Founded | 1884New York, United States | in
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The Commercial Cable Company was founded in New York [1] in 1884 by John William Mackay and James Gordon Bennett, Jr.
Their motivation was to break the then virtual monopoly of Jay Gould on transatlantic telegraphy and bring down prices (particularly for Bennett's newspaper empire). Their most famous ship was the CS Mackay-Bennett, named after the founders.
The technology was well established by this time, and they were able to lay cables from Waterville in Ireland to Canso, Nova Scotia, without the major technical problems of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable. Onward connections to New York City and beyond were initially overland and later submarine. Connections from Waterville to Weston-super-Mare in England and Le Havre in France were soon established by the submarine route after initial use of landlines from Waterville onward to mainland Britain. Commercial Cable also had a relationship with the German Atlantic submarine cable system.
Domestically the cable distributed its cable traffic through its partner firm the Postal Telegraph Company. It had a twenty-five percent share ownership in the Commercial Pacific Cable Company that operated a cable from San Francisco to Manila and Shanghai after 1906. Together these companies were all part of the Mackay Companies, also known as the Associated Companies.
John Mackay's son, Clarence Mackay, took over the firm by the early 20th century and led it during World War I. Clarence Mackay and Frank Polk, a senior State Department official, were friends and this enabled the State Department to have access to selected diplomatic traffic carried over Commercial's cables. The company flourished for a time but in 1928, together with other elements of the Mackay System, came under the control of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) under a wholly owned subsidiary, the Postal Telegraph & Cable Corporation. This would be reorganized in 1935, with Commercial Cable becoming part of the American Cable and Radio Corporation. The undersea cables remained in use carrying telegraph traffic until 1962. In 1998, cables were briefly visible going out to sea at Waterville and are probably still there.
The Commercial Cable Company Building was one of New York City's early skyscrapers. Constructed in 1897, it was demolished in 1954.
A two and a half story Neo-Classical brick and granite building in Hazel Hill, Nova Scotia built in 1888 was the last trans-Atlantic station remaining. [2] Despite the historic significance — the station helped send cables on the sinking of the RMS Titanic and at the end of World War I) — it was torn down in 2017 due to safety concerns around its state of disrepair. There are plans to build a space port in the area. [3]
TAT-1 was the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Kerrera,Oban, Scotland and Clarenville, Newfoundland. Two cables were laid between 1955 and 1956 with one cable for each direction. It was inaugurated on September 25, 1956. The cable was able to carry 35 simultaneous telephone calls. A 36th channel was used to carry up to 22 telegraph lines.
TAT-9 was the 9th transatlantic telephone cable system, in operation from 1992 to 2004, operating at 560Mbit/s between Europe and North America. It was built by an international consortium of co-owners and suppliers. Co-owners included AT&T Corporation, British Telecom and France Telecom.
A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried telegraphy traffic, establishing the first instant telecommunications links between continents, such as the first transatlantic telegraph cable which became operational on 16 August 1858.
Cyrus West Field was an American businessman and financier who, along with other entrepreneurs, created the Atlantic Telegraph Company and laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858.
Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean 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 in the 1850s from Valentia Island off the west coast of Ireland to Bay of Bulls, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. The first communications occurred on August 16th 1858, but the line speed was poor, and efforts to improve it caused the cable to fail after three weeks.
Waterville, historically known as Coirean, is a village in County Kerry, Ireland, on the Iveragh Peninsula. The town is sited on a narrow isthmus, with Lough Currane on the east side of the town, and Ballinskelligs Bay on the west, and the Currane River connecting the two.
The All Red Line was a system of electrical telegraphs that linked much of the British Empire. It was inaugurated on 31 October 1902. The informal name derives from the common practice of colouring the territory of the British Empire red or pink on political maps.
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, for electric power transmission, military, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cable over bow or stern or both. Bow sheaves, some very large, were characteristic of all cable ships in the past, but newer ships are tending toward having stern sheaves only, as seen in the photo of CS Cable Innovator at the Port of Astoria on this page. The names of cable ships are often preceded by "C.S." as in CS Long Lines.
Siemens Brothers and Company Limited was an electrical engineering design and manufacturing business in London, England. It was first established as a branch in 1858 by a brother of the founder of the German electrical engineering firm Siemens & Halske. The principal works were at Woolwich where cables and light-current electrical apparatus were produced from 1863 until 1968. The site between the Thames Barrier and Woolwich Dockyard has retained several buildings of historic interest. New works were built at Stafford in 1903 and Dalston in 1908.
Sir John Pender KCMG GCMG FSA FRSE was a Scottish submarine communications cable pioneer and politician.
Hibernia Networks, alternately known as Hibernia Atlantic, was a privately held, US-owned provider of telecommunication services. It operated global network routes on self-healing rings in North America, Europe and Asia including submarine communications cable systems in the North Atlantic Ocean which connected Canada, the United States, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and mainland Europe. Hibernia managed cable landing stations in Dublin, Republic of Ireland; Coleraine, Northern Ireland; Southport, England; Halifax, Canada; Lynn, Massachusetts, United States.
John William Mackay was an Irish-American industrialist. Mackay was one of the four Bonanza Kings, a partnership which capitalised on the wealth generated by the silver mines at the Comstock Lode. He also headed a telegraph business that laid transatlantic cables and he helped finance the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway Company.
The Cable Ship Mackay-Bennett was a transatlantic cable-laying and cable-repair ship registered at Lloyd's of London as a Glasgow vessel but owned by the American Commercial Cable Company. It is notable for being the ship that recovered the majority of the bodies after the sinking of the Titanic.
CSS Acadia is a former hydrographic surveying and oceanographic research ship of the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and its successor the Canadian Hydrographic Service.
Hazel Hill is a small community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia in the Municipality of the District of Guysborough in Guysborough County.
Scotia was a British passenger liner operated by the Cunard Line that won the Blue Riband in 1863 for the fastest westbound transatlantic voyage. She was the last oceangoing paddle steamer, and as late as 1874 she made Cunard's second fastest voyage. Laid up in 1876, Scotia was converted to a twin-screw cable layer in 1879. She served in her new role for twenty-five years until she was wrecked off of Guam in March 1904.
American Cable and Radio Corporation was a communications holding company in the middle 20th century. Created in February 1940, it was a part of ITT World Communications, and operated what was known as the American Cable and Radio System, comprising All America Cables and Radio, the Commercial Cable Company, Mackay Radio, and the Sociedad Anonima Radio Argentina.
Postal Telegraph Company was a major operator of telegraph networks in the United States prior to its consolidation with Western Union in 1943. Postal partnered with Commercial Cable Company for overseas cable messaging.
Heart's Content Cable Station is a former cable landing station located in Heart's Content, Newfoundland and Labrador. It served as the western terminus of the first permanent trans-oceanic submarine telegraph cable, while a sister cable station on Valentia Island, Ireland, served as the eastern terminus. The original cable was first brought ashore in Heart's Content on July 27, 1866, and the station remained in use until it was closed in 1965. The station was designated a Provincial Historic Site in 1974 and is now a museum. On December 20, 2017, it was announced that the Heart's Content Cable Station would be one of eight new sites nominated by the Canadian Government for UNESCO World Heritage Site status.