I'm actually just finishing "How the world was One" by Arthur C. Clarke. It's an absolutely fascinating look at undersea cabling. So in 1858, the wire that was

I'm actually just finishing "How the world was One" by Arthur C. Clarke. It's an absolutely fascinating look at undersea cabling. So in 1858, the wire that was laid across the Atlantic by Cyrus W. Field was essentially just that, not a cable at all. It was a few strands of copper coated in gutta-percha, and it was destroyed by an overzealous engineer jamming WAY too much voltage into the wire (he would later lose his job to Lord Kelvin of Degrees Kelvin fame). In 1865 they attempted to lay the cable again, but the cable snapped during the trip. It would snap 3 more times before they would finally connect Europe to North America. The Times of London had an amazing quote from the 1858 endeavor: "The Atlantic is dried up, and we become in reality as well as in wish one country.... The Atlantic Telegraph has half undone the Declaration of 1776, and has gone far to make us once again, in spite of ourselves, one people...." On another really interesting point: there were no telephone cables crossing the atlantic until 1957. So how did folks make calls to Europe? The answer was the Heaviside layer of the atmosphere and radio transmissions. Yes up until 1957, all calls to Europe were made by bouncing waves off of the ionosphere. I <3 Telecom.