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Originally Posted by Graham2001
In August of 1858 the first TransAtlantic telegraph cable was laid to wild celebrations, when it failed less than a month later, claims appeared that the whole thing had been a fraud and that the messages supposedly sent via the cable had in fact been sent via ship in advance to create the impression that the cable existed/was working. The laying of the second and third TransAtlantic cables in 1866 should have silenced the claims but when the first account of the project appeared in 1892, the author, son of one of the main backers of the project included a chapter devoted to proving that the 1858 cable was real.
But the best parallel may be drawn between the Apollo Moon Landings and the TransAtlantic cable, both were major and risky technological projects carried out under the glare of the media and both were greeted with major celebrations when they succeeded.
In the first case (1858) these claims were relatively simple and didn't require much detailed 'explanation'. eg. "They shipped a months worth of messages over the Atlantic to give the impression there was a telegraph cable across the ocean.".
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What's funny is that just before it failed the transAtlantic cable was used by the British government to countermand orders that had been sent by ship for troops based in Canada to ship out to help suppress the Sepoy Rebellion- developments in India having made the addtional manpower unnecessary. The British government saved something on the order of 50,000 pounds by avoiding an unnecessary troop movement.
In order for this to have been included in a month's worth of messages supposedly sent in advance by ship, it would have been necessary to predict the course of the Rebellion a month in advance.
I think that a rational person would have drawn one of two conclusions from this: "The cable was genuine" or "who cares about the cable-they've just proved precognition". :wink: