Looking for a particular documentary about the history of long distance communication

Upvote:2

American Experience (on PBS) aired a documentary called The Great Transatlantic Cable many years back. I don't remember any mention of the clepsydra, but the story of the first cable burning out after just a few weeks in most assuredly in there. Basically, the engineers had assumed that you needed to push a lot of current through the wire, when in fact, just a little current would work just as well...

I also seem to remember the first attempt was harder because the cable would not fit on a single ship, and thus it had to be spliced together on board. For the second laying, the world's largest ship ever was repurposed to hold the cable.

More post

Search Posts

Related post