History of Transatlantic Cables

One of the most interesting articles for me in the IEEE Communications magazine last year was about the history of transatlantic cables [1].  The article was written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first telegraph transmission across the Atlantic Ocean in August 1858.  The article describes in detail, projects to lay cable to connect North America and Europe with a transatlantic communciation link.  The challenge of doing this seems easy at first until you really dig in and understand the magnitude of the problem.  Many attempts failed with broken cables laying at the bottom of the ocean!  Even with modern technology, hard wired trans ocean communications links are not trivial to implement.  Anyone interested in communications will enjoy reading this article.

[1] Hayes, Jeremiah. September 2008. "A History of Transatlantic Cables." IEEE Communications Magazine. Vol. 46, No. 9, pp. 42-48.