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History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

1900 Atlantic Cable (Nova Scotia - Azores Section)

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Manufactured by Siemens Brothers of London for the Commercial Cable Company, this is the core of the 1900 cable from Nova Scotia to Horta (Azores). The cable was laid by CS Faraday (1). The second leg of the cable from Azores to Waterville, Ireland, was laid in 1901 by the same manufacturer and ship.

The conductor has a center copper wire of 0.093" diameter (#13 BWG), surrounded by 15 wires of 0.023" diameter (#24 BWG). The weight of the copper is 300 lbs per nautical mile. The insulation is gutta percha, weighing 240 lbs per nm. As this is a core sample only, there is no information on the armoring wires which would have surrounded the core.

The cable remained in service until 1962, when it was abandoned along with the company's other Atlantic cables, the traffic being carried instead by a singe voice channel on each of TAT-1 and TAT-2, giving a total of 44 telegraph channels.

Original tag attached to the core sample. The reverse of the tag is marked "S.B. & Co., Jan 1900" and "Azores to Newfoundland", although the cable actually terminated in Nova Scotia.

Last revised: 4 October, 2011

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