Queen Victoria sent the first transatlantic telegraph message
On this day · 16 August 1858
A 98-word royal greeting crawled beneath the ocean for sixteen hours, collapsing weeks of sea travel into a single day.
On August 16, 1858, Queen Victoria sent the first public message across the newly laid transatlantic telegraph cable, addressed to President James Buchanan. The cable ran from Valentia Island off Ireland to Trinity Bay in Newfoundland, and for the first time a message could cross the ocean in hours rather than the weeks a ship required.
The Queen’s greeting expressed hope that the cable would prove “an additional link between the nations.” It was just 98 words long, yet it took roughly 16.5 hours to transmit through the faint, balky signal.
Buchanan replied that it was “a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle.”
A device the size of a tabletop instrument caught a current too weak to ring a bell, and turned it into a sentence from a queen.
The celebration was short-lived. Within weeks the cable failed, and a durable link would not be re-established until 1866.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
