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What Lies Beneath: The First Transatlantic Communications Cables (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: Our global information networks are connected by many many fibre optic cables sitting on the the ocean floor. The precursor to this technology goes all the way back to 1858 when the first telegraph cable connecting North America and Europe was laid. The story of efforts to lay transatlantic cables is fascinating. First attempts were met with many failures including broken cable in the first few miles of installation, and even frying the first successful connection with 2000 volts within a month of completion. But the technology improved quickly and just a century later we laid the first voice cables that used — get this — vacuum tubes in the signal repeaters. This seems a good time to link to one of my favorite-ever pieces in Wired, about a more modern but similarly impressive cable install, as told by Neal Stephenson.
Not so far off the mark. The ship used for one of the first cables was the SS Great Eastern, the biggest ship in the world at that time. This was the only ship big enough to carry the whole cable in one piece.
Earlier cables had been laid in sections and spliced together, but the splices were found to be a weak point. They also complicated the laying operation, so for a long time, cables were laid in one piece. These days, splicing has become feasible again, and is done routinely e.g. to repair cables.
There can be no mention of the "Great Eastern" without mentioning Isambard Kingdom Brunel. I mean that literally: Say it out loud- "Isambard Kingdom Brunel".
They don't make great Engineers with names like that these days. (A good runner up was James Clerk Maxwell.)