2-356-062 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Picking up the Atlantic cable, 1866 (c1880). An attempt in 1865 by Brunel's giant steamship, the 'Great Eastern' to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable ended in failure when the cable snapped and the end was lost. The following year the 'Great Eastern' succeeded in retrieving the lost cable and completing it, connecting Valentia in Ireland to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. Instead of the length of a sea voyage, communication time between the two sides of the Atlantic became a matter of seconds. A print from Cassell's History of the United States, by Edmund Ollier, Volume III, Cassell Petter and Galpin, London, c1880.