone cables which
could transmit voices. Whereas telegraph messages often used to suffer from interference,
there was no background noise on the telephone cables. Hundreds of thousands of
kilometres of cable were laid across the world’s oceans, linking the world with speech.
Later they were replaced again – this time by fibre-optic cables, which are much faster. No
doubt the fibre-optic cables will be replaced, too. But who knows when, and by what?

A. Find words or phrases with the same meaning as 1–5.

1 difficult ……………………
2 an old way of writing a message using dots (• • •) and dashes (- - -) …………………..
3 long ………………………
4 to send a message ………………………..
5 spoken language …………………….

B. Read the text again. Answer the questions.

1 Why do you think it was more difficult to lay cables across the Atlantic than the
English Channel?

2 How do you think the American president felt when he received the Queen’s
message? Why?

3 Why did it take so long to transmit messages at first?

4 Do you think the 1858 telegraph cable made a big difference to communication?
How?

5 What effect did telephone cables have on the world?

Suggested answers:

A.
1 problematic
2 Morse code
3 lengthy
4 (to) transmit
5 speech

B.
1 The Atlantic is wider and deeper than the English Channel.
2 Suggested answer: He was probably very excited because it was the first
transatlantic telegraph.
3 It took a long time to transmit the messages because the reception was very bad.
4 Yes, because it used to take weeks to send a message by ship.
5 People could talk to each other in different places around the world.