August 16: Queen Victoria Sends Telegraph Message to James Buchanan
Prayer Idea
Pray that people would use communication technologies for good purposes.
History Note
Since ancient times, people have explored ways to send messages quickly over long distances. They have used smoke, fire, reflected light, and drums.
In the 19th century, several people experimented with using electricity to send signals over wires. In the 1830s, American artist Samuel Morse developed a system of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. Along with collaborator Alfred Vail, Morse created a practical method to send these dots and dashes (known as Morse Code) as electrical signals from one location to another.
The U.S. government financed construction of a telegraph line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. Morse demonstrated the system on May 24, 1844, by sending the message, “What hath God wrought!” The telegraph quickly became an important method of communication in the United States and other countries.
At that time, sending a message by ship across the Atlantic Ocean took about 10 days. If people could connect North America and Europe with a telegraph cable, that time could be reduced to hours or even minutes.
A company with American and British backing formed in 1856 to attempt to lay a transatlantic cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. Manufacturing such a long cable was difficult. Getting it on a ship and then onto the bottom of the ocean was even more difficult. The first attempt in 1857 ended when the cable broke while being laid in the ocean.
The company attempted the effort again in 1858, and they were able to lay the cable successfully. After testing the connection, the company sent the first official message from Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom to U.S. President James Buchanan:
The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken the greatest interest. The Queen is convinced the President will join with her in fervently hoping that the electric cable which now connects Great Britain with the United States will prove an additional link between the two nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus directly communicating with the President, and in renewing to him her best wishes for the prosperity of the United States.
Transmission of the Queen’s message started on August 16, but because of technical delays, it wasn’t completed until August 17. A variety of factors had contributed to the deterioration of the cable’s effectiveness, and it stopped working completely a few weeks later.
The failure dampened enthusiasm for the project. The company was able to secure funding for another attempt in 1865, but that cable also broke during installation. Finally in 1866, another cable successfully connected Europe and North America. Additional cables were laid in coming years, and the telegraph station at Heart’s Content, Newfoundland, operated until 1965.
This 2022 photo shows the Heart’s Content Cable Station, an historic site in Newfoundland, Canada. Photo by Ramon Cliff / Shutterstock.com.
Learn More
This video provides an overview of the transatlantic telegraph cable and the continuing importance of undersea cables today.
Please Note: The narrator says the first cable functioned for a few months. It was actually only a few weeks.
Find more resources at Homeschool History.
