Anglo-American Telegraph Company
The SS Great Eastern iron sailing steam ship, used to lay the Transatlantic telegraph cable.
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| Industry | Telegraphy |
|---|---|
| Fate | 1870 merged with New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company and French Atlantic Cable Company |
| Founded | 1856 |
| Founders | Cyrus Field, John Watkins Brett, Charles Tilston Bright |
| Subsidiaries | Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company |
The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed on 6 November 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic ocean, the first such telecommunications link.
The project stemmed from an agreement between the American Cyrus Field and the Englishmen John Watkins Brett and Charles Tilston Bright, and was incorporated in December 1856 with £350,000 capital, raised principally in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. The board of directors was composed of eighteen members from the United Kingdom, nine from the United States and three from Canada. The original three projectors were joined by E.O.W. Whitehouse as chief electrician. Curtis M. Lampson served ably as vice-chairman for over a decade.
The board recruited the physicist William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), who had publicly disputed some of Whitehouse's claims. The two enjoyed a tense relationship before Whitehouse was dismissed when the first cable failed in 1858.
When a second cable, under Thomson's supervision, was proposed, the Admiralty lent the hulks of HMS Amethyst and HMS Iris to the Company in 1864, both ships were then extensively modified in 1865 for ferrying the Atlantic cable from the works at Enderby's wharf, in East Greenwich, London, to the Great Eastern at her Sheerness mooring. A new subsidiary company, the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, under the chairmanship of John Pender was formed to execute the new venture.
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