Transatlantic Telegraph

From aoc.gov- "Marine," The Apotheosis of George Washington, Constantino Brumidi, 1865.

August was a big month for the telegraph. If you don't know a lot about the invention, or technological advances of the nineteenth century in general, I highly recommend Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought (it won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2008). Howe begins the book with a look at Samuel F.B. Morse's public demonstration of the telegraph at the U.S. Capitol on May 24, 1844, in which he wired the message "What Hath God Wrought" to his assistant in Baltimore. Not long afterward, the telegraph brought news to a pro-Henry Clay (that year's Whig presidential nominee) crowd that the Democrats nominated former Speaker of the House James K. Polk for that year's presidential election. Howe adeptly navigates his study of early antebellum America with a focus on technology and social change.

There were several attempts at running a transatlantic telegraph cable. The first successful cable was completed on August 5, 1858. The month before, the Agamemnon, Valorous, Niagara, and Gordon, all British and American ships, met in the Atlantic Ocean to connect a telegraph wire. The North American end was placed at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland and it ran to Valentia, Ireland. The cable ran almost 2,000 miles and at times, reached depths of two miles.

August 16 (this coming Thursday) marks the anniversary of President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanging pleasantries over the newly completed wire. However, the transatlantic cable failed by September.

When Constantino Brumidi painted the Apotheosis of George Washington at the top of the Capitol dome in 1865, he included Venus, the Roman goddess of love, laying a new transatlantic telegraph cable in a scene titled "Marine." As Brumidi painted, workers were preparing a new wire across the Atlantic. The cable was completed in 1866.

Daniel Walker Howe wrote of Morse's 1844 experiment, "The invention they had demonstrated was destined to change the world. For thousands of years messages had been limited by the speed with which messengers could travel and the distance at which eyes could see signals such as flags or smoke.... Now, instant long-distance communication became a practical reality" (What Hath God Wrought, 1). Not only could news be spread through remote areas of the United States, but information could now reach places around the world. And to think how far we've come since Morse's day!