page_title: Transatlantic telegraph cable
section_title: First contact
hierarchical_section_title: Transatlantic telegraph cable / First contact
caption_attribution_description: English: Parade on Broadway, New York City, to celebrate the completion of the transatlantic telegraph cable.
context_page_description: Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean used for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data are still carried on other transatlantic telecommunications cables. The first cable was laid across the floor of the Atlantic from Telegraph Field, Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island in western Ireland to Heart's Content in eastern Newfoundland. The first communications occurred August 16, 1858, reducing the communication time between North America and Europe from ten days—the time it took to deliver a message by ship—to a matter of minutes.
  Cyrus West Field and the Atlantic Telegraph Company were behind the construction of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The project began in 1854 and was completed in 1858. The cable functioned for only three weeks, but it was the first such project to yield practical results. The first official telegram to pass between two continents was a letter of congratulations from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom to President of the United States James Buchanan on August 16.
context_section_description: Test messages were sent from Newfoundland beginning August 10, 1858; the first successfully read at Valentia was on August 12, and the first successfully read at Newfoundland on August 13; further test and configuration messages followed until August 16, when the first official message was sent via the cable: "Directors of Atlantic Telegraph Company, Great Britain, to Directors in America:—Europe and America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good will towards men." Next was the text of a telegram of congratulation from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan at his summer residence in the Bedford Springs Hotel in Pennsylvania which expressed a hope that it would prove "an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem." The President responded that, "it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world."  The messages were hard to decipher – Queen Victoria's message of 98 words took sixteen hours to send.
  These messages engendered an outburst of enthusiasm. The next morning a grand salute of 100 guns resounded in New York City, the streets were decorated with flags, the bells of the churches were rung, and at night the city was illuminated. On September 1 there was a parade, followed by an evening torchlight procession and fireworks display, which caused a fire in the Town Hall. Bright was knighted for his part, the first such honour to the telegraph industry.
caption: Celebration parade on Broadway, September 1, 1858
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