The 1858 Cable: Sixteen Hours for One Royal Message OCEAN CABLES | MORSE CODE WORKS In August 1858, two warships met in the mid-Atlantic, spliced their cable ends, and steamed apart - one to Ireland, one to Newfoundland. For the first time, electricity joined the Old World and the New. New York celebrated with fireworks that nearly set City Hall alight. The triumph was real but fragile. Signals were agonisingly slow - Queen Victoria's 98-word message needed some sixteen and a half hours of patient repeating. Within weeks the cable failed entirely, undone by weak insulation and, many believed, the brute-force high voltage used to push signals through. Key points - Operators read the faint signals with Thomson's sensitive mirror galvanometer - A shared word between continents cost a small fortune at first - Failure taught cable-makers about insulation, testing and gentle voltages - The dream was proven possible eight years before it worked reliably Try it yourself Translate any text to Morse code and hear it with sound, free: Morsecodeworks.com