The improvements

Technical improvements and the demand for faster communications encouraged companies to try laying cables over even greater distances. Several attempts to lay cables across the Atlantic failed when the cables snapped, but one was completed in 1858. To mark the occasion, Queen Victoria sent a telegraph message to President Buchanan in the USA. It took almost 18 hours to transmit her 99-word message! Attempts were made to increase the pace by raising the voltage, but this quickly burned out the cable. In 1865 the world’s largest ship at the time, the Great Eastern, laid the first continuous cable across the Atlantic. It was the only ship to carry a cable long enough. During the 20th century, telegraph cables which transmitted Morse code were steadily replaced by telephone cables, which could transmit voices. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of underwater cables were laid across the world’s oceans and seas. These have now been replaced by fiber-optic cables, which offer faster transmission and many more connections.