The Transatlantic Telegraph Cable: A Tale of Extraordinary Perseverance

[@Ralphieboy]

Another offshoot of the TA cable: When they pulled the lost cable up they were surprised to find it encrusted with marine animals. Up to then the depths of the ocean were thought to be devoid of all life: that is helped spark a major interest in exploring the deep oceans.

[@SpottedHares]

I just love that "don't worry nothing lives down their the cables wont disturb marine life at all"

[@dudesumting]

My grandmother used to work at the Telegraph station in newfoundland. Years later it's a museum, I had no idea she used to work there til one day I took a tour of the place with her and she non-chalantley said "this is the machine I used to work on"

[@bobpower5545]

Many women worked there especially during the war. My grandfather worked there as well. He was the last Superintendent when it closed and helped get the museum set up. I was there last summer.

[@notyourtypicalwatchreview2563]

Wow!!

[@doncarlin9081]

I actually received an international telegram in the late 1980s. My parents applied to a boarding school for me back in the US. Rather than call us, or mail a letter which took up to two weeks to get here, the school sent me a telegram informing my I had been accepted. At the time I thought it was pretty neat.

[@shonifari5783]

Imagine designing the projects and everything and see the ship sail. Then u have to wait like 15 days to see the ship come back and be like "nah bro, the cable snapped".. at the third time I bet the guy snapped as well

[@royhsieh4307]

i would just meet the guys and snap fifteen days later

[@davonmulder8458]

XD

[@featherbrain7147]

In the mid-fifties I was nine. I was given a book called "The Cruise of the Kingfisher" by H De Vere Stacpoole. It was a boy's adventure aboard a cable grappling and repair ship, including piracy and other themes. The book was quite detailed in its account of the workings of the cable salvage and repair operation. Although already outdated technology, I was hooked on this subject, and have remained fascinated. I still have the book.

[@ztoob8898]

I love life stories like this. Thanks for sharing yours.

[@vonfaustien3957]

They still lay cable its just fiber optic not copper.

[@BrewPackBuck12]

Kingfisher...great Indian beer

[@danielmessi1092]

Nigga old as shit

[@ewoodley82]

Really interesting fact: all subsequent northern Transatlantic cables have followed the same route. The people behind this truly laid the foundation for modern transcontinental communications networks

[@19billdong96]

Bonus fact: Cyrus Westfield profited enormously after he succeeded, and despite costly earlier failures, the service proved so valuable he recouped all his losses and much more, deservedly so in my opinion.

[@richardkenan2891]

He definitely found a way to monetize sheer bloody-minded persistence, that's for sure.

[@wongijen9167]

Most of the time I dislike businessmen who take Science for profit, but this time I respect him for his sheer will

[@bobpower5545]

He lost everything in the end. I met one of his ancestors a few years ago and they said nothing, not even mementos were kept.

[@jokuvaan5175]

I'd really like a video of electric grid(s). They truly are an underappreciated marvel of human engineering. Maintaining power levels, frequency etc. takes a lot more effort than most people realize. Maybe focus on some specific large grid in Europe or NA

[@BasilRoosli]

Jami I second this

[@jokuvaan5175]

The European grid might be a good topic (Or some other intercontinental power grid). Most of European nations + some none European nations have synchronised their grids with each other. There is currently an on going project of European electric grid integration. energytransition.org/2019/07/work-in-progress-the-integrated-european-electrical-grid/ China also might have some ridiculous electric grid projects in their near history seeing how fast they have been industrializing

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Concidentally I watched this video b4 I came here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oH7QhqKQnZh7p5Y About the US electrical system.

[@kasession]

I'd recommend the History Channel mini series 'The Men Who Built America'. J.P. Morgan's contribution to the electric grid was illuminating.

[@Markus-zb5zd]

Heck yeah, the European grid is very interesting. It sometimes falls apart and resynchronization is a major effort.

[@wolf3794]

All of us watching this on different continents than Simon lives on appriciate the speed of communications!

[@GodofWhoopass]

Why is Simon posing like Ermac or Reptile on the thumbnail?

[@serveaux]

@@GodofWhoopass Its for his new channel Mortal Projects 🐲

[@GarganoGambino]

I’m pretty sure AoL still use these cables! 🤣🤣👌🏻

[@chesthoIe]

Bonus Fact: That very cable is why Jamaica and Canada use the US Phone system and have area codes and share our country code. When phones came out, they just traced the lines of the old telegraph service.

[@Ron4885]

Sean. Yes. Check out all the cables in service now: submarine-cable-map-2019.telegeography.com/ It is interesting stuff.

[@jasN86]

@@Ron4885 That's an awesome site!

[@WJSpies]

Interesting point

[@FREAKIN_BRYAN]

That and euro-style phone numbers seem exceedingly stupid

[@kimchipig]

I am Canadian and all our telecoms are Canadian owned.

[@shanehebert3237]

Hey I'm early. The undersea cables, from telegraph to fiber optic, are probably one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in use. Definitely worthwhile to learn about.

[@Ron4885]

Agree. Very interesting stuff.

[@WanderingWriter]

It really is. Where I work we do underground construction and one of our departments is specifically for fiber splicing. It is fascinating stuff indeed

[@rpower1401]

The facility used to receive the first message in Newfoundland is still there and now a museum. Heart's Content Cable Station, wonderful place to visit, everything is in perfect shape and would likely still be operational if not for its obsolescence. Also while scuba diving in Torbay I once found one of the old cables, you can see the outer casing has worn away in places and the inner cables are there to see.

[@bobpower5545]

Thanks so much for the very interesting way of telling this story. My family was involved in this megaproject from its beginning in 1866 in Valentia, Ireland (my gg-grandfather) to the closing 1966 in Heart's Content, Newfoundland (my grandfather). All the men on that side of my family worked in the Telegraph industry all over the world for 100 years. Both Newfoundland and Ireland have officially applied to UNESCO with a joint application to become a cross boundary World Heritage Site. 🤞

[@unvergebeneid]

"It's $10 per word." "How much for a cat video?"

[@Markus-zb5zd]

A word is a few bytes. A single picture quite a few kilobytes. A video... Uncompressed... Big off So I'd guess upwards of 10 million

[@Azivegu]

I mean, cats have a quite complicated language structure, where a meow can mean one thing, while a meeow means something completely different. And if they say meoow, well you are screwed. And yes, if you get those subtle differences, you too are an experienced cat caretaker.

[@unvergebeneid]

@@Markus-zb5zd oof, can you imagine? How did Reddit even work back then?! 😳

[@stevehill4615]

$10 a word made me smile, I remember my first mobile (analogue, brick) in the 90's ----- 35p a minute off peak, 52p peak managed a £135 bill one month

[@paulpierce1001]

damn... if a picture is 1000 words and a video is just a string of pictures... how long is the video and at how many frames per second?

[@ignitionfrn2223]

0:25 - Chapter 1 - Under the sea 1:30 - Chapter 2 - The telegraph 2:55 - Chapter 3 - Transatlantic communication 5:15 - Chapter 4 - The cable 6:55 - Chapter 5 - Laying the cable 13:10 - Chapter 6 - The 2nd cable 16:05 - Chapter 7 - The end (finally)

[@mrclarke5200]

I live in the town in Newfoundland where the Great Eastern landed and even today you can still see the cable on the beach running toward the old cable station

[@Zyo117]

Damn, I really have to drive out that way sometime. Between that and whatever's left of the old rail loop park I could make a day of photography.

[@lostwizard]

A point about Newfoundland: it wasn't part of Canada until 1949.

[@l00k69]

At least he pronounced it right

[@sandybarnes887]

We joined on April Fools Day

[@amandabromell9660]

Was is new land the found?

[@sandybarnes887]

@@amandabromell9660 the Island

[@sorcererstone3303]

@@amandabromell9660 Yes, and it is located about an inch on the right hand side of the couch where everyone is sitting.

[@MrKago1]

I know it was before telephones, but could you imagine calling in that order to Gutta Percha Company. "hi, I'd like to place an order for your telegraph cable." "sure, would you like that by the foot or by the yard?" "By the mile." "uhhhh.....okay? How many miles would you like? 2? 3? maybe 4?" "2,500 miles" "Oh, I see. Shoooor you do. I bet you'd like a dozen pizzas to go with it. I see how this is." "Pizzas? No. But I would like it all individually shielded." *CLICK*

[@steffenschiller3189]

Suggestion - you mentioned the "Great Eastern". This ship would make a fascinating Megaprojects episode!

[@evilbred974]

Came to say this. The Great Eastern was one of the greatest engineering projects of the 1800s. Truly a breakthrough feat of engineering and overseen by one of the greatest engineers in history, Isambard Brunel.

[@slickstrings]

@@evilbred974 the greatest engineer of all.

[@hinahanta]

Yes it would

[@perfectibility999]

I agree. Early steamships and the transition from sail to steam would be an awesome topic. So would pre-dreadnaught battleships, that awkward phase of battleship design before they began to take on their mature form.

[@scottcarter6623]

The first great ship

[@acepilot1]

Imagining the job of the guys with grappling hooks on long ropes combing the ocean floor reminds me of the scene from space balls where they are combing the desert with a oversized hair comb

[@PyrusFlameborn]

At least you can see the desert, not so much for the oceanfloor😂

[@rayceeya8659]

I love any story that involves The Great Eastern. What a fantastic ship.

[@snickle1980]

😂 I was going to save this automatically for my " fall asleep to" file... But I never knew it could be SO DAMNED FRUSTRATING to string a cable across the ocean! Here's to perseverance.

[@tomschmidt381]

Great overview of the early transatlantic telegraph cables. I'm a baby boomer and was fascinated when the first transatlantic telephone cable was laid in the mid 1950s, with the whopping capacity of 35 phone calls. As with your comment about the massive impact of the telegraph cable we tend to forget now a days with massive fiber optic cables connecting continents just how significant of a development this was.

[@jonathanorlando1294]

Simon, Olivier, Jennifer... I remember learning about the Grasberg Mine and the whole project would be perfect for this channel. Dozers fell off mountainsides. The mine and roads to it are almost constantly in cloud cover at various elevations. However, consistant improvements, such as transporting slury in pipes, have probably prevented even more deaths.

[@willycrawley]

Being from Newfoundland, I'm absolutely in my glee rn, what a beautiful way to start my week, thanks Simon!!

[@michaelgallagher3640]

Do ya know a guy named "Nipper"? Everyone knows Nipper.

[@Deaddriftbum]

00:35 that awkward moment when you realize you’re older then Simon but believe all this time he was older then you.

[@davidstarkman8811]

These are great! We've been watching Biographics and Top Tenz for years. Don't usually comment because we usually watch on our TV streaming.

[@TheLoxxxton]

I'm amazed one man can present so many youtube channels, and especially a man with no legs! Good on ya Simon

[@GodofWhoopass]

Why is Simon posing like Ermac or Reptile on the thumbnail?

[@smoothmicra]

I love the bold ambition to lay a cable thousands of miles long...under the sea. Even today that would be no small undertaking, but back then it was a remarkable achievement. These pioneering types are the people who keep the human race advancing. They deserve nothing but respect and admiration.

[@LanaHazou]

Loved this kind of topic! Projects like this are way under appreciated now-a-days. But if they never happened.... How about how sewage systems were created under modern cities? Like how the city of Chicago was “raised” by 4’ to 14’?

[@Azivegu]

bruh, you should look into the underground city of Seattle. That story is wild.

[@raduran13]

Or st Louis the only system that runs down hill no pumps needed,.

[@ShreddySteve]

I would like it if you guys go into more detail on how exactly the laying of the cable worked in terms of the unrolling mechanism and how it was laid. Nor sure if that is more the purview of Real Engineering, but the detail is something that I'd like to see in these videos in addition to the overarching story. Generally love the videos, though. Keep up the good work!

[@paulinbrooklyn]

“Only the blind determination of Cyrus Westfield kept the project afloat” (9:32). Actually, it was his blind determination that led to the project becoming SUBMERGED and thereby operational and thus safe from being cut, by nearby ships, fishing nets and whatnot.

[@rauhamanilainen6271]

I find the following two things quite surprising: Undersea cables were already laid across the Atlantic over 160 years ago. We still rely on undersea cables for most of our communications today. It's amazing how the core idea hasn't really changed since then.

[@evernewb2073]

we found one of those old _old_ public phones where you needed to hand crank a generator to power your call. moderately zapping yourself is a surprisingly good way to start your day in the morning and that thing was a lot more interesting than playing around with the electric fence next to the buss stop. some plants do interesting things when you run a current through them. ...we were weird kids

[@spyone4828]

I really like stories of great success that relied on a previous failure. The Great Eastern had never been profitable, but was enormous (having been designed to travel from Great Britain to Australia without refueling), and so was for sale at the price of the metal as scrap. If they had needed to build a ship to carry the cable, just raising the funds would have taken decades. Only because the Great Eastern was available at such a cheap price was the laying of the cable possible.

[@sussekind9717]

My grandmother had a fluorescent orange, rotary phone. It looked like something you would see in an old government conspiracy movie. You know the kind, sitting on a desk in a government office, as a hotline to some other, even more important, arm of the government. Meanwhile, all kind of drama is happening, generals and politicians are arguing, should they call the president, etc. She had that phone until 2008, I kid you not.

[@allisonschempf2230]

I had a red rotary phone as a kid. If was scary but cool to imagine getting a DEFCON 1 call!

[@Kynareth6]

I believe you. I had a rotary phone as a kid and my grandmother had a rotary phone until just a few years ago (along with a wireless phone, now only one new wireless phone). But they were not that old, just old-style. In the 90s many people used rotary phones where I live.

[@scienteer3562]

Great video. Slightly underplays the science advances that went into the later generation cables. This was not to make them stronger, but to counteract the dispersion of the Morse pulses. Today we can use equaliser algorithms and chips to characterise the frequency dependent delays and compensate. This trick is what enables the internet to work over basic twisted pair telephone lines.

[@ChadWilson]

Yes! Thank you for this one. Amazing that they could do it way back when.

[@studlord9970]

Great video, thanks! You guys should research the Alaska-Canadian highway. Thousands of miles of road pushed through some of the worlds harshest terrain in less than 8 months in the early 40s to connect Alaska to the national highway system, in order to defend the state against possible Japanese invasion during World War II. A nearly miraculous feat of engineering.

[@larryscott3982]

Fun fact: One of the first science tasks of the cable was for time transfer. And that returned precise longitude measurement from Greenwich to Washington DC. Additional Trans Pacific cables allowed for a direct measurement of the circumference of the earth by time transfer.

[@makerspace533]

What I think is really amazing is the the first transatlantic telephone cable was not laid until 1956, almost 100 years later! All overseas telephone service depended on radio. It's no wonder Amateur Radio was so popular in those days.

[@MyStarwars01]

Suggestion: the Bismark battleship and Yamato battleship.

[@RufioChris]

This please.

[@BreadManMike]

Two thousand men, and fifty thousand tons of steel

[@vonfaustien3957]

Set a course for atlantic with the allies on her heel

[@heckinmemes6430]

FIRE POWER, SHOW OF FORCE!

[@lylecosmopolite]

Undersea telegraphy remained essential until the first telephone cable was laid under the Atlantic, in 1957. This cable was limited to 120 simultaneous conversations. There was intercontinental telephony by short wave radio, but the quality was abominable. My uncle ran an import-export business in Brazil. My father worked evenings and weekends as one of his stateside agents. The two men communicated via Western Union into the 1970s. My father told me that cost was not a concern. Meanwhile, an international telephone call was $12 for the first 3 minutes, and $3/minute thereafter. This at a time when my father was paid $300/month for his day job as an engineer.

[@jaclatoya]

I'm loving this series Simon. I'd be interested to learn more about the Human Genome Project. I don't know much about it, but I do know labs at a lot of universities were involved. It might be considered a megaproject.

[@Lowmanification]

It is actually a really interesting story. It includes a Public v. Private race, the controversial act of patenting genes (and subsequent devastation of the biotechnology stock market), and conspiracies over how the new data could be applied for discrimination. It would also be a great place to introduce the current ongoing efforts to characterize the human epigenome through projects like Encode and the HapMap project to identify common sequence variants in certain populations to better serve those communities health needs. Also, as a plug for another interesting topic which is also bio related, the Norway Seed Vault is also really cool and is a nice segue into the work being done on the Frozen Ark project which seeks to preserve embryos and genetic material from rare or endangered species in the hopes that we may one day be able to revive them.

[@williamchamberlain2263]

"A Thread Across The Ocean" - great book; short, well-written, packed with the atmosphere of trying to lay these bloody cables even before they had decent rubber insulation or reliable ocean-going paddle ships. Crazy capable sailors.

[@zGJungle]

No wonder the messages took 17 hours to get there, the messages wrapped in weed.

[@bradleyalexander5821]

Hilarious 👍🏼

[@lovepirate14]

Amazing how fast you can turn these out, this was just the top comment on your video like 3 days ago, you guys do some serious work lol. Single handedly could put schools out of bussiness.

[@SilvanaDil]

I sent one telegram in my life. In early 1984, I was a sophomore living on Stanford campus. My mom's 60th birthday was on a weekday. Before I phoned, I sent my mom in San Francisco a telegram w/a verse about a 60 yr-old mom from a famous Italian book. (Tip: Careful. She loved it, but when she first got it, she thought it would be news of a death.)

[@MrEddiyOwen]

roll forwards another 50 years, and I'll say the same thing about email ... expect it will be 'Nigerians trying to give me money'

[@paulburley7993]

@@MrEddiyOwen mine was long lost, fabulously wealthy family members who all died in a horrific crash on a Madrid expressway!! 😂🤣

[@tomryan914]

@@MrEddiyOwen Email: I won 1 million (US) from Nigeria, and 1 million Euros from the Netherlands!

[@gunnarkaestle]

Similar for me: I was a teenager in the 80s and remember vaguely a telegram as curious birthday gift from my Gandpa. It was somewhat unusual but it came with a big fancy envelope. Telegrams had no practical application in my life, which rather was accustomed of fax and email. But I like hand written letters as personal message for special occasions.

[@jonnunn4196]

That's because the news of death were sent by telegram during WW2 to the nearest known family member, which anyone who was around 20 in 1944 would have remembered. The same would have applied during the Korean war; I don't know if they were still doing that for Vietnam or if they had switched to air mail by then.

[@allisonschempf2230]

Thank you so much for this video. I'd been wondering how the first transatlantic cables were laid, but kept forgetting to look it up. Fortunately you had the answer, as usual! It's pretty amazing that this project was even attempted given the available materials and technology at the time.

[@neilgoodman2885]

Mr. Whistler: Top notch! Somehow, the telegraph adventure is at least as breathtaking as the first walk on the Moon!

[@nickthelick]

I grew up in the 80s and 90s... Those original rotary telephones weren't *_that_* odd to see occasionally in people's homes. I remember my two Great Uncles and Aunties both still using their original, 1920s/30s vintage "Candlestick" telephones! 😁 As a young child they sort of captivated me a little bit, holding the speaker to my mouth with one hand and the other holding the speaker to my ear. 😊

[@Rekuzan]

"The Atlantic ocean is MASSIVE!" Relatively speaking. Compared to the Pacific, it's a pond, which is why we call it that.

[@gunnarkaestle]

Thus, the Pacific ocean is much more massiver.

[@Rekuzan]

@@gunnarkaestle Technically speaking, it's gihugeic, but yeah.

[@whyjnot420]

The fact that the Great Eastern was used in this endeavor brings up a thought... The very life of its designer, Isambard Kingdom Brunell was nothing if not a litany of groundbreaking megaprojects, perhaps more fitting this channel than biographics.

[@deadfreightwest5956]

6:44 - Minor quibble: "pull" is "tension", not "pressure."

[@arthas640]

He's English though so they do everything backwards, they pull a pint of lukewarm lager from the beer tap rather then pour themselves an ice cold glass of alcoholic water.

[@TonyRule]

@@arthas640 *than

[@Skraeling1000]

@@arthas640 I have to wonder why the Brit = warm beer meme is still going lol, I've never had warm beer in a pub. It might stem from WW2 when we were lucky to just HAVE any beer, let alone cool it lol. Also, to maintain balance, not all American beer tastes like alcoholic water, you just need to buy micro brewery stuff, not the gnats piss that coors et al put out.

[@sophiecat2161]

Thank you Mr Whistler for keeping us entertained and expanding our knowledge during lockdown. We had a 'tring' phone in 80s lol.

[@Mondo762]

There are ships that lay cable, fiber optic cable. They are certainly not obsolete.

[@Noodle999]

There are also ships that lift cables off the seabed for inspection/maintenance and drop them back down again.

[@nagualdesign]

I know how they feel.

[@gunnarkaestle]

There are also HV cables for electric power transfer. AC or DC. Those have a larger girth than telco cable because of the thicker insulation and current carrying conductor.

[@stereoroid]

One important figure oddly overlooked in this video was engineer William Thomson, who not only solved the cable-breaking problems by figuring out how to calculate the stresses in the cables, but was also chief engineer on all the expeditions covered here. He also designed a more sensitive detector for the receiving end that actually worked. For his contributions he was knighted, and eventually became Lord Kelvin, after whom the temperature scale is named.

[@rachelcollins8158]

Seriously I can listen to Simon for hours...he is like the single best story teller of our generation. Not only that but he has this quirky sense of humor that we all love.

[@nickdanger3802]

Whitehouse's inadequate apparatus had to be replaced by Thomson's more sensitive mirror galvanometer but Whitehouse then ruined the cable by delivering massive shocks of 2,000 volts in an attempt to rectify the problems. Whitehouse continually maintained that the cable and his equipment were a success. Though he put up a desperate public defence of his conduct and was more than ready to apportion blame among all other parties, an 1861 enquiry concluded that he should bear the majority of the responsibility.

[@thomasdupont1346]

I had suggested this mega-project a few weeks ago. I wonder if they used my suggestion or if they came up with it on their own. I always loved the story of the transatlantic cable.

[@zackmorrison470]

Thanks for another fascinating video. You are absolutely correct when you say (paraphrasing) that we have no real concept of the technical challenges they faced, or how world altering the Transatlantic Cable was in its day! Thank you! You have asked for suggestions for Mega Projects to do videos about, and I'd like to recommend the infrastructure that went in to the U.S.'s ICBM/Anti-ICBM strategy during the cold war! You can still see A LOT of the remaining infrastructure just using Google Earth! The Atlas Launch Complexes just Northwest of Cheyenne, Wyoming, or the HUNDREDS of totally non-descript (yet still super obvious... and laid out at regular intervals on an obvious grid system), underground Titan I ICBM silos, or even the earlier Nike Hercules surface to air missiles with nuclear warheads to be used as anti-jet aircraft/anti-incoming ICBM interceptors with these nuclear capable missile installations in downtown-ish areas of major American cities (including ~16 sites in and around Cleveland, Ohio of all places! Which would probably make a better bonus facts than meat of the story.) Bottom Line: MASSIVE logistical projects, having to be carried out in total secrecy so as not to unduly alarm the public (or the Soviets), YET, still making it obvious enough to any Soviets who cared to take the time to find all those little identical, perfectly maintained rectangles of barbed wire fence and gravel; to deter them just by shear brute force should they make a first strike. The Tsar Bomba maybe could taken out all the sites in North Dakota (maybe) but that would not stop the literal thousands of warheads from the other sites from launching... and it only takes one to hit Moscow (Allegedly!) Plus, another bonus fact, each silo crew would get to choose their own squadron's mural, and one of them had a Dominoes Pizza logo and the caption read, "Delivery to anywhere in the world in 30mins or less, or your next one's free!" (I recognize nuclear holocaust is no laughing matter, but a little humor amidst the darkest of realities can be some small solace for those who have to make that decision and push THAT button!) Thanks again! Respectfully, Zack Morrison PharmD p.s. I "Perched The Merch" including a couple of the stickers, before you started telling everyone they are way overpriced... but I like them! And I think they are worth it! I have The Queen with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and Satan in her hair, and "Ask Me About My Pyramid Scheme" proudly displayed on my computer case! And I love the "Smash the Dislike Button!" shirt! =) Hope you all stay healthy and safe!

[@autumnnnn]

Ah yes, the l o n g b o i Oh and thank you for the amazing content, please keep it up!

[@bunnygirl2448]

Thank you for posting this! I have always wondered how they did this. It’s an absolutely amazing accomplishment for the time period. Wow!

[@spectreshadow]

It's just amazing it withstood such a hostile environment as the ocean floor.

[@forgesoulfire1320]

Insufferable pressures and drops in temperature, and absence of light in the deeper points, not to mention currents and storms... am I missing an aspect?

[@denniskennedyjr.9128]

Actually it’s where today’s internet is as well, everyone thinks it’s air or satellite it’s not it underwater fiber optics

[@denniskennedyjr.9128]

They are constantly being fixed

[@alternavent]

...and all the crab people!

[@paulpierce1001]

@@alternavent HEEEY! HEEYY!! HEEY!! ;)

[@haramanggapuja]

If you want a long story written in Victorian style, there's a book, "The History, Theory & Practice of the Electric Telegraph," by George B Prescott that recounts the entire development of the telegraph, including the laying of the cables. My copy was a hard cover reprint of the 1866 original by a guy in Tennessee around 1972. I picked up my copy at a booth at the Dayton Hamvention (an amateur radio convention held in Dayton, Ohio) many years ago. . . . And yes, I still use the Morse code. Learned it in the US Navy. Used to be good for 20 words per minute, by hand & ear, no computers, just a pencil & a note pad. That was before essential tremor kicked in and my hands started to shake, which brought me back to a beginner's speed of about 15 wpm. . . . Oh, and the reason it took so long to send a character? Well, there's this thing called inductance & capacitance. Which stores energy and then releases it. Energizing the cable produced a magnetic field. Turning off the current in the cable made the magnetic field collapse. But a change in magnetic field causes a change in electrical field. So keying the line produced a magnetic field and unkeying the line made the field collapse, which induced a voltage in the line, which kept the cable energized or keyed. Plus the energy stored in the line against the return path of the earth also stored energy, inducing more current in thecable. So a dash had to be sent, then wait until the dash made the journey down the cable, the magnetic field collapsed and the capacitance discharged, before the next dash or dot could be sent. Hell of a trip. Must have driven the inventors nuts. . . . All of that's in the book. Nice read. . . . As was your video. Truly cool adventure story, ain't it?

[@fvckyoutubescensorshipandt2718]

7:43 oopsie, 2 miles = 3.2 km

[@Dreju78]

Probably mixed up units and should have been 2 km / 1.6 miles

[@robbiedecamp5023]

Came down here to say the same thing.

[@stajne83]

@@Dreju78 1.6 miles is 2.5km so it's not that kind of an error

[@MrInitialMan]

I'd just like to say that all these projects you CAN'T see, or even these projects that are now long outdated or taken for granted are really, really interesting. You know what might be a really cool topic? It's one that companies all over the world spent over 300 billion dollars on. It was less a single megaproject, and more thousands of separate projects happening all over the world at the same time. Something predicted in the 50s--but not addressed until the mid 1990s. It was the monumental effort to avoid the Y2K bug before January 1, 2000 made hash of the world's computers.

[@sawyerflechsig7329]

I feel like their might be a very obvious answer to this so I'm scared to asked, but why when they first lost the cable while laying it did they not just retrace it back to where it was connected to on land

[@jimsibley1872]

You might do a piece on the internet, including its inception as ARPA net, to its current structure both physical and logical. A message (i.e. email, etc) is sent as packets. The backbones stretch across continents with cables connect continents with cables and satellite. The packet switching algorithm to select a path for a packet is automatic, and a message can, in theory, be sent over several different nodes and medium.

[@fsj197811]

This was a good episode, thank you!

[@SirWussiePants]

Bonus bonus fact: In December 1814 the treaty of Ghent was signed ending the war of 1812 but it took 2 or more months for the news to travel across the ocean and then on to the combatants. I wonder how many people died after the treaty was already signed but no-one knew about it

[@Doc_OLDGUY_Savage]

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try again." Jack O'Neill, Stargate SG-1: Window of Opportunity.

[@deadfreightwest5956]

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damned fool about it." - W.C. Fields

[@mitchellelliott1650]

Great episode

[@arnepianocanada]

Yes, the lost Mars rover was due to Imperial-Metric mixup; so clear in hindsight, just as in this cable winding inconsistency, but a clearly easy error to make.

[@barbararajska3570]

just as this poped up, it reminded me of the guy in Scotland who actually did a POST RUN doing 120 miles every week delivering post in the rural areas where sending carriage or horse even would be too expensive. :o how the times have changed :D

[@TheJttv]

Mailmen still walk miles a day....

[@jugganaut33]

Not up 800m mountains they don’t. Not carrying 80lbs of mail they don’t. Not carrying food they’ll need for multiple night. They don’t. Carrying their sleeping equipment. They don’t. Doing 120 miles. Week in. Week out in the pissing rain in mountainous terrain with weight is a different league to modern shorts and polo mailmen. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[@garyn4ocw]

Barbara Rajska a

[@AnalystPrime]

Post run as in running with a bag of mail? That used to be a thing, have a relay system where people carried bags of mail and ran between stations because horses were still too expensive or something. I remember seeing display about it in a post museum, though I can't recall just now when it was in use.

[@knightrider585]

The idea that a cable was run across the Atlantic Ocean is such an amazing thing I am not surprised that it failed so many times. Amazing that there are so many cables today.

[@headcrab4090]

How did they map the seabed of the Atlantic back then? I must have been quite a task.

[@HunterAtheist]

This needs to be an episode.

[@jimdeboer84]

On a side note, my father, who grew up in Nebraska in the 1910s, told me that farmers in the area used the barbed wire fences as telephone lines. If you opened a fence gate, you had to make sure it was probably closed before you left.

[@nancycurtis3230]

A lot of cattle stations used the fences as an aerial for short wave radio signals.

[@Kevin_Kennelly]

12:40 There's a topic. Conspiracy Theories Throughout History.

[@nilstrieb]

*so basically the history of ani-semitism?*

[@Arbiter099]

Sounds like another channel for Simon

[@elliotsmith9812]

@@nilstrieb Um, how is the fake moon landing antisemitic? Anti vax?

[@allisonschempf2230]

@@Arbiter099 I'd love to see that happen. It might take up most of his time though!

[@pbinnj3250]

I love that you get right to the topic, no wasting time.

[@jackbridge5780]

I wanna see a megaproject on how simon manages to be on so many channels at once.

[@GodofWhoopass]

Why is Simon posing like Ermac or Reptile on the thumbnail?

[@rikvanderzanden2834]

This is the best megaprojects video yet. Eventually, this is where also this youtube channel started...

[@TalOfTheEast]

4:27 Newfoundland was not part of Canada until 1949.

[@sandybarnes887]

April Fools Day we joined

[@Treviisolion]

Canada was also still a full British territory rather than merely a part of the Commonwealth, so saying it was part of Canada wasn’t really wrong because Canada as a separate political entity didn’t exist,

[@cduemo]

@@Treviisolion but it WAS wrong as Canada and Newfoundland were different, separately administered parts of the Empire.

[@dansanger5340]

Not only that, but Ireland was part of the UK back then.

[@elliotfineberg9503]

Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland...

[@austinwagner3231]

For another video, what would it look like if a planet was harvested for 100% of its resources? In an early video you discussed harvesting Mercury to make a Dyson sphere. What would happen to Mercury over the life of the project, from day one when our first mining probe hits the surface, to the day the project is finished. For reference, Rick and Morty S1E9 explores Pluto shrinking over time due to mining. Would Mercury exist as a hollow honeycomb structure? Would it simply collapse into a moon/asteroid? Would we be able to harvest every single atom till there is absolutely nothing left? I hope you see this comment, I really love your content!

[@deadfreightwest5956]

The story of laying the cable reminds me of that Marx Brothers routine where they were impersonating "the world's three greatest aviators." Chico explained at a press conference, "We left Europe and got maybe half way across the Atlantic when we runna outta gas. So we turned back. So we got more gas. This time was almost made it across. We could see the Statue of Liberty, when whaddya know, we runna outta gas again, so we turn back. Thissa tima we bringa plenty of gas, but whaddya know, we forgot the airplanes!"

[@RIlianP]

Here are some ideas for videos: - ITER (repost but it is just so cool) - Svalbard Global Seed Vault - The great wall of China - Aikhal, the worlds biggest diamond mine - Hubble space telescope, or the currently constructed Extremely Large Telescope in Chile

[@caldoborg]

Could you do one on the Roman Colosseum

[@LikeUntoBuddha]

I remember seeing one building in England where 5-6 Telegraph Cables from all over the world came together. Thus, the British knew everything weeks and months quicker than anyone else. Think about what an advantage that was for them.

[@jerryumfress9030]

The original "Cable Guy"

[@Azivegu]

Kind of scary thinking how he is in all of our lives...

[@thephantomharanguer]

My first ham radio license required demonstrable capability to communicate both ways at 5 words per minute. That was 1968. The top licensing level, at that time was "Amateur Radio License " Extra Class" at 20 wpm.

[@creekwalker62]

Although, I knew already knew about the transatlantic cable, still an interesting story The impetus of why Morse developed his code has a sad story behind it. It would make for a good video.

[@sagesheahan6732]

Wow.. Dad wouldve loved this one. He passed away 4 days before this... I love this story though. Well done, Simon.

[@IRBitterSoB]

"... and ultimately they failed enough that couriers were able to carry their letters across the cable mound that spanned the Atlantic."

[@daveogarf]

Thank you, Simon! You've added some obscure, but vital details to this epic story! This was one of the most important Mega-Projects ever, the Chunnel notwithstanding.

[@craigyami]

Please do the concept project of the transcontinental railroad/ Bering Sea bridge

[@Arbiter099]

I could see the Soviets actually trying that in a world where Russia never sold Alaska

[@PatrickLaneMJD]

I am currently in Valencia, Ireland, to see the cable sights! Thanks for telling the story!

[@BJrockk]

7:46 minor error: 2 miles = 3.2 km

[@BigKelvPark]

It would be 3.7Km as nautical miles would be used at sea (and in the air corridors) if we are going to be pedantic.

[@purpleldv966]

As someone mentioned already, the discussion is about nautical miles, 1 nm = 1.852 km. But what's realy off is the conversion from tons/nm to kg/km... those conversions, one of them at 06:15 are just nonsense!

[@philhead03]

You should do a video on the Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Project! Grand Coulee is the largest power station in the US, and the whole project (the largest water reclamation project in the US) brought a lot of irrigation to the deserts of eastern Washington as well as providing power for much of the western US.

[@visheshsharma93]

6:19 you said 26KM/KG, lol thats surprisingly light. Don't you mean the other wayround?

[@arthas640]

i was about to say that's insanely light. a single 14 gauge wire (one of the 3 wires that powers a light in a house) weighs about 22kg per km and that's not rated for going under water, isnt corrosion resistant, uses modern technology, and isnt particularly strong.

[@patricklinehan4747]

I was on Valencia Island, Co. Kerry a few weeks back. The old cable building is still there with the displays of the different cables.