Learn about the fascinating history of transatlantic communication at the French Cable Station Museum in Orleans.
by James P. Freeman
Time stops inside the Operations Room, where original telegraphic equipment from a century ago remains intact as if it was used just yesterday. In fact, the room looks, feels, and smells like you have entered a time warp.
But in that very room was the 19th century’s version of the transporter system aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek. And for more than 60 years, engineers inside a room in Orleans, Mass., sent and received critical information between the New World and the Old World. Earth’s final frontier was finally conquered.
Come, listen all unto my song;
It is no silly fable;
’Tis all about the mighty cord
They call the Atlantic cable.
—John Q. Sax, “How Cyrus Laid the Cable” (Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 11, 1858)
In 1890, The French Cable Company built an operations station in Orleans. It served as a vital link to an undersea telegraph system that connected continental America to mainland Europe. When it opened, the Cape Cod station was one of the most technologically advanced communication hubs in the United States.
There was no fiction in this science.
The apparatus was resource-rich and relied initially upon battery power. It was a connected maze of now-ancient gadgets and gizmos like the siphon recorder, the simulated mirror galvanometer, and the signal monitor and regenerator. Here, heavy equipment worked in concert with delicate instruments. It was busy and noisy. Operators called out a steady barrage of alpha-numeric messages as machines rattled a continuous cacophony of clicks, clacks, and clanks.
Today, a rock guitarist with a big rack of effects gear would feel an affinity for all these devices steering a signal path. But an electrical signal bouncing around a sound stage is vastly different from an electrical signal traveling 3,000 miles, three miles deep, within the inhospitable environs of the cold, salty Atlantic. Somehow, though, it managed to work. And work well.
The station closed in 1959. Since 1972, it has operated as a museum, one of only three marine telegraph stations preserved in the world. That same year it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Now, as if conjured by the ghost of Jules Verne himself, the equipment and the narrative still manage to awe adults and inspire students. At this unprepossessing museum, seeing is believing.
Joe Manas, 83, has been the museum’s president since 2010. Armed with an electrical engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he lights up like loose electricity when talking about the station. “I’m amazed at what they did given the technology at the time,” he marvels.
Conceptually, it was simple. Samuel Morse demonstrated, in 1837, via the electromagnetic telegraph, that an electrical current sent through a copper wire could be manipulated in such a way (by a code of dots and dashes) to allow communication between parties on each side of the respective wire.
The mid-1800s was an adventurous time. The first telegraph line was constructed between Washington and Baltimore in 1844. As these lines expanded, distances shrank. Days became minutes. By 1854, there were more than 23,000 miles of land telegraph in North America. Europe was similarly connected.
However, the two continents remained separate from each other. The only means of communication was by vessel. Shipping was dangerous and time-consuming (a roundtrip took at best a month). Even as technical knowledge advanced rapidly, commerce demanded connectivity.
“Thus began,” wrote Bern Dibner in his captivating book The Atlantic Cable, “one of the great sagas in modern history, touching the fields of science, politics, finance, and geography.”
But chief among the many arduous challenges was technology itself.
Would it work?
For this endeavor, a series of clever innovations extracted an otherwise weak signal transmitted more than 2,000 miles away, underwater, and converted it into a kind of simulated Morse Code.
Cyrus Field, a wealthy entrepreneur from Stockbridge, Mass., spearheaded the effort with British counterparts to ultimately connect New York and London. The endeavor was a private enterprise and not a public works project. After several attempts, two cables delivered upon the promise in 1866.
Meanwhile, France grew concerned that its transcontinental cable communication was routed entirely through Britain. Seeking greater independence, the French laid their own indirect cable in 1869. Later, a 3,173-mile cable (dubbed “Le Direct”) was laid directly between Brest, France, and Orleans, Mass., in 1898.
The legacy of those first lines cannot be underestimated. Submarine cables account for over 99 percent of intercontinental data traffic today.
A tour of the Orleans site unlocks a pre-digital history of extraordinary people and events that seems, upon reflection, inconceivable in 2024. Its story should be understood and appreciated.
The French Cable Station Museum reminds us that communication across the mighty Atlantic long ago was precious and precise.
Museum tours run June through September, Friday through Sunday, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. or via appointment. Located at the corner of Cove Road and Route 28, Orleans. 508-240-1735
For more information, visit frenchcablestationmuseum.org.
