History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy - 1873 Rio de Janeiro

	History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network
1873 Rio de Janeiro - Para Cable

Made for the Western and Brazilian Telegraph Company by Hooper's Telegraph Works.

1873 Rio de Janeiro to Para cable sample case
(Hunterian Museum, Glasgow)

Co-directors of William Hooper put forward a scheme to set up the Great Western Telegraph Company to lay a cable from England to the USA and on to Bermuda. They had been attracted by the profits being made by the Anglo American Telegraph Company. The Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, which had a substantial holding of shares in Anglo American, offered them its South American concessions on the condition they dropped the transatlantic plan, which they did.

These concessions had been granted by the Brazilian Emperor to Sir Charles Tilston Bright who in turn sold them to Telcon. The Great Western Telegraph Company was wound up and the Western and Brazilian Telegraph Company (W&B) was set up in its place.

The cable already manufactured by Hooper's Telegraph Works for the Atlantic was used on the east coast of South America between Para and Rio de Janeiro. CS Hooper laid the cables during 1873 from Para-Maranham-Ceara-Pernambuco-Bahia-Rio de Janeiro.

--Bill Glover


Hooper's Atlantic cable for the Great Western Telegraph Company, used instead on the Para-Rio de Janeiro route. See the middle sample in the cable case above.

The catalogue entry at the Hunterian Museum for the cable sample case shown above reads in part:

WESTN. & BRAZILN. Co. CABLE B. HOOPER'S LONDON. (engraved on the brass bands holding the ends of the section of cable together).

The specimen is in a plush lined box marked on the purple silk in the lid "SPECIMENS OF WESTERN AND BRAZILIAN TELEGRAPH Co.'s CABLES: RIO DE JANEIRO TO PARA MANUFACTURED AND SUBMERGED BY HOOPER'S TELEGRAPH WORKS, LIMITED, LONDON. 1873."

Last revised: 11 June, 2009

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