For most of recorded history, the inhabitants of North America and Europe were isolated from each other by the vast Atlantic Ocean. Even once Europeans discovered and began settling the New World, communication between the two continents was still fairly slow. It was no faster than the fastest ship, so it took weeks for information to travel between the continents. That changed, however, in 1858 with the completion of an underwater Transatlantic Cable that allowed messages sent in Morse Code to be sent across the ocean.
Work on a Transatlantic Cable began in 1856 with $1,400,000 by the Atlantic Telegraph Company. It took a while to develop and manufacture a cable strong enough for the job, so the cable was not actually laid until 1857. This was done by the American ship Niagra and the British ship Agamemnon. Several of their early attempts ended in failure. Their first four attempts at laying the cable all ended in failure when the cable snapped. Finally on August 5, 1858, the cable was completed. On August 16th, the first message sent by Morse code under the Atlantic said, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men."
Unfortunately, this cable did not last very long. The engineer in charge of maintaining it used a voltage far too high for what was needed. This rendered the cable inoperable after only three weeks. It was a great loss, but the cable had not worked as well as everyone had hoped anyway. It had taken 17 hours to send that first message, meaning that it could only send an average of .1 words per hour. Obviously, that is not a very efficient way of communicating.
Nothing was done about the cable until 1865 when the largest ship of its day, the Great Eastern, laid a new cable. Unfortunately, it laid 1200 miles before the cable snapped. Attempts to recover the broken cable failed. After spending $2,500,000 on more cable, the Atlantic Telegraph Company again readied the Great Eastern for an attempt at laying a cable. This time, the ship had no problems at all. By July 17, 1866, the cable had been laid all the way across the Atlantic. The Great Eastern then searched for the broken cable it had abandoned the previous year. It found it 16,000 feet below the surface, and completed it by September 8th.
This cable was much more efficient than the previous cable had been. It could send eight words per minute. By the 20th century, advances in communication allowed a speed of 120 words per minute.
