Just learned the first transatlantic cable had enough wire to wrap around the earth three times

I was reading an old book about engineering history at the library, trying to kill time between jobs. It said the first working telegraph cable laid across the Atlantic Ocean in 1866 used over 340,000 miles of iron and copper wire. That number just sat in my head. I was up in an attic yesterday, fighting with maybe 50 feet of RG6, and I tried to picture that much cable. The book said they made it on a ship called the Great Eastern, and it took them four tries over eight years to get a line that held. It makes my bad days with a tangled drop line seem pretty small. Has anyone else run into a fact about our trade that just stopped you for a minute?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_thea6d ago

That old cable project is just mind blowing, @owens.nancy. Makes our modern wire messes look tiny in comparison. Really puts the scale of early tech into perspective.

owens.nancy6d ago

That part about fighting with 50 feet of RG6 in an attic is too real. I was rewiring an old apartment building last month and the amount of old, brittle cable in those walls was a nightmare. It makes you appreciate the sheer scale of that old project, just getting one signal across.