Undersea Cabling

Many of us boomers grew up in the 1960s and can remember to our astonishment that the reason we could pick up our phone and call someone in Paris was the transAtlantic cable. Speaking for myself, it blew my mind that the technology of the day enabled us to navigate a boat across an ocean and spool out 4000 miles of thick wire (with even thicker insulation around it) from the East Coast of the United States to the shores of Europe.

As if that weren’t enough, there are similar cables that went back to the age of telegraphy in the mid-19th Century.  On July 13, 1866 the cable laying ship Great Eastern sailed out of Valentia Island, Ireland and on July 27 landed at Heart’s Content in Newfoundland, completing the first lasting connection across the Atlantic. It was active until 1965.

I considered myself cool when I strung two cans connected by a string from my bedroom to my best friend’s in our neighbor’s house in 1961 or ’62.  See photo below.  My room: house on the left, second floor.

This may be a long way of saying that the graphic at left is total bulls***.  The distance is 2700 miles, and the idea of transmitting energy for no reason is stupid beyond words.