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In the early days, the cable carried messages in the newly-invented Morse code. The signal grew weaker with distance, so repeater stations were needed. They were not automatic! Someone had to listen to the beeps, write down the message, and then re-transmit it down the wire. In the arid interior of Australia, water was the limiting factor and telegraph offices were established wherever it could be found. One spring, in the centre of the continent, was named after Alice Todd, wife of the Superintendent of Telegraphs for South Australia. The telegraph station in Alice Springs still stands today.
In this programme, physicist and writer Paul Davies uses the latest satellite technology to re-link the ends of the original cable and hear the epic story of its construction. He talks by satellite from Alice Springs with the director of the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum in Cornwall, where the submarine cables reached the British mainland. At it's height, Porthcurno was the hub of world communications, with 14 cables coming ashore to link by land lines with London.
It was only in 1849 that the first successful trial was held of a submarine cable, linking London with a ship in the English Channel. By 1870, there were cables linking Suez to Bombay and on through Madras, Penang and Singapore. News that the cable would soon reach Java set Australians competing to host the route onwards to the South. It had only been in 1860 that Queen Victoria had sent Burke and Wills on their ill-fated expedition across the heart of Australia, and the interior of the continent was still mostly unexplored by Westerners. So, to survey and construct a 3,200 Km telegraph line there just ten years later was ambitious indeed. The logistics of transporting thousands of poles and wire, to say nothing of finding food and water for the teams, are incredible. But, on 22 October 1872, the link was complete and Queen Victoria could send another message, this time to her most distant dominion, that previously had had to wait months for any news from Europe.
PAUL DAVIES is a successful writer and physicist and a Professor at the Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarrie University.

The East West Telegraph Vortrag von G.P. Stevens, vor der Australian Historical Society, 27. Oktober 1933

Transkript "Wire around the World" [PDF , 66.0 KB]

Vortrag "East-West-Telegraph" [PDF , 57.6 KB]

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